How to make a realistic electron microscope material

QuickMax is a new series of simple 3dsmax tutorials that I created, which will feature all aspects of the program itself, including modeling, texturing, lighting, and animation. Welcome to section one, this will feature the 3dsmax Material Library.

Section 1: Materials

Standard Materials 2:

How to make a realistic electron microscope material

(To complete this tutorial, you will need 3dsmax.)

A lot of people got stuck near the end of my “micro cells” modeling tutorial from a while back (december 2004), mainly because the electron material was made with a 3rd party plugin that most people didn’t have, so I decided to write a new tutorial on making electron shaders in 3dsmax with standard materials.

To start off, open up the material editor in 3dsmax. Then go to a free material slot and rename it “electron_1.” Then go to your maps rollout. We are gonna need to make settings for some new maps:

Now obviously we are gonna start off with the diffuse map, so choose the diffuse map and select a new falloff map. Next, give the settings as shown below:

Now go back to the maps rollout and choose the self-illumination map. We are making this map so that it will give off a nice glowing/illumination effect in the renders. Create a new falloff map for this also, but give it the proper settings as shown below:

Now on to the final step, creating a new bump map. Go back to your maps rollout and click the selector for the bump map, and choose a new noise map. Then give it the settings as shown below:

Now we’re done! Here was my final result (rendered in VRay):

Well I hope you enjoyed taking this tutorial, and I am writing new ones all the time. Happy maxing!

This tutorial is copyright by Necksmasher/Xeron3D © 2006