Materials and Mapping Tutorials > Introduction to Materials and Mapping >
Create a Material for the Bottom of the Swimming Pool: Using Box Projection

The floor and sides of the swimming pool are also made of ceramic tiles, but in this case the tiles are small, and might better be described as terrazzo or mosaic.

Set up the lesson:

- Continue from the previous lesson, or open med_villa_deck_mapped.max.

Select the swimming pool:

1. On the Layers toolbar, choose the layer called Swimming Pool, and then click (Select Objects In Current Layer).
2. Right-click a viewport and choose Isolate Selection.

   Now only the swimming pool is selected and visible in all viewports.

Create the mosaic material:

1. In the Slate Material Editor, drag a new Arch & Design material from the Browser into the active View, and double-click the new material node so you can see its parameters. Name this material Swimming Pool.
2. On the Templates rollout, open the drop-down list of templates and choose Glossy Finish.
3. On the Reflection rollout, change the value of Reflectivity to 0.6 and the value of Glossiness to 1.0.
4. Drag a Bitmap node from the Browser into the active View.

   3ds Max Design opens a file dialog.

5. In the file dialog, browse to the \sceneassets\images folder. Choose the file mosaic.jpg and click Open.

   Mosaic map for the sides and bottom of the swimming pool

6. Wire the new Bitmap node to the Diffuse Color Map component of the Swimming Pool material node.
7. Double-click the new Bitmap node so you can see its parameters.
8. On the Coordinates rollout, make sure Use Real-World Scale is turned on, and then set Width Size = Length Size = 3.0m (meters).
9. On the Slate Material Editor toolbar, click (Show Shaded Material In Viewport) to turn it on. (If you use a legacy viewport driver, this button's tooltip reads, "Show Standard Map In Viewport.")
10. Click the Swimming Pool material node to make it active, then on the Slate Material Editor toolbar, click (Assign Material To Selection).

    The swimming pool is an editable mesh, so as with the terrace, you need to apply a mapping modifier.

11. Go to the Modify panel, and choose UVW Map from the Modifier List drop-down list.

    Make sure the UVW Map modifier’s Real-World Map Size toggle is turned on. (It should be on by default.)

12. Examine the mapping in the Camera-Hi-Point viewport.

    The bottom of the pool doesn’t look bad, but the sides are streaked.

    Unlike the wooden deck and the tiled terrace, which are flat surfaces, the swimming pool has both flat (or nearly flat) surfaces and vertical ones, so the default Planar mapping doesn’t work.

13. On the Modify panel Parameters rollout, change the map projection from Planar to Box.

    The radio buttons at the top of the UVW Map Parameters rollout control how a map is “projected” onto the surface of an object. For the pool, Box projection works better than Planar.

14. Click Exit Isolation Mode to view the whole scene again.

15. Now the pool has a fine-grained mosaic tile texture of the correct size. It’s a little too fine-grained to show up well in viewports, but when you render it, it looks correct, and it interacts nicely with the Water - Pool material above it.

    In the Slate Material Editor, line the Swimming Pool nodes up with the other materials you’ve already created, then minimize the material node.

Save your work:

- Save the scene as my_villa_pool.max.

Next

Create a Material for the Terrain: Cropping a Texture