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460 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
Therefore, an AccuRender material that uses a
bitmapimageinthebasetexturedefinitionwill
provide a more accurate translation to 3ds Max.
Note: There are some limitations on what is
translated b etween Revit/AccuRender materials
and 3ds Max materials because there is not a
one-to-one correlation between the two material
definitions.
Ma ter ia l As si gnments
The Revit DWG Exporter puts embedded
informationoneachobjectitexports.Amongst
this information are identifiers specifying
material assignments. Revit creates the same
kind of material definitions used by Architectural
Desktop, VIZ Render and 3ds Max. When
importedorlinked,3dsMaxusesthisinformation
to translate and maintain the material assi gnment
totheresultingsceneobject.
Be cause the material identifier is embedded, if you
opened the DWG in AutoCAD, you would not see
the applied materials.
Revit offers many options for specifying a material
to an object or class of objects. Likew ise, there
are many ways where material assignments can be
over ridden. The results you see in the 3ds Max
scene, in terms of how the materials are applied,
match what you see in the Revit mo del.
The exception to the rule would be if many of the
materials are AccuRender procedural materials. In
these cases, you wil l see only the diffuse color.
Tex tur e Coordina tes
Material textures on imported or linked objects
havethesameappearanceaswithinRevitor
AccuRender. Of course, the exception to this rule
is when AccuRe nder procedural textures are used.
When materials from Revit are viewed in the
3ds Max Material Editor, you’ll notice that some
settings are not tr anslated or t hey are not set as
you’re used to seeing in 3ds Max. For example,
if the texture map of a flooring material has a
rotation of 45 degrees in the Revit project, the
rotation setting does not translate when the model
is linked/imported to 3ds Max. The rotation for
the texture map is set to zero in the 3ds Max
Material Editor.
Map S caling
The scale of material textures is of primary
importance.TheFileLinkManagerorDWG/DXF
Importer attempts to read and translate the offset
andtilingofthematerialssothetexturemaps
appear in 3ds Max as they do in Revit.
However, map scaling may differ because the Tile
Size settings in Revit are measured in decimal
feet or meters even if your Project Units are set to
Decima l Inches or Millimeters. Once the model
is linked or imported to 3ds Max, you c an turn
on Use Real-World Scale and match the Tile Size
settings. The main thing is to pay attention to the
Tile Size settings when you c reate the material in
Revit.
As a example, let’s say you’ve created a m aterial
in Revit that uses a brick texture map with an X:
Tile Size set to 20 and a Y: Tile Size set to 16. If
youopenthatmaterialinthe3dsMaxMaterial
Editor, you will find that the Width and Height
Size settings are automatically set to 20’ and 16’
respectively. The texture mapping will always
be scaled correctly in the scene. How a material
is displayed in the Material Editor depends on
whether Use Real-World Scale is turned on or off.
See also
Propagate Materials to Instances (page 2–1276)