This is a basic Mental Ray tutorial in which you’ll learn to create shiny/ reflective objects and how to use HDR images (high dynamic range). You’ll also learn to manipulate basic scene environment settings. The reflective textures you will create are completely procedural and only require 3DS Max and the Mental Ray renderer (included).

We’re using 3DS Max 2011 but the process is basically the same on most previous versions. That being said, the 2011 version has loads of improvements and you should really check it out.

The Scene and the HDR map

Our scene is made up of 2 basic spherical primitives and a teapot.

You should also download The Uffizi Gallery Angular .hdr map from Paul Debevec’s excellent Light Probe Image Gallery

Set the mental ray renderer as default.

2/x Diffuse texture – the Occlusion map

First of all please maximize the Camera window(corner right) by pressing “Alt+W” as you won’t be needing the other views. Select the pot model, open the Material Editor {} by pressing “M” and Apply {} the first empty material to the model. Now click the material’s Diffuse map check-box, scroll down to the mental Ray tab and assign an Ambient/ Reflective Occlusion map.

Set the Samples to 32, the Spread to 0.9, the Max Distance to 0.9 and check the Reflective box. Next, change the white color to set the color of your object (in our case a bright green) and click “Go To Parrent” {} to get to the main material. Explanation: The samples control the overall quality of the map and the spread will set the map’s diffusion level.

This is it for the diffuse texture. Simple, ehh ?
Expand the material’s Maps tab, click the Reflection slot and assign a Falloff map {}

Set the “Falloff Type” to Fresnel, adjust the black and white strength to 20 and 10, click the black map slot and assign a Raytrace map to it.Hit the “Go to Parent” {} button to get to the main material.

Drag and drop the green material to another empty slot. Do this twice and remember to rename the material. Now select one of the new materials and click the Diffuse map’s check-box or map slot and change the the Ambient/ Reflective Occlusion’s green color to something else. Do this for the other material too.

You should now have 3 distinctly colored materials. Assign {} the new materials to the other objects and apply a standard light grey material to the ground plane.

If we render the scene now the objects will reflect each other and the ground plane but would not look exactly realistic because of the lack of things to reflect.

Continue to page 2 for the HDR part of this tutorial