Chapter Summary
This chapter explained how materials can be used to define how the surface looks when rendered. Materials are created in the Material Room and the Library includes an assortment of preset materials you can apply to material groups. Simple materials include properties such as color, highlight, reflection, and transparency, and you create advanced materials by connecting material nodes together within the Shader Window. Several complex material properties can be created using the Wacros palette. Finally, the chapter showed how new smoothing and material groups can be created using the Group Editor and how atmosphere effects can be added to the scene.

What You Have Learned
In this chapter, you:

•       Discovered the layout of the Material Room interface including the Shader Window.

•       Used the Select Material Tool to select a material group in the Document Window.

•       Discovered how materials can be previewed in the Document Window using OpenGL.

•       Learned the properties used to create simple materials, including color, highlight, ambient, reflection, bump, and transparency.

•       Added texture images to materials.

•       Used Bump and Displacement maps to give the object’s surface some texture.

•       Learned what the various root material values are used for.

•       Connected material nodes together and created new material nodes.

•       Loaded a Normal Map to display details on the surface.

•       Reviewed a list of the available material nodes.

•       Used the Wacros palette to enable specific material properties.

•       Set the global and local crease angle.

•       Created a new smoothing and material group using the Group Editor.

•       Added depth cueing and volume atmospheric effects to the scene.

Key Terms from This Chapter
•       Ambient color. A global pervasive light color that is applied to the entire scene.

•       Bump Map. A 2D bitmap image that adds a relief texture to the surface of an object like an orange rind.

•       Depth cueing. An atmospheric effect that makes objects farther in the scene appear hazier.

•       Diffuse color. The surface color emitted by an object.

•       Displacement map. A 2D bitmap image that controls the displacement of geometry objects.

•       Highlight. The spot on an object where the light is reflected with the greatest intensity. Also known as a specular highlight.

•       Material group. A group of selected polygons that defines a region where similar materials are applied, such as a shirt or pants group.

•       Material node. A dialog box of material properties that can be connected to control another material value.

•       Normal Map. A texture map that adds details to the surface of an object by changing the normal vectors of the object.

•       Opaque. The opposite of transparency. When objects cannot be seen through.

•       Root node. The top-level material node.

•       Shader Window. An interface found in the Material Room where new custom materials can be created.

•       Smoothing group. A group of polygons that are smoothed between adjacent polygons without any hard edges.

•       Texture map. An 2D image file that is wrapped about a surface.

•       Transparency. A material property that defines how easy an object is to see through, like glass.

•       Volume effect. An atmospheric effect that colors all scene objects with the designated color, much like fog.

•       Wacro. A custom PoserPython script used within the Shader Window to create new material types.

Kelly L. Murdock has more than 15 years experience in the computer graphics arena, especially in the area of 3D graphics. Included in the experience is a variety of tasks from high-end CAD product design and architectural pre-visualization to virtual reality and games. Kelly is best known for his international best-selling books on graphics including the 3ds max Bible, Illustrator Bible and Naked Maya. He also is the author of Poser 6 Revealed and Poser 7 Revealed as well as Edgeloop Character Modeling for 3D Professionals. Kelly currently works as a freelance designer for Logical Paradox Design, a company that he founded with his brother.