[3DS Max/gMax] The Material Editor and UVW Map

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[3DS Max/gMax] The Material Editor and UVW Map

Post by hppav »

The material editors in both programs are different in how you start a new material but they function the same.

In gMax you open the Material Editor and click New... We want "Multi/Sub Object" or similar (forgive me but I forget some of the details for gMax such as the exact wording).

In 3ds Max you open the Material Editor and click an empty sphere and select the "Standard" button and choose "Multi/Subobject" from the list that pops up.

I don't know if gMax has is but in 3ds Max I recommend you change the shader to Phong, this is the shader used by the original Trespasser Developers as well as the TC Ops in TC~Isle

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Now that you have this set you'll see either 2 or 10 empty texture slots (depending on if it's gMax or 3ds Max). You can add more but I have had serious issues doing so, as you could see when I first imported the Visitor Center into JPO.

We want to add our textures to these. First we'll add in an exterior wall texture. Under (Shader name) Basic Parameters you'll see Ambient and Diffuse. To the right of those are two boxes with a color swatch in them. Further right for Diffuse is a gray square. Click that and from the popup select "Bitmap" Then select your texture.

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Now click "Go to Parent"

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And then click "Show map in Viewport" and name it something descriptive like "Exterior Wall"

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Now click go to parent again to go to the main material (the one with the 10/2 slots) and repeat the process so that you have textures for the exterior walls, interior walls, cieling, floor, trim, and roof. Then once you have the necessary slots filled, select the building and click "Assign Material To Selection"

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Now the building looks funky. That's because we haven't adjusted it's Material IDs. The numbers to the left of the slots is the ID number for that particular texture. What we need to do is change the material IDs for the polygons to match the ID number of the texture we want to use. I'd suggest writing down the ID numbers and their corresponding textures before continuing.

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Now what we need to do is go back into Editable Poly/Editable Mesh (depending on how you modeled the building) and go to Polygon/Face and select all the exterior wall faces. Scroll down and you'll see a grid with numbers in each of them and above that "Set ID" with a text input box next to it. Type the number of the texture you want to apply to these faces (in this case 1).

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It still look horrible, doesn't it? We need to set the polygon's UVW coordinates. For this we'll use the UVW Map modifier. DO NOT DESELECT THE POLYGONS. You go to Modifier>UV Coordinates>UVW Map. Since this part of the mesh is a box we'll use a box modifier. And to keep the textures proportional, we need to set all three sizes to the same (in this case it's the height of this part of the mesh).

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Now that we're done with these polygons, we right click and select "Convert to Editable Poly" (Or Editable Mesh to those who prefer that)

Do the same for the interior walls and the trim. The floor and ceiling would be done with just a plane instead of a box.

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Now comes the fun part, the thatched roof. We need to do each individual side one at a time. Select one side, set the ID, give it the modifier and set it to planer with both sizes being the same.

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It kinda looks alright but we need to adjust the gizmo to match the angle of the roof regardless. Luckily there is a subobject to do just that. Using this subobject, you can adjust the position, rotation, and scale of the UVW gizmo. So use the controls to align it to the roof angle.

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Do this to all 4 sides of the top, keeping the size of the gizmo the same throughout.

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And now you are done with the texturing! There's still more to do but that's another tutorial.
Album 1 http://m.imgur.com/a/cRA26
Album 2 http://imgur.com/a/6tvKV
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