The Material Editor (and the whole material system) is one of the most important elements of Maxwell Render™. It provides a powerful set of parameters for advanced editing of a Maxwell material.
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This makes it very easy and intuitive to create interesting and complex materials, such as a rust material showing through a car paint material, or applying a logo on top of a combination of different materials. A large library with thousands of free, ready-to-use materials is also available.
Editing Materials in plugins, Maxwell Studio, MXED
You can create and edit materials in three different ways:
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While the Material Editor is implemented inside all the compatible plugins, the interface and/or functionality can be different depending on each 3D platform, but the underlying principles remain the same. The information below shows the main areas of the material editor found in Maxwell Studio and MXED. In your 3D platform the interface may be slightly different. |
MXED Interface
Main areas in the Maxwell Material Editor as seen in Studio and in the MXED (Material Editor standalone)
The top menu bar contains the following menus:
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Aside from the menu bar, the material editor can be split in five main areas:
1. Layers Tree
Maxwell Render’s materials are made up of different “components” which are organized into folders (Layers). Each Layer can hold one or more BSDF components (BSDF is the main material definition), plus one Coating (varnish), one Emitter and/or one Displacement component.
Each folder represents a Layer, which are stacked vertically one on top of the other, similar to layers in a 2D image editing application. Please see the Stacking Layers section for more information about this.
The Layers tree
2. Material Preview
This window allows you to get a quick preview of the material while you are editing it. When you are changing material parameters, double-click in the preview sample image to refresh the preview with the new parameters, or click on the Refresh Preview button (green double-arrow icon). During the preview, the green icon will be replaced by a red square icon, to indicate that it is calculating your preview.
The Preview window
Right-click in the Preview to show a menu with the following options:
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- Options: Set the different preview options - Sampling Level, Time, Scale and Quality.
Real-time material editing
Pressing the lock icon in the lower right of the Preview will enable real-time editing of all material settings - the preview will update as soon as you change a setting. Unlock it to return to normal mode - you have to double-click the Refresh Preview button for the preview to refresh.
Choosing which texture to display in the viewport (Maxwell Studio)
Clicking the black/orange squares icon shows a list of the current textures applied to the material. Pick a texture to choose to display it in the viewport in Maxwell Studio. You must set your shading mode to Textured or Textured decal for textures to be shown in the viewport.
Creating your own preview scenes
Any MXS file can be used as a preview scene - you only need to have a material in that scene called "preview" which is applied to an object, and you also need to have a light source in the scene (Environment lighting or Emitters). The "preview" material will be replaced by your current material when previewing the scene.
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3. BSDF Properties
Contains the parameters to control the main physical behavior for each material component.
The BSDF properties of a material
4. Surface Properties
Parameters to control the surface properties of a material (mainly the physical roughness or smoothness of the surface itself).
The Surface properties of a material
5. Subsurface Properties
Parameters to control the internal behavior in case of a translucent material, commonly referred to as Sub-Surface Scattering (SSS).
The Subsurface properties of a material
The Color Picker
When you click on a color chip, the Color Picker opens (in a separate window when using MXED standalone, or the Color Picker panel in Maxwell Studio).
The Color Picker panel
To control the Hue: click and drag in the outer circle
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You have three color modes available for selecting colors: RGB, Hue Saturation Value (HSV) and xyz.
Material Browser
For information related to the browser panel, please see the Resources Browser panel page in the Maxwell Studio section of the manual.
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