Maps provide images, patterns, color adjustments, and other effects you can apply to the visual/optical components of a material. Without maps, material design in 3ds Max is limited. Maps give the Material Editor its full flexibility, and can give you dramatic results.
The simplest use of a map is to assign a pattern to a material's Diffuse color. Diffuse mapping is also known as "texture mapping." It applies an image or pattern to geometry the material is applied to.
Example of designing a mapped material:
1. Choose a sample slot.
2. Increase the highlight.
3. Apply a checker map to the material's diffuse component.
4. Apply a bump map to give the material ridges.
5. The checker map displays in viewports, but the bump map does not.
6. Rendering the material shows the full effect of mapping.
Warning: When you change the shading type of a standard material, you lose the settings (including map assignments) for any parameters that the new shader does not support. If you want to experiment with different shaders for a material with the same general parameters, copy the material to a different sample slot before you change its shading type. That way, you can still use the original material if the new shader doesn't give you the effect you want.
The term "material map" is sometimes used to describe a map assigned in the material editor. A material map applies a color or pattern to a surface. This is different from maps used for displacement mapping with the Displace modifier, environment mapping for backgrounds, or projection mapping from lights.
The term "texture map" is sometimes used as well. It is interchangeable with "diffuse map"; that is, with a map that applies colors to geometry, as opposed to a map that create reflections, bumps, and so on.
In the Material/Map Browser, maps are categorized according to how the map software functions. The categories are:
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A bitmap is the prototypical 2D map. 2D maps apply pictures and patterns to the surface of objects.
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3D maps are generated procedurally. 3D maps apply patterns throughout an object's geometry.
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Color modifiers are usually composited with another map to adjust its color. The Vertex Color map is a special case that displays the colors you assign to vertices in a mesh.
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"Other" maps include maps that simulate reflection or refraction.
The names of individual map types describe the pattern or effect they create, such as Checker map, Bitmap, Gradient, Flat Reflection, and so on.
Note: In some cases the user interface also uses "map" to describe not the map type, but the visual component being mapped. For example, a "diffuse map" means a map of any type applied to a material's diffuse component. This is an ambiguity in the use of "map" that can be a bit confusing when you first encounter it.
For a standard material, you assign maps using the Maps rollout. Click the Map button in line with the name of the visual component you want to map. The Material/Map Browser is displayed. Select the map type (for example, Bitmap) from the list of maps, and then click OK. Double-clicking the map's name in the Browser also assigns the map type.
The Browse From group box in the Browser creates new maps by default. You can also use it to obtain maps from a library (see Saving A Material), from the current scene, from objects selected in the scene, or from elsewhere in the material editor.
In the Browser, you can turn on icons of differing sizes to preview maps before you assign them.
A Standard material's Basic Parameters rollout has shortcut buttons for assigning a map to some of the material's visual components. These small buttons are equivalent to the buttons in the Maps rollout. Assigning a map to a button in one rollout changes the corresponding button in the other.
Each type of map has its own set of parameters and controls. If the map is a Checker map, for example, you can choose the colors of the checkers, and whether a checker color has a map of its own. You can change tiling values to affect the scale of the checkers, adjust noise parameters to make the checkers irregular, and so on.
Note: To save loading time, if a map with the same name is in two different locations (in two different paths), it is loaded only once. This poses a problem only if your scene includes two maps that have different content but the same name. In this case, only the first map encountered will appear in the scene.
When you build a material of any complexity, you are building a material/map tree. The root of the tree is the material itself. The branches are the maps you have assigned to the material's components. Some maps can themselves contain maps, as in a map applied to one color of a Checker material, so the tree can be more than two levels deep, and can actually be as deep as you need it to be.
The Material/Map Navigator is a dialog that displays the tree for the current material. It is useful for finding a map and displaying its parameters.
Click the map to display its rollouts in the Material Editor. To copy a map to a different component of the same material,
you can also drag the map's name from the Navigator to a map button in the Material Editor.
The Go Forward To Sibling and Go To Parent buttons also navigate the map tree. Go Forward To Sibling moves laterally in the
map tree, while Go To Parent moves up the tree. (To move down the tree, click a map button that has a map assigned to it.)
Another way to move between parents and children in the tree is to drop down the material name field and click the name of a map or material.