I’ve decided that Materials in 3DS Max are not my favourite thing.  In fact, I think they are my least favourite thing.  I’ve been playing around with them for the past couple of days, trying to get a stone material that looks just right.  While I’ve had some minor success with a material for the buildings, I have yet to make it look like individual stone work (currently, it looks like each building is carved from a single rough-hewn stone).

The Process So Far

As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, my original thought on materials was to use a multi-subobject approach.  I would apply diffuse and bump maps using images taken of the exterior of the keep, then use secondary materials for the roof.  This approach was largely unsuccessful. I ended up rebuilding the roofs on the various buildings as other objects, so I could apply separate materials to them.  For the stone work on the buildings, I created a blend material that used an image from the castle wall as the map for the blend.  This seemed to work better as it presented more of a rough stone look.  I then applied a UVW Map modifier to each object and applied the material.  With the exception of the material creating the illusion of a single stone instead of multiple stones, the material application worked rather well.  However, when applying the same materials to my wall objects (which also had a UVW Map), the material looks painted on and doesn’t have the same texture as the buidings.  See below for an example:

I’ve tried messing with the tile values on the UVW map for the wall objects, but that doesn’t seem to have the effect I was hoping for.  I may scrap the material all together and return to using images applied as bump, diffuse, and displacement maps in order to create a more individual stone look.  As for the walls, I suppose more trial and error is involved.  I will continue to work with the UVW map settings; I may also separate materials for the walls, so I can further control how they are applied.