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1354 Chapter 16: Material Editor, Materials, and Maps
surface shading that a standard material does.
It can also create fully raytraced reflections and
refractions. It also supports fog, color density,
translucency (page 3–1121) , fluorescence (page
3–1036)
,andotherspecialeffects.
The reflections and refractions Ray trace material
generates are more accurate than those produced
by the
Reflect/Refract (page 2–1509) map.
Rendering raytraced objects can be slower than
using Reflect/Refract. On t he other hand, Raytrace
is optimized for rendering 3ds Max scenes. You
can f urther optimize it for your scene by excluding
specific objects from ray tracing.
Note: If you want accurate, raytraced reflections or
refractions in a standard material you can use the
Raytr ace map (page 2–1508) ,whichusesthesame
raytracer. TheRaytracemapandmaterialshare
global p arameter settings.
Impor tant: Raytrace map and Raytrace material use a
surface’s normal to decide whether a ray is entering or
exiting a surface. If you flip the normals of an object,
you can get unexpected results. Making the material
2-Sided doesn’t correct the problem as it often does
with reflections and refractions in Standard materials.
In some cases, the colors in the Basic Parameters
rollout of Raytrace material behave differently
from colors in standard materials. Standard
material has a diffuse shad ing model that does
an excellent job of rendering solid, nonreflective
objectssuchasplastic,ceramic,andsoon. In
effect, this model applies color to the object.
The color components in Raytrace material, on
the other hand, attempt to model their physical
counterparts in nature.
In Raytrace material, the surface reflects its Diffuse
color component without specular reflection,
while the Reflect color component con trols the
amount of specular reflection. These two material
components are layered together. The results you
see depend on the layering effect. For example,
if the material is not transparent and completely
reflective, no diffuse color is visible. If the material
is not transparent and completely nonreflective,
only the diffuse color is visible.
The Dynamics Properties rollout for the Raytrace
material contains the same controls as the
dynamics properties for a
standard material (page
2–1309)
.
Raytrace material has a large user int erface with a
lot of controls. In general, if you are using Raytrace
to create reflections and refractions, the controls in
the Basic P arameters rollout are the only ones you
need to adjust. The Extended Parameters rollout
for Raytrace has controls for special effects. The
Raytracer Controls rollout affects the raytracer
itself. Use the Rayt racer Controls to turn the
raytracer on or off, and to toggle other options.
Use the
Global Raytracer Settings dialog (page
2–1369)
(Rendering > Raytr ace Globals) to set
options globally (for all Raytrace materials and
maps in the scene), including recursion depth.
Interfa ce
Raytrace materia l has the following rollouts, w hich
are described in these topics:
Raytrace Basic Parameters Rollout (page 2–1355)
Raytrace Extended Parameters Rollout (page
2–1360)
Raytr acer Controls Rollout (page 2–1362)
SuperSampling Rollout (page 2–1302)
Raytrace Maps Rollout (page 2–1364)
Ray t race Dynamics Properties Rollout (page
2–1368)
The following dialogs are also part of the Ray trace
material’s interface:
Raytr acer Global Parameters Rollout (page
2–1369)