ADI802A Produce photo-realistic images from an Architectural 3D model

Topic 4 Intro to creating Materials and Mapping

Exercise Lounge Chair

This exercise will demonstrate how to generate new materials using bitmaps, how to apply them to objects in the scene and how to correctly map them so they appear correctly. We will start buy loading the max file "singlelounge_nomaterials.max"

1. After you open the file you can change the object line colour's using the modify menu, it makes them easier to work with.

2. The first thing we will do is create a new material. Open the materials editor using the toolbar icon as shown in yellow above. If your materials editor has more than 6 sample slots you can right mouseclick on them to change the number.

3. Select the second sample window and change the material type to Standard, click the Architectural button, shown No 1, and from the list select Standard No 2. A Standard material is easier to edit and has fewer parameters to concern yourself with.

4. With the Standard material properties displayed we can know edit the material parameters. Firstly give the material a name. I have used the title "Fabric", you can edit this at any time later, we may use Fabric as the material descriptor and add its colour and texture "Fabric_redchecked" or "Fabric_brown_leather". To create our new material we will use one of the standard bitmaps that comes with Viz. The Diffuse colour swatch is the body of a material colour, in this case we will replace the diffuse colour with the bitmap. Pick the button at No 2 and select "Bitmap" from the list, No 3.

5. This opens up the "Select Bitmap File" dialogue box. You can see from the path in the above image that in the Autodesk, Viz2007 folder there is a folder for "Maps" this contains all the standard bitmaps that are included with Viz 2007. We will navigate to the Architectural bitmaps.

6. When you first get the bitmap, it does not appear correctly in the sample slot. We will be generating our own mapping coordinates so we need to remove "Use Real-World Scale" so unchecked that button and change the tiling to 1.

7. I selected the bitmap Furnishings.Fabrics.Plaid4.jpg. To give the material some texture, this material has an associated bitmap that can be used as a bump map. Bump maps use colour to identify the bumpyness, black is a hollow and white a ridge. If you look at the bump map you will see what I mean. Choose the "none" button next to the Bump this will open up the select bitmap dialogue again, choose the Furnishings.Fabrics.Plaid.Bump.jpg

8. You can now Assign the material as we have before, select the object you wish to assign it to, in this case the chair seat and use the Assign Material to object button from the toolbar. You can see the fabric does not appear correctly in the viewport. There are a couple more things we need to modify yet.

9. With the chair seat still selected, select the modify menu, drop down the above menu by using the down arrow, then choose UVW Map.

10. In the modify menu select UVW Mapping and highlight "Gizmo" In the parameters area uncheck "Real-World Map Size" You can now adjust the size of your mapping icon (shown in yellow). Firstly set the size of the icon Length, Width and Height to 1000. With Gizmo select, (yellow box on Gizmo on) you can use the scale tool button to scale it to look approximately a 1000 x 1000. I find this is a good starting point. As you scale it up and down you will see the bitmap scaling. You can now adjust it to the correct size for your application.

11. Once you have mapped a material correctly in your scene it is easy to apply that to other objects that will use the same material. Above you can see the side cushion has had the same material assigned to it as the seat. To apply the same mapping coordinates, add a UVW Map to the object, then scroll down to the Acquire button.

You can choose Relative or Absolute to the original object, in this case I used relative.

12. Add the second material for the main surround of the chair, then map it to suit.

13. Try using the mapping Gizmo with the rotate tool (as you did with the scale tool) to get the desired effect on the cushions.