User manual
© Next Limit Technologies 2010
Maxwell Render 2.5 User Manual
Chapter 14. Appendix I. Materials Examples | 125
Use a bump map to add bumps to the surface. Check the Normal map icon if you prefer
to use a Normal map.
More concrete examples at the MXM Gallery...
b. Example 2: Plastic
Fig.01 berglass by rivoli Fig.02 Blue _ Dull Plastic by DarkSonofChronos
A plastic material can be created using a two-BSDF material. The rst BSDF is the plastic’s
base color. Set the Re 0° color to the color of your plastic. The Re 90° and Nd numbers
do not matter and can be left at default because we are using a high roughness value to
create a 100% diffuse material. So set roughness to 100%.
The second BSDF is the shiny “topcoat” of the plastic. The Re 0° color can be left at
default or you can raise it or lower it to have an overall shinier or duller plastic. The Re
90° color can also be left at default because we want the plastic to be very shiny at the
edges, and we do not want any tinting of the reections.
Nd should be set to 3 which is a good value for plastics.
The blending weight of the second BSDF was set to 30 so that the shiny BSDF has less
inuence on the nal material. This will create a more realistic plastic.
To make the plastic more or less shiny, there are two possible approaches:
1. You can lower the Re 90° color, and/ or lower the Nd of the second BSDF to make it
less shiny. Conversely, you can raise the Nd to make the plastic shinier, given that the
Re 90º is already set to the maximum value.
2. You can increase the blending weight of the second BSDF so it will have more inuence
on the nal look of the material.
You can also create a plastic using Additive mode, creating two layers with one BSDF each.
Set the top layer (the shiny top coating) to Additive, and adjust the layer’s weight to make
it more/ less shiny. This approach will create more vivid-looking plastics which may be
preferable in certain cases.
Avoid having more than one layer set to a weight of 100 in Additive mode. A material
with three layers, two of which are set to Additive and have a weight of 100, will look
unrealistically reective. And it will also add to the render time. This does not apply to
layers in Normal mode.
More plastic examples at the MXM Gallery