User manual

© Next Limit Technologies 2010
Maxwell Render 2.5 User Manual
Chapter 10. Maxwell Materials | 59
desired axis.
• Offset: Select the amount of offset for the X, Y axis.
• Relative/ Meters: The amount of tiling for a texture can be set in the texture
coordinates (Relative), or in real scale in meters (Meters). Maxwell Render will use a
1m x 1m x 1m UV set for the texture when the Meters option is selected, regardless of
the actual size of the object and what other UV sets may be applied to the object. This
is very useful to create re-usable materials which can simply be dragged & dropped
on an object of any size. For example, if you want to create a material with 25cm tiles,
check the Meters mode, and set the tiling for both X and Y axis to 0.25. Now you can
drop this material on a oor of any size and your tiles will always be 25cm.
The Image Properties section is an image editor where you can make simple adjustments:
• Invert: Invert the loaded texture. This is useful for black & white textures used as a
weightmap or mask.
• Interpolation: Turning this option on applies ltering to a texture, which may be
useful to avoid pixelization when rendering close-ups of smaller textures. Filtering
is handy mostly for displacement textures – to smooth out the displaced surface –
especially when using 8bit textures. It is recommended to keep this option turned off
for regular textures (color, bump, weightmaps, etc.) to avoid blurring them.
• Brightness/ Contrast/ Saturation: Common image editing options useful for ne-
tuning a texture without having to use an external image editing application.
• RGB Clamp: Adjust the levels of your image. This function enables you to specify the
maximum darkest or brightest values in the texture. For example, if you change the
min Clamp from 0 to 30, any value in the texture darker than RGB 30 will be set to 30.
10.02.09 Drag & Drop functionalities
The Material Editor has certain drag & drop functions. You can drag & drop:
• Color chips
• Texture icons
By default both textures and texture settings (tiling, offset, etc.) are copied. Hold Shift
before starting the drag & drop to only copy the texture itself.
The drag & drop functionality also works between BSDFs – you can drag a color chip or a
texture icon from one BSDF to another. To do so, start dragging the icon over a BSDF layer
icon. The right side of the material editor will change to show the BSDF properties. Now
you can drop the icon in one of the appropriate slots.
You can also drag & drop a Layer to another Layer to rearrange them if you wish.
You may also replace the settings of one component with the settings of another by
holding Shift and dragging & dropping one component over the other.
10.03 The Stacked Layers System
Maxwell materials work in a natural, layered way. A layer represents a complete material
and it can (and usually will) contain several BSDF, coatings, displacement components,
etc.
Each layer should be thought of as an independent material, and the different layers in a
material are stacked from bottom to top, just like with the Photoshop layers palette. The
top layers conceal the bottom layers, and this means that the order of the layers in the
material arrangement can change the material’s look and behavior completely. This makes
it easy to create complex materials. In real life, there are many surfaces that are created
putting different materials over one another, like paint over wood, a decal over a metal
surface, or dust over a glass surface.
To allow maximum control over all the properties of a material, the material parameters
have been arranged into three different panels, accessible from the layers list: