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Let's
start putting a material and a texture on this object. First, download
this texture
and put it in your mydash directory.
Note:
to get this texture, you might need to right click on the link,
then choose Save Target As.
Next,
click on the Material icon - its at the top near the right
side of the screen - it looks like 4 colored balls. This will bring
up the material editor.
| Next,
we're going to get the material that is already assigned to
the Dash9. In the Material window, click on the icon
to the left - it looks like a blue ball with an arrow. This
is the Get Material icon. |
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| The
Material/Map Browser window should pop-up. To the left,
under Browse From, click on Scene. Now, click on the
third material down from the top of the list to highlight -
Material #57 (Multi/Sub-Object) [FREIGHT]. |
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| You
should notice a ball sample that has the BNSF textures on it
in a small window to the left. Click and drag that ball sample
over to the first ball in the Material Editor. You'll
get a pop-up dialog box - make sure that Instance is
selected, then hit OK. |
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Go ahead
and close the Material/Map Browser window. We are going to
make room for our new texture. In the Material Editor, under
Multi/Sub-Object Basic Parameters, click on the Set Number
button. A pop-up dialog will show. Change the number to 6
and hit OK.
Now that
we have our own material slot, we need to name it. MSTS can show
a variety of surface types - from dull surfaces, to shiny surfaces,
to transparent surfaces and more. In order to tell MSTS what surface
you want to have on your texture, you need to name the material
with a specific name. We will name our material - TransNorm1.
This tells MSTS that the material will have see through areas and
will react normaly to the light. The number following the name is
an ID number. Because you can have multiple versions of the
same material type, this number helps MSTS tell them apart.
To rename
our material, click on the button labelled Material #58 [Standard]
in the Material Editor, under the Multi/Sub-Object Basic
Parameters. You'll notice that the Material Editor will
now show you attributes of that material. Click in the text window
that says Material #58 and change it to say TransNorm1.
Copy this name exactly - MSTS is case-sensitive.
| Let's
put a texture to our new material. Look down under Blinn
Basic Parameters and click on the empty square button
next to the grey rectangle next to the word Diffuse:
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| The
Material/Map Browser window will pop open again.
In the lister box, double click on Bitmap. |
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| A
Select Bitmap Image File pop-up dialog box will show.
Select the testtex.tga file and click on Open. |
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Now we
need to assign our new material to our object. Click on our object
in any window view to select it if it hasn't been already. Next,
go to the Material Editor and click on the Assign Material
to Selection icon - it looks like a ball, an arrow, and a white
box.
| Hey,
let's see what our new material looks like. First, we need to
turn the material on. In the Material Editor, click on
the Show Map in Viewport icon - it looks like a checkered
cube. |
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| Go
to the Perspective view, Right click on the word Perspective
in that window, and select Smooth + Highlights. And you should
see....something... |
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Aww...gee....that
doesn't look very inspiring... What's going on? Well, the
material assigned to the Dash9 is a special material. It's
called Multi/Sub-Object and it is actually a collection
of materials. In this case, there are 6 different materials.
When we assign this type of material to an object, 3DSMAX
makes a guess as to which sub-material to assign to which
face. In most cases, it's usually wrong. We need to show 3DSMAX
the right way.
Click
on the Modify tab. Now, in the Perspective window,
click and drag a rectangle selection box around all of our
object to select all of the faces. Next, go back to the Modify
panel and slide it up until you see a section called Surface
Properties. Under Surface Properties, you'll see
Material and under that you'll see ID: In the
text box right next to it, type in 6 - that's the material
ID for our new material.
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| Well,
now the object looks all red. It's still not what we want. What
are we missing? We're missing mapping coordinates for our object.
This tells 3DSMAX how the texture is placed on our object. To
do this, go to the Modify panel and click on the down
arrow in the box that says Modifier List. Under UV
Coordinate Modifiers, select UVW map. |
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| Hey!
Look in the Perspective window - a texture! |
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