From the course: 3ds Max 2019 Essential Training

Controlling material sample size - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2019 Essential Training

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Controlling material sample size

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- [Instructor] In this chapter, we'll explore texture mapping, or applying images and patterns onto surfaces. To begin with, we want to make sure that we know the size of the sample in the Material Editor. When we look at the Material Editor samples, they have some absolute size. We need to control that, so we know what we're doing. I'll go into the Material Editor and just create a simple material. Drag over a physical material, then double-click it. Let's call it Floor. We'll assign this to the floor of the office. I need to have a map attached in order to see the effect of changing the sample size. So, let's attach a map. We can go into the Material Map browser, and you'll see there's a section for maps. I want you to open up the OSL section. That's new in 3ds Max 2019. It's pretty exciting, the open shading language. We have these open sourced maps that we can apply to any Arnold Shading network. It should work pretty well in other renderers as well. Currently, there's no support for ART. Let's drag over a Noise 3D. I'll drag Noise 3D over and drop it onto the input for the base color map on that physical material. When I release the mouse, I get a popup asking do I want to connect the output and one of the X, Y, or Z outputs. We have multiple outputs on these OSL maps. I'm going to choose X and that's a simple grayscale. If I had connected the output, it would have been sort of prismatic effect. If I click on the OSL map and my preview is showing the current selection, then we can see that it's three different red, green, and blue noises superimposed. I'm just taking the first channel of that and using it as a grayscale. Now the question comes up, what is the size of this sample? If I go back over to the Material node, it'll update. We really don't have any idea of what the scale of this is. We actually can't even check that or change it in the Slate Material Editor. We have to go back to the old Compact Material Editor to get at this option. Go into the Material Editor menu to Modes. Switch it over to the Compact Material Editor. And then there's a button for Options. Click on the Options. Here, under Render Sample Size, is the size of a map swatch or a material swatch. I'll bring this down to a low value so we can see the difference. I'll set it to 10 centimeters, click OK. Go back to the Slate Material Editor, and then click on these nodes to refresh. You can see that we zoomed in on that pattern now. We're seeing a much smaller area. It's 10 centimeters on a side in a 2D view such as this one. I can go back to Compact Material Editor, back into Options and change the sample size. We'll make it 1000. So that's 10 meters on a side. Click OK, and once again, go back to Slate. And once again, click on these nodes in order to refresh the update. If I go over to the Procedural Map, or the Noise, now I'm seeing the pattern as if this sample was 10 meters on a side. That's how to change the size of samples in the Material Editor.

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