8

1104 Glossary
for Use with the mental ray Renderer (page
2–1384)
.
The mental ray manual,
Prog ramming mental ray,
describes how to write custom shaders.
Shaders (Standard Materials)
For a standard material (page 2–1309) ,theshader
is the algorithm that controls how the material
responds to light. Shaders especially control how
highlights appear. They also provide a material’s
color components, and control its opacity,
self-illumination, and other settings. Shaders are
often named for their inventors; they can a lso be
named for the effect they provide. See
Shading
Type (page 2 –1242)
.
Samples of different shading for a standard material
1. Anisotropic
2. Blinn
3. Met a l
4. Multi-layer
5. Oren-Nayar-Blinn
6. Phong
7. Strauss
8. Translucent
For each material, one of the available shaders
is always active. You choose the shader on the
material’s
Shader Basic Parameters rollout (page
2–1310)
.
The
raytr ace material (page 2–1353) uses a subset
of the standard material shaders: Anisotropic,
Blinn, Metal, Oren-Nayar-Blinn, and Phong.
You choose the raytrace material’s shader on the
material’s
Rayt race Basic Parameters rollout (page
2–1355)
.
The other types of materials in 3ds Max don’t give
you a choice of shader.
Materials(andlightsandcameras)usedwith
the
mental ray renderer (page 3–77) can use
ment al ray shaders, which are not the same as the
standard mater ia l shaders. See
Shaders (mental
ray Renderer) (page 3–1103)
.
Shadow Maps (Light Objects)
Example of shadow-mapped shadows
Ashadowmapisabitmapthattherenderer
generatesduringapre-renderingpassofthe
scene. Shadow maps don’t show the color cast by
transparent or translucent objects. On the other
hand, shadow maps can have soft-edged shadows,
which ray-traced shadows cannot.