Materials and Mapping Tutorials > Introduction to Materials and Mapping >
Create a Material for the Vase: Using Cylindrical Projection

For the outdoor vase, you will use a stone material and a slightly different mapping.

Set up the lesson:

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

Select the vase and isolate it:

1. In the Camera-Terrace viewport, click to select the Plant-Pot object.
2. Right-click to display the quad menu, and choose Isolate Selection.
3. Click the Point Of View (POV) viewport label (it now shows “[ Camera-Terrace ]”), and choose Perspective.
   TipYou might have to move the Warning: Isolated Selection dialog to see the viewport labels.

   This helps you get a better view of the vase.

4. Click (Zoom Extents All).

   You can find this button among the navigation buttons at the lower right corner of the 3ds Max Design window.

   Now the viewports show a closeup of the vase (except for Camera-Hi-Point, which retains the camera’s point of view).

Create the stone material:

1. In the Slate Material Editor, drag a new 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 Plant Pot.
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 component of the Plant Pot material node.

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

   Travertine texture for the vase

4. Click the Bitmap node to make it active.
5. 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.")
6. Click the Plant Pot material node to make it active, then on the Slate Material Editor toolbar, click (Assign Material To Selection).

   In viewports, the vase turns brown, but doesn’t show the map. The vase is an Editable Poly object, and like Editable Mesh, this object type requires a mapping modifier.

Map the vase and adjust the map settings:

1. On the Modify panel, apply a UVW Map modifier to the vase.
2. For the UVW Map modifier, turn off Real-World Map Size. Also double-click the Bitmap node and on the Coordinates rollout, turn off Use Real-World Scale.

   If you shade the Front viewport the mapping looks all right, but in the Perspective viewport you can see that the sides appear to be smeared.

3. Orbit the Perspective viewport to see how the map is smeared along the sides of the vase. When you’re done, press Shift+Z to undo the rotation.

   Planar mapping isn’t appropriate for the vase.

4. On the UVW Map Parameters rollout, change the map projection to Cylindrical.

   An orange cylindrical “gizmo” shows the cylinder used to project the map. Unfortunately, the default orientation of the cylinder isn’t aligned with the vase, so you need to fix that.

5. In the Parameters rollout Alignment group, change the axis to X.

   Now the projection cylinder (gizmo) is aligned with the vase.

6. Also in the Alignment group, click Fit.

   This fits the gizmo to the vase geometry, so there’s no chance of tiling.

Change the surface finish of the vase:

1. In the Slate Material Editor, assign a Bitmap to the Bump Map component of the Plant Pot material node.

   3ds Max Design opens a file dialog.

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

   Granite texture to use as a bump map for the vase

3. Double-click the Plant Pot material node so you can see its parameters. Scroll down to the Special Purpose Maps rollout, and change the value for the Bump map to –0.5.

   This gives the vase a weathered look when you render it.

   As with the bump map you applied to the terrace tiles, the detailed vase texture won’t be apparent in long shots, but it might come in useful if you render the vase 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, and choose Cameras Camera-Terrace to restore the long camera view.

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

Save your work:

- Save the scene as my_villa_vase.max.

Next

Create a Material for the Trellis: Using MapScaler