3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [205]
Cross-Reference
For more on maps and the various map types, see Chapter 17, “Adding Material Details with Maps.” •
FIGURE 16.2
The Blinn Basic Parameters rollout lets you select and control properties for the Blinn shader.
Self-Illumination can use a color if the Color option is enabled. If this option is disabled, a spinner appears that enables you to adjust the amount of default color used for illumination. Materials with a Self-Illumination value of 100 or a bright color like white lose all shadows and appear to glow from within. This happens because the self-illumination color replaces the ambient color, but a material with self-illumination can still have specular highlights. To remove the effect of Self-Illumination, set the spinner to 0 or the color to black. Figure 16.3 shows a sphere with Self-Illumination values (from left to right) of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100.
FIGURE 16.3
Increasing the Self-Illumination value reduces the shadows in an object.
The Opacity spinner sets the level of transparency of an object. A value of 100 makes a material completely opaque, while a value of 0 makes the material completely transparent. Use the Background button (located on the upper-right side of the Material Editor) to enable a patterned background image to make it easier to view the effects of the Opacity setting. Figure 16.4 shows materials with Opacity values of 10, 25, 50, 75, and 90.
FIGURE 16.4
The Opacity value sets how transparent a material is.
Specular highlights are the bright points on the surface where the light is reflected at a maximum value. The Specular Level value determines how bright the highlight is. Its values can range from 0, where there is no highlight, to 100, where the highlight is at a maximum. The graph to the right of the values displays the intensity per distance for a cross section of the highlight. The Specular Level defines the height of the curve or the value at the center of the highlight where it is the brightest. This value can be overloaded to accept numbers greater than 100. Overloaded values create a larger, wider highlight.
The Glossiness value determines the size of the highlight. A value of 100 produces a pinpoint highlight, and a value of 0 increases the highlight to the edges of the graph. The Soften value doesn't affect the graph, but it spreads the highlight across the area defined by the Glossiness value. It can range from 0 (wider) to 1 (thinner). Figure 16.5 shows a sampling of materials with specular highlights. The left image has a Specular Level of 20 and a Glossiness of 10, the second image has the Specular Level increased to 80, the third image has the Specular Level overloaded with a value of 150, and the last two images have the Glossiness value increased to 50 and 80, respectively.
FIGURE 16.5
You can control specular highlights by altering brightness and size.
Phong shader
The Phong shader creates smooth surfaces like Blinn without the quality highlights, but it renders more quickly than the Blinn shader does. The parameters for the Phong shader are identical to those for the Blinn shader. The differences between Blinn and Phong are very subtle, but Blinn can produce highlights for lights at low angles to the surface, and its highlights are generally softer.
Tip
The Blinn shader is typically used to simulate softer materials like rubber, but the Phong shader is better for hard materials like plastic. •
Anisotropic shader
The Anisotropic shader is characterized by noncircular highlights. The Anisotropy value is the difference between the two axes that make up the highlight. A value of 0 is circular, but higher values increase the difference between the axes, and the highlights are more elliptical.
Most of the parameters for this shader