Materials in 3ds Max are vital to making your visualizations compelling and realistic. The native material attributes that 3ds Max relies on are those that tell it how to render the surface of an object given certain lighting conditions. Those material properties that are so central to architectural visualization (that convey surface coloring, surface texture, transparency, and so forth) are only one of many sets of properties covered in an Autodesk Architectural Desktop material definition. To make your work more efficient, the rendering material properties stored and assigned in Architectural Desktop are designed to flow transparently to 3ds Max through the File Link Manager.

The following topics focus on the management of rendering materials between Architectural Desktop and 3ds Max.

Assigning Materials to Linked Architectural Desktop Objects

Making Changes to Architectural Desktop Materials

UVW Mapping in Architectural Desktop Objects