9

Raytrace Material 1513
surface shading that a standard material does.
It can also create fully raytraced reflections and
refractions. It also supports fog, color density,
translucency (page 3–1027), fluorescence (page
3–942),andotherspecialeffects.
The reflections and refractions Raytrace material
generates are more accurate than those produced
by the Reflect/Refract (page 2–1699) map.
Rendering raytraced objects c an be slower than
using Reflect/Refract. On the other hand, Raytrace
is optimized for rendering 3ds Max scenes. You
can f urther optimize it for you r scene by excluding
specific objects from raytraci ng.
Note: If you want accurate, raytraced reflect ions or
refractions in a standard material you can use the
Raytrace map (page 2–1698),whichusesthesame
raytracer. TheRaytracemapandmaterialshare
global p ar ameter 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 g et unexpected results. Making the material
2-Sided doesn’t correct the problem as it o ften does
with reflections and refractions in Standard materials.
In s ome cases, the colors in the Basic Parameters
rollout of Raytrace ma terial behave differently
from colors in standard materials. Standard
material has a d iffuse shad ing model that does
an excellent job of rendering sol id, nonreflective
objectssuchasplastic,ceramic,andsoon. In
effect, this model applies color to the object.
The color components in Ray t race material, on
the other hand, attempt to model their physical
counterparts in na ture.
In Ray trace material, the surface reflects its Diffuse
color component without specular reflection,
while the Reflect color component controls 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 Ra ytrace
material contains the same controls as the
dynamics properties for a standard material (page
2–1465).
Raytrace ma terial has a large user interface with a
lot of controls. In general, if you are using Raytrace
to create reflections and refractions, the controls in
the Basic Parameters 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 Cont rols to turn the
raytracer on or off, and to toggle other options.
Use the Global Raytracer Settings dialog (page
2–1528) (Rendering > Raytrace Globals) to set
options globally (for all Raytrace mater ials and
maps in the scene), including recursion depth.
Interfa ce
Raytrace material has the following rollouts, w hich
are described in these topics:
Raytrace Basic Parameters Rollout (page 2–1514)
Raytrace Extended Parameters Rollout (page
2–1519)
Raytracer Controls Rollout (page 2–1521)
SuperSampling Rollout (page 2–1459)
Raytrace Maps Rollout (page 2–1523)
Raytrace Dynamics Properties Rollout (page
2–1527)
The following dialogs are also par t of the Raytrace
material’s interface:
Raytracer Global Parameters Rollout (page 2–1528)
Raytracing Acceleration Parameters Dialog (page
2–1531)