ScuM - 3D Studio Max

A simple picture made up of four of Max's basic primitives each with a different material:

A sphere with a solid material, a box with a transparent material, a cone with a shinny material and a plane with a reflective material

And 1 omni light so we can see some nice shadows

I made this scene to experiment with different materials and to learn the Max interface

Make a sphere, a cube and a cone as seen above

Make a plane and move the other objects so they 'sit' on the plane

Place an omni light above the objects and off to one side to light the scene - click on the Modifers button and then Shadow Parameters and turn shadows on, use Raytraced shadows

Press M in Max to bring up the Material Editor

There are 24 grey spheres, only six are visible at a time - scroll to see the others

These are where you can make materials to apply to your objects

I applied a different matreial to each object to experiment with different settings

The parameters I used are shown below

The Sphere - I simply used the default settings with a yellow diffuse colour

The Cube - Again the default settings but coloured green

an opacity value of 50

In extended parameters a filter colour similar tot he diffuse colour

An index of refraction of 1.75

The Cone - This time I used a raytrace material

All other settings used are as shown

The Plane - This is another raytrace material

Use the settings as shown

Using a colour in the reflection settings tints the reflection that colour - and the lighter the colour the more reflective the material

If you click on the check box you can enter a numerical value for the reflection which will then be untinted

And there we have it - move the perspective veiw so you can see the objects as shown above and render