From the course: V-Ray Next for 3ds Max Essential Training

V-Ray Color - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: V-Ray Next for 3ds Max Essential Training

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V-Ray Color

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- [Instructor] The V-Ray Color Map is one of those simple and yet can come in handy for all sorts of reasons on a texturing project-type maps. It's premise is very simple in that it is designed to give users the ability to set a custom color using the zero to 255 range on numeric floating point spinners for the RGB and alpha channels on the map. And then when plugged into any material input channel or other map node can be used to drive some aspects of the material that can even be used to specify overall opacity if we like. In the shader ball tab in the Slate Material Editor then let's drop a V-Ray Color Map onto the canvas, add a new V-Ray material, and plug the color map into the diffuse input. And then apply the material to the various shader ball paths, making sure that the Show Shaded Material in Viewport option is turned on. If we then double-click to load up its parameters we can see that the color map is pretty straightforward in terms of the controls that it offers. So for the color mode we can work with color or temperature options. Temperature, of course, using the Kelvin temperature scale to control color values which could be real handy if you're using this say as the master color control for a whole bank of V-Ray lights or emissive materials in a scene. The RGB spinners can be used to dial in very precise floating point values if that is what we need in a material or map channel, although it is worth noting that these will also update should we use the zero to 255 color picker approach as well. The color picker itself though is limited internally to just 8-bits per channel precision and so as we modify it, the RGB spinners will snap to the nearest 8-bit level. The RGB multiplier does exactly what it says and multiplies the values in any color data that we already have and so if we go high enough, all color channels will, of course, lead to white, whilst a zero entry will produce pure black. Finally, the color gamma value gives us the ability to apply a gamma correction during rendering but doesn't actually affect the color swatching and so if I set a gamma value of 2.2 you can see that whilst the swatch remains unchanged the material in the viewport and so subsequently, the material at render time does receive a gamma correction.

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