User Manual

Normally, in a 3D application, only the front face of a surface is visible and the back face is
culled, so that if a camera were to revolve around a plane in a 3D application, when it reached
the backside, the plane would become invisible. Making a plane two sided in a 3D application is
equivalent to adding another plane on top of the first but rotated by 180 degrees so the normals
are facing the opposite direction on the backside. Thus, when you revolve around the back, you
see the second image plane, which has its normals facing the opposite way.
NOTE: This can become rather confusing once you make the surface transparent, as
the same rules still apply and produce a result that is counterintuitive. If you view from
the frontside a transparent two-sided surface illuminated from the backside, it
looks unlit.
Material ID
This slider sets the numeric identifier assigned to this material. This value is rendered into the
MatID auxiliary channel if the corresponding option is enabled in the renderer.
Common Controls
Settings Tab
The Settings tab in the Inspector is duplicated in other 3D nodes. These common controls are
described in detail at the end of this chapter in “The Common Controls” section.
Material Merge 3D [3MM]
The MaterialMerge node
Material Merge Node Introduction
The Material Merge node can be used to combine two separate materials together. This node
can be used to composite Material nodes, combining multiple illumination materials (Blinn, Cook
Torrance) with texture nodes (Bump Map, Reflection) to create complex shader networks.
The node also provides a mechanism for assigning a new material identifier to the
combined material.
Inputs
The Material Merge node includes two inputs for the two materials you want to combine.
–
Background Material: The orange Background material input accepts a 2D image or
a 3D material to be used as the background material.
–
Foreground Material: The green Foreground material input accepts a 2D image or a
3D material to be used as the foreground material. A 2D image is treated as a diffuse
texture map in the basic shading model.
Chapter –82 3D Material Nodes 1778