3ds Max: Materials and Render Settings CRASH COURSE + Scene Files

In this 3ds Max tutorial, we focus specifically on creating different types of materials, such as glossy plastic, glass, chrome, emissive, and volumetric materials. We also explore creating and applying texture maps, as well as creating bump and displacement maps for extra surface detail, and using the UVW Map modifier to adjust the look of textures on objects. We cover a lot in this video, but it's really only the first steps on an expansive set of parameters available in 3ds Max for creating materials.
You can download the file used during this tutorial below for reference, but I encourage you to explore creating your own materials while watching the video, and explore more material parameters on your own! :)
www.dropbox.com/s/j1a1hk0q6r7...
Textures used during this video were downloaded from here:
www.textures.com/
We created displacement maps during this tutorial using Crazy Bump, which you can download here:
www.crazybump.com/
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to the channel for more upcoming tutorials! If you're interested in more 3ds Max tutorials, check out my other videos on my channel! Also, let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about this tutorial in the comments below :)
Also, you can follow me on instagram for news on upcoming tutorials, and to see current art pieces that I'm working on:
/ simulationlab
Thanks for watching!!!

[@nick-sx5ob]

this man is a straight up legend, not making any advertisemeants, doesnt beg for money and simply posts the most high quality tutorials for free.

[@simulation_lab]

Dude I really appreciate that!! I'm glad you think the tuts are good quality! I think I tend to ramble a lot, so I'm working on that, lol. I'll keep making tuts as long as people like them!

[@nick-sx5ob]

@@simulation_lab thats like the best part, its only more usefull information i can learn from. More is in this case certainly not less. because as someone who started working with this program as of last week, without any training or courses the more information i get the more i understand the program or usefull applications. Also, props for still awnsering on 3 year old vids.

[@fadihaniisaachelalibrahim5878]

best tutorial I went through so far, greatly appreciated!

[@SamiMikkola]

I’ve got to say: this was by far the most amazing tutorial in any subject, ever. Super clear, easy to follow, high quality. Thank you!

[@simulation_lab]

Thank you so much Sami! I'm glad you found it to be helpful!

[@Flipperchuck]

What a pleasure to listen to. The descriptions are very clear, the pace is perfect and, most importantly, you inspire confidence. Not easy to do. Thank you very much.

[@Jenlenjen]

absolutely love this tutorial! thank you for taking the time to create it!

[@AfterJuneFilm]

Thanks Kyle for taking some of your time to help us learn.....

[@macihun93]

I'm so happy I found your channel, thank you!

[@MStrawberryChe]

you're my hero. thank you for taking your time to explain everything so thoroughly, you saved my matriculation lol

[@antonio.argolo]

Good Morning, this 60-year-old professional, unemployed for some time, has a lot to learn from you. gratitude for freely putting his knowledge to help other people and professionals. God blesses

[@saifehab1249]

Clean, thorough and to the point thank you

[@marvy3473]

the way i burst out laughing when he said "slap my wood" 😂 by far the best materials tutorial i've come across btw. thanks alot 🙏🏽

[@simulation_lab]

Hahaha!! Thanks, I'm glad you liked it :)

[@thetalkinganvil8366]

While I moved on from 3ds Max it will remain my one true love when it comes to 3d. I cut my teeth on it back in the very old days and I loved it. I truly, madly loved it. It's good to see some updates and people using it. After 20+ years and it's interface is "mostly" the same.

[@user-ws2me9xm8t]

Every video covers very interesting topics in simple way to understand. I watch videos to the end multiple times, and my "english" becomes better with " native-speaker".

[@yasiin_miim3278]

this tutorial is GREAT! helped me a lot. thanks so much! :)

[@arpanmukherjee2072]

you doing a great job ..! we want more videos of modelling tutorials last one is great

[@chanwilliam6867]

The best teachers teach from the heart. Thank you for being a wonderful teaching ！ Happy teacher Day! 🎉

[@shrikantpilankar5485]

so much to learn from you ,thank you so much 🙏

[@chanwilliam6867]

The best teachers teach from the heart. Thank you for being a wonderful teaching ！ Happy teacher Day!

[@ganeshshirodkar8562]

Thanks for these tutorial. thank you so much.

[@cocorose2265]

wow thank you so much. no joke it is now so much easier and u explained it really good.

[@prajwalaughade1210]

Bro you are god for 3ds max 🛐❤ keep it up man

[@jebs6536]

Friend, thanks for this tutorial. It's very good

[@xmusicsana]

This is great, thank you!

[@shujenka]

Big thanks. i found video to be easy to wrap my brain over :)

[@simulation_lab]

Glad it helped!

[@jawadchaudhary3528]

TNice tutorials video is the best tutorial I’ve ever seen about soft soft

[@bharatculture]

Thank you so much bro. Sending virtual hugs. Worked like a charm ;-)

[@Guttalaser]

Tnx 1000. Great tutorial as always! You know how to make simple even the most complex thing! I'll love an "in deep" view of the unwrapping... editing... end rassigning material to a complex/organic object like a face... or to a "hard-surface" object like a spaceship hull! I'm following you Man! keep Tutoring! ;-)

[@simulation_lab]

You're welcome dude! Yea that would be a great idea for a tutorial. I recently had to unwrap a few assets for a game I'm making, and I used Substance Painter to paint textures. I can probably show that process, or use Quixel Mixer because it's a free software. Might be more fun to show that rather than the old way of painting textures in photoshop, lol.

[@leeahmed1799]

One of the best tutorial Thank you so much

[@MrDucky39]

Very stupid of me that I didn't watch this video the first time I have seen it, I have seen this video about 6 month ago and I thought nothing of it, until I actually started to worry about improving my materials, I started to watch the video, and I can say, this is by far the best material video I have seen, keep up the great work!

[@aynashaa]

thank you so so much for sharing your knowledge!

[@simulation_lab]

You're very welcome!

[@ayushkaudiyal955]

Best Basic Material Tutorial I have Ever Seen Hoping for a Lightning Tutorial too

[@simulation_lab]

That's great to hear! I'm glad you liked it! I can definitely do a crash course on lighting. I will put that on my list for sure. Thanks for the suggestion!!

[@MinhPaprika-pu6yg]

THis is what i need right now, thank you so much

[@saniamalik641]

Awesome ❤

[@rohitchowdhury450]

thanks, it actually let me through so i could download it.

[@LinhTran-wy2fj]

thanks a lot!!! so nice reverb

[@3bhukkad]

i finally made so good soft. thanks ❤

[@varithjaithep2153]

I love it !

[@relaxingmusicsleep3749]

Everything works perfectly

[@eng.khalidabbas8882]

Its great information thank you for your efforts

[@bonusstoreservice]

It's just awesome

[@arraju7283]

soft just keeps getting better

[@matanmifawas8768]

so much helpful bro,appreciate

[@simulation_lab]

You're very welcome!

[@hoaanhao704]

working fine thank you

[@Acme.Lifequotes]

now i am in a good mood

[@music4relaxationmeditation707]

you are just awesome ! keep up the good work and God bless !

[@simulation_lab]

Thanks very much! 🙂

[@debzzzz4415]

Thank you for this video. I am a student and it was very helpful

[@mr.paradox8409]

He said it's a good tutorial if you are beginning with Materials topic. It's true.

[@vukzlatkovic7087]

Huge thanks amazing video!!! Btw i caught that slap my wood on there hehe :)

[@walnesios6423]

Nice tutorial,

[@sportxdesigns2608]

I would love a tutorial on material unwrapping! Keep up the amazing work your videos are extremely helpful as their aren't many tutorials that are explained as clearly and simplified as yours. Quick question, how would I apply normal maps and specular maps?

[@simulation_lab]

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words! Normal and specular maps can be added under a material's map channels, but making the actual maps is a different process. I usually use Photoshop or a program called Crazy Bump to make normal and displacement maps.

[@sportxdesigns2608]

No worries! I use Vray materials and there isn’t an option for normal maps or specular maps on the material map channel. Is their a specific method of applying this?

[@musthakrahmanps-hw4sw]

Guys it really works, I checked.

[@christineangela5858]

Thank you very much. 😉

[@abizarrin3427]

very helpful

[@yucrakahuanasamueladan9035]

took me a while due to mistake, but it works thanks

[@NhanHoaiDuong]

thank you very much!

[@camilofuentes9396]

Muchas Gracias !!

[@simulation_lab]

De nada! :)

[@umapuma]

I wish you explained slate material diagrams :( you were a life saver with the 3ds max basics tutorials!

[@simulation_lab]

Yes, I should totally have explained that, lol. I tried to make this a beginner-friendly course, and I thought the slate would just confuse people. That would be a great tangent video though!

[@umapuma]

​@@simulation_lab you're probably right in thinking that. It's just that I got spoiled by your tutorials and now all the others are unwatchable, because you show the cool stuff you can do with things, others just go trough the bland theory. well, either way, thanks for the response, looking forward to your future tutorials!

[@uzaykisi1863]

Hi Kyle, thank you for the tutorial but please don't forget the guys climbing on the rope tutorial

[@simulation_lab]

Haha yea I can probably do a tutorial on the rope climbers. It's sort of an extensive setup, and takes a lot of time to tweak, but I'll see if I can simplify it enough so the tutorial isn't 3 hours long, lol.

[@malejude4752]

Please, thanks for sharing this knowledge. Kindly requesting to go through the V-ray render settings

[@medhatatef7737]

thanks helpful vid

[@friedasimonetta7287]

Question, how would I make a volumetric material with Arnold? I don't have Fstorm, so I'm struggling a little bit with that.

[@yazenmousa493]

Great Tutorial!!!! very helpful and understanding slap my wood though! made me crack lol.

[@koketsu]

great tutorial! could you please possibly make a tutorial of one of the architectural projects you've done in the past? they look very very stunning. thank you!

[@simulation_lab]

Thank you!! Yes I can put together a tutorial about rendering architectural scenes. There's a lot of detail that goes into architectural scenes, so it would probably have to be a series of videos. I'll start planning something out for that :)

[@koketsu]

@@simulation_lab awesome appreciate it - thank you very much!

[@wvijay]

Amazing tutorial. Thank you !!

[@gaborkis5786]

Hey, i have a problem with the channel rack. Everyti I add an instrunt, for example the soft he added, it keeps loading for a long

[@XaadAhmed]

Thanks Kyle good tutorial very informative , quick question you didnt mention Redshift Render any perticular reason :)

[@simulation_lab]

You're welcome dude! I love RedShift, not sure why I didn't mention it, lol. I just don't use it that often I guess.

[@rfzzkx]

Nice

[@taniakhan5319]

I was rather hoping that it would be possible to open another instance of soft soft VST in rewire and drag stuff from one to another but

[@martinluterelectronics8619]

hey man! im on the free version of soft soft and the plugins list on the left side of the screen is not showing up and i can not bring it up.

[@happyfish7260]

Great

[@deansdynamicdesignsllc5241]

i've been follwoing this (slowly) using fstorm 1.5. there is a setting for opacity, and nothing under refraction seems to alter transparency of the material.

[@manna6912]

Hi there, can you tell me how to apply bump map in arnold render without using displacement modifier

[@dirge8032]

i would love a UVW unwrapping creach course.

[@the_gemmapelle434]

hey Kyle, thanks again for this tute!! I wonder if it's possible for you to add timestamps in future videos? Sometimes when I'm messing around on 3dsmax I know what I want to do, but can't remember the steps to do it - and I'll go to a video of yours which I know covered that topic. However it takes a little time to find exactly where that is covered in the video. If its not too much trouble that would be really appreciated :) thanks once again mate!!!

[@simulation_lab]

Great suggestion! In future videos with a lot of steps or when I cover different objectives, I'll add in some timestamps. Thanks bud!

[@sara_work]

COOL

[@archstudent4168]

Hello! Could you please tell me how to find the option in 3ds max x vray x corona, XSPM, the option where you could find the texture and the color of the material.

[@DuyNguyen-qu3cc]

Please make a Vray crash course :( Please ! Your tutorials is so good !! Thanks

[@simulation_lab]

Thanks!! I don't use Vray much these days, especially since Fstorm is so fast. I only really use Vray when I'm rendering huge numbers of instances or particle sims from Phoenix FD. I might do some Phoenix FD tutorials in the future, and tie in some Vray usage :)

[@anujrajawat7000]

i dont have ft storm render it is plugin like corona or a defalut?

[@bublcha544]

sorry in advance, maybe outside of the video. I want to ask why my material editor can't be pressed/clicked and nothing appears (like 11:01) . usually a box will appear and ⚪⚫⚪🔴 like this right? how to fix this? because I am a beginner, I have only been guided by my lecturer for 4 days.

[@martynawincenty6823]

I downloaded some objects with materials but they are not showin on render. Any suggestions why? I run a corona converter ...

[@xXLirik52Xx]

Hello, i've watched the whole video and i'm really grateful for your tutorial, it explained a lot. however for someone who can't afford getting Vray or Fstorm and has the built in renderers liks Arnold, Scanline etc.. (i'm running 3Dsmax 2019) can you make a tutorial explaining how to do the same thing under Arnold for exemple. i tried applying your tutorial and nothing worked properly. thank you a lot

[@simulation_lab]

I chose not to cover those because there are quite a few tutorials which cover the default scanline engine and Arnold, some of which I've seen on the official Autodesk channel I believe. Regardless, most of the material property setup should translate to any engine, once you have a grasp on setting up lighting, etc with the engine you're using.

[@iainmcdonald4549]

Hi! I'm really struggling to open a 3d image from TurboSquid in 3ds Max. I need to rotate an aircraft image for screenshots to use in training manuals but this seems so complicated. Any chance you could do a video to teach us mere mortals how to get a downloaded 3d image rendered and looking as good as the screenshots on TurboSquid? I don't want to animate it or make a Peter Jackson style epic movie; just a jpg! All other 3ds Max tutorials seem to miss out this basic use! I've tried using the free models but all I get is a grey outline block. Hope you can help, thanks!

[@darrella5677]

How are you running 4 gpu's what is your setup? I seen a H3 Falcon 4502 which holds 4 GPU Cards but I can't get a price. Just curious how your doing it. thanks

[@aditor8055]

Brother make a video on lightning in 3ds max... You are doing a great job man ❤ ❤

[@shrikantpilankar5485]

your voice was so pleasent to hear 🤩🤩

[@simulation_lab]

Thanks you so much! :)

[@-legend-4472]

how did u trumped-up that, it is so cool

[@eliazahobiri8009]

Great Tutorial. PLEASE HELP ME! The DISPLAY CORRECTION under the Layer panel in my Vray Frame Buffer is not showing Please help me fix this. Thank you.

[@mayank_parashar_]

thx

[@paul_anderson6_707]

Interesting. This is a very simple question, which might have an easy answer, in which case thanks in advance. If the answer is complex thanks too. How do you link a screen projected environment map's rotation setting (W) angle with a moving object in a scene, like say a box, or a sphere? The challenge is to have the angle change to point at the object wherever it moves to on the screen.

[@andrewilson3722]

is nvidia geforce gtx 860m enough for f storm rendering

[@Patricknab]

i tryed to drive back plane up it doesn't why???

[@vibzvfx8648]

cool

[@uroborosteam1285]

I DEMAND MORE TUTORIALS

[@simulation_lab]

Hahaha I'm glad you like them! Is there anything in particular that you'd like a tutorial on? I'm always open to suggestions :)

[@valeriyshvetsov7022]

Hello Kyle, I'm also in Brooklyn.. Do you offer private lessons?

[@ShannonWare]

Helpful? Try, "a life saver". I started learning Max back in 2006, and after a brief stent in the game industry stopped all modeling in 2008. Now I am up for a job as a modeller, and I sort of remember... sort of don't. At the same time, (your) techniques are so much more refined than what I was getting back when I first learned the tool. I will move on to your modeling tutorial after this.

[@kamranahmad6889]

aight imma head out

[@Shahzod-lp7uq]

which site is better 3d modeling

[@vona5251]

Nice tutorial but the problem is that I do not have FStorm, I couldn't follow along

[@ailtonbustillos]

botton and cant see what it does (HELP PLEASE) I want my soft or say to long 5 , 10mins long... you understand

[@ganeshshirodkar8562]

Earlier you used single graphic card for your work and you showed your that outstanding work in this video. Could you please tell me which graphic card you used and memory size of the card.

[@simulation_lab]

I initialy had a single gtx1080ti card, which I believe has 8bg of VRAM. I have 4 of those cards now, which helps speed things up, especially for rendering. Nowadays, the 30 series cards are much more powerful, so if you're looking to buy new card, I would suggest an rtx3060, 3080, or if you're lucky enough to find one, a 3090!

[@ganeshshirodkar8562]

@@simulation_lab thanks a lot👍