Materials and Mapping Tutorials > Introduction to Materials and Mapping >
Create a Material for the Trellis: Using MapScaler

The next object to texture is the arbor trellis on the balcony of the house. Its geometry is complicated, and requires a new mapping technique.

Set up the lesson:

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

Create the weathered wood material:

1. In the Slate Material Editor, drag an Arch & Design material from the Browser into the active View. Double-click the new material node so you can see its parameters. Name this material Trellis.
2. On the Templates rollout, open the drop-down list of templates, and choose Matte Finish.
3. Assign a Bitmap to the Diffuse Color Map node of the Trellis material.

   3ds Max Design opens a file dialog. In the file dialog, navigate to the \sceneassets\images folder, choose the file oldwood.jpg, then click Open.

   Weathered wood texture for the trellis

4. Click the Bitmap node to make it active, then 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.")

Apply the material:

1. If the Layers toolbar isn’t visible, right-click the gray area to the right of the main toolbar, and choose Layers to display this toolbar.
2. From the drop-down list of layers on the toolbar, choose Vine, and then click (Select Objects In Current Layer).

   This selects the arbor trellis that can support a grapevine.

3. In the Slate Material Editor, click the Trellis material node to make it active, then on the toolbar, click (Assign Material To Selection).

   You can’t see the texture in viewports yet, because the trellis is made of editable meshes.

4. Right-click to display the quad menu, and choose Isolate Selection.
5. Click the Point Of View (POV) viewport label (it now shows “[ Camera-Terrace ]”) and choose Perspective.
6. In the Perspective viewport, use (Zoom), (Pan), and (Orbit) to adjust the viewport so it shows a closer view of the trellis.

Map the trellis:

The trellis requires a mapping modifier, but UVW Map won’t work. If you were to try (you don’t have to go through the steps), you could see that none of the projection options work, because of the crosswise configuration of the trellis beams.

Trellis close-up: Poor mapping with UV Map

The solution is to use a Mapscaler modifier instead of UVW Map.

1. On the Modify panel, choose Mapscaler from the Modifier List drop-down list.
   NoteBe sure to choose “MapScaler” from the list, and not “MapScaler (WSM)”. The world-space (WSM) version of MapScaler has a similar effect, but is not quite the same.

   The MapScaler modifier maintains the map scale relative to each object (in this case, the cylindrical beams), and by default it wraps the texture so the wood grain wraps around each beam.

2. On the Mapscaler Parameters rollout, change the Scale to 1.0m (meter).

   This effect is already good, but the grain should actually follow each beam. Adjusting the Mapscaler and map settings can fix this.

3. In the Slate Material Editor, double-click the Bitmap node so you can see its parameters, then on the Coordinates rollout, change the W angle to 90.0 degrees.

   Now the beams in the trellis look the way they should.

   The effect of the Mapscaler modifier shows up even better if you render the close-up.

4. On the Warning: Isolated Selection dialog, click Exit Isolation Mode.

   If a Select Camera dialog appears, choose Camera-Terrace, and then click OK; otherwise, click the Point Of View (POV) viewport label (it now shows “Perspective”), and choose Cameras Camera-Terrace to restore the long camera view.

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

Save your work:

- Save the scene as my_villa_trellis.max.

Next

Add Materials to the Chairs: Propagating Materials to Instanced Objects