Working with materials

For the last two weeks I have been working with materials in 3ds Max. This subject is far too big to learn in two weeks, but I have learned the general idea of materials. When you make materials it is good to have a never ending attention to details.

Some of the objects I create in 3ds max are easy to apply materials to, just throwing it on the object, which is great (Boxes, planes etc.) 3ds Max however, does not understand how to apply materials to objects that are not as primitive, these needs to be unwrapped.

Unwrapping requires patience

If you model something, say a vinyl toy. 3ds max doesn’t know what you created, so you have to unwrap it. While doing so you should think about how you want the texture to look when you apply it to the object. This is quite tedious work, if you want to get it correct.

In the image above I am in the process of unwrapping a vinyl toy I modeled in 3ds max. While doing this I am trying to get all the squares equal size so that all parts have similar texture quality.

Some areas do not require a lot of detail, say under the foot. These areas will have larger squares and therefore use less space in the texture – since these are not seen often it is okay.

Using Photoshop to create textures

After the unwrapping is done, I bring the unwrapping into Photoshop to paint the texture. First you paint all the base colors on all the areas (in this example skin color). After that you start adding detail like eyes, scars and other things you want on your object.

You can also paint what areas that should reflect more light than other areas using black and white to define the separate areas. The same idea goes for the bump map, using black and white you can paint on the texture where you want the skin to bump outward or inward (good to use for scars).

The only thing that keeps you back in this area is your own imagination. You can texture the object to be whatever you want.

Realistic materials

If you are trying to create a realistic material, you can use pictures of the material you find on the internet. A good example of this is a brick wall.

If you want a brick wall in 3ds Max to be a brick wall you can use materials to achieve this effect without modeling several bricks and placing them in a brick pattern. Instead of doing this you can create a texture that does the same thing, but all you need in 3D is a plane. This can be challenging to get right manually in Photoshop, but you have some great tools that can help you quite much in this area. For example: www.crazybump.com or www.pixplant.com

Drawings of the week

A few drawings from the week that passed. Its outline/inline drawings to get used to drawing. Drawing negative shapes makes it easier to draw. since the left side of your brain is not interfering – there are no “real shapes”. Drawing get harder as you reach parts of the body the left side of the brain knows, such as hands and head.

  
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