8
1276 Chapter 16: Material Editor, Materials, and Maps
TheSampleTypeflyoutletsyouchoosewhich
geometry to display in the active
sample slot (p age
2–1264)
.Thisflyouthasthreebuttons:
•
Sphere (the defaul t)—Displays the material
on a sphere.
•
Cylinder—Displays the material on a
cylinder.
•
Cube —Displays the material on a cube.
•
Custom —Displays the material on a
custom object. This button appears only if you
have used the
Material Editor Options (page
2–1280)
dialog to specify a custom object for
sample slots.
See also
Creating a Custom Sample Object (page 2–1269)
Propagate Materials to Instances
Material Editor > Options menu > Propagate Materials
to Instances
When Propagate Materials To Instances is on, any
material assignment you make will be propagated
to all
instances (page 3–1051)
of the object in
your scene, including imported AutoCAD blocks
or ADT style-based objects; the latter two object
types are common in
DRF files (page 3–528)
.
When Propagate Materials To Instances is off,
materials are assigned in traditional 3ds Max
fashion; each object has a unique material
assignment.
•AutoCADblocks
• Architectural Desktop style-based objects
•Revitobjects
• Any instances of objects you’ve made in the
current scene
Backlight
Material Editor > Backl ight
Material Editor menu > O ptions menu > Backlight
Left: Backlight on
Right: Backlight off
Turning on Backlight adds a backlight to the active
sampleslot.Thisbuttonisonbydefault.
The effect is most easily seen with the sample
spheres, where the backlig ht highlights the
lower-right ed ge of the sphere.
Backlight is especially u seful whenever you’re
creating
metal (page 2–1322)
and
Strauss (page
2–1324)
materials. Backlig ht lets you see and
adjust the specular highlig ht created by glancing
light, which is much brighter on metals.