Adding Materials

Creating a Realistic Hourglass

Animating the Sand Level with Slice Modifiers

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials >  Modeling Tutorials > Creating a Realistic Hourglass > 

Creating Glass and Sand Materials

In this lesson, you'll make a transparent material to simulate glass and a new solid material to represent sand. For the glass materials, you'll add transparency falloff and increase the glossiness, then make the material two-sided so you can see through to the inside of the glass.

1. Click the upper-right material sample slot in the Material Editor to activate it.
2. In the Material name field, name the material Glass.

   Giving your materials logical names helps you keep track of what you've made. Any materials that you make can be stored in custom material libraries so you can reuse them in the future.

3. Drag the material onto the hourglass in the viewport.

   The hourglass should turn gray; the same as the sample sphere.

4. In the Material Editor, click the Background button (right side of sample spheres). A checkered background displays behind the purple sphere. This background is helpful in seeing transparencies in materials.

   

   There are four options you need to adjust before the material will start to look like glass. You'll change the opacity, the color, the specular values, and set it to be two-sided.

5. In the Blinn Basic Parameters rollout, set the Opacity value to 22.
6. In the same rollout, click the Diffuse color swatch. In the Color Selector dialog, choose a light blue color. If you prefer, you can type these values into the Red/Green/Blue (RGB) fields at the right, then click Close:
   • Red: 112
   • Green: 211
   • Blue: 243

   

   Changes to the material are automatically reflected on the model.

7. In the Specular Highlights group, increase the Specular Level to 88, and the Glossiness to 33.

   

   Glass material.

   On the Shader Basic Parameters rollout, turn on 2–Sided.

   This option controls the visibility of the inside of the hourglass so that it displays.

   NoteThere is one additional setting for this glass, but it won't be visible until you render the file to a bitmap image.
8. In the Material Editor, open the Extended Parameters rollout. Set the Falloff value to In, and Amount to 88.

   You'll now create the sand material, which is easy to do because it doesn't require as many settings as the glass material.

9. Click the sample slot in the lower-left corner to activate it. In the Material name field, type the name Sand.
10. Click the Diffuse color swatch. In the Color Selector, choose a light brown color or enter these RGB values:
    • Red: 216
    • Green: 185
    • Blue: 137

    

    The Red/Green/Blue settings for sand.

11. Save your scene as MyHourglass4.max.

Now that the Glass and Sand materials are created, you'll create the sand in the hourglass. Once you've created it, you'll apply the sand material.