Material Shaders Rollout (mental ray Material)

Surface—Shades the surface of objects that have this material.

In addition to any of the usual 3ds Max materials, the surface component can be assigned the following mental ray materials or shaders:

Note: Unlike a standard 3ds Max material, if you assign the Surface component a bitmap with tiling turned off, the original surface color does not “show through.” In renderings, you see only the untiled map, and none of the rest of the object.

Shadow—Assigns a shadow shader.

The shadow component can be assigned the following shaders:

Photon—Assigns a photon shader. Photon shaders modify the appearance of caustics and global illumination. They modify light energy (luminous flux) rather than color (radiance).

The photon component can be assigned the following shaders:

Photon Volume—Assigns a photon volume shader. Like a photon shader, a photon volume shader modifies caustics and global illumination, but it affects photons that pass through the inside of the object, rather than photons that collide with its surface.

The photon volume component can be assigned the following shaders:

Bump—Assigns a bump shader. Bump shading for mental ray materials is similar to bump mapping for standard materials.

The bump component can be assigned the following shaders:

Displacement—Assigns a displacement shader.

The displacement component can be assigned the following shaders:

Volume—Assigns a volume shader.

The volume component can be assigned the following shaders:

Environment—Assigns an environment shader. Like an environment you assign using the Render Scene dialog, the environment shader changes the scene background.

The environment component can be assigned the following shaders:

Flag Material as Opaque—When on, indicates that the material is fully opaque. This tells the mental ray renderer that it doesn't need to process transparency for this material, or to use the shadow shader (if one has been assigned). This can improve rendering time. Default=off.