Gmax Tutorials
Setting up the master material
- The master material is the place where you load all materials you want to decorate your model with.
It is here you can load your textures and apply them to your model, which is in this case a simple
house. Re-Volt allows us to use 10 bitmaps only for our tracks, and 1 bitmap for our cars and this allows
us to map our textures and give them detail and colors. Even though the bitmaps only has the 256x256
resolution, we still can add more detail than for example using plain vertex coloring. Gmax looks alot
like 3ds max, but setting up the master material is done in a bit different way compared to 3ds max. So,
let's get started, shall we?
- Open Gmax, and find theese button
in the tool bar below
"Files, etc.". Theese buttons is the buttons you have to use to open up The Material Editor
(left button) & The material Navigator (right button). It is also thoose tools you us when
applying textures to your model.
So, let's start by opening up The Material Navigator, by pressing the button to the right.
This will make a rectangled window open like on the picture you see to the right. Click on it
to enlarge. As you can see there is a box to the right and "Browse From" square to the left. The
Material Navigator is used to keep materials organized and it is somehow similar to 3ds max "Material
Libray". Generally you are using The Material Navigator to find and delete unused Materials (which
often is in there when you import a .3ds file for example), but also to create and save Materials.
Let's create a new material, by choosing "New" under "Browse From" which you see to the left of the
Material Navigator window.
This will make 6 options aviable for you to select between in the box to the right. Which one
to choose depends on what you are going to use Gmax to and what kind of material you want to set up.
But in this case we are going to use our final model in Re-Volt, so we will use "Multi-Material"
since this fits our needs. We could also have choosen "Standard" but Multi-Material allows us to work
with more than 1 texture for our model, while choosing Standard will only divide our new material
into 1.
- By double-clicking "Multi-Material" this will open a new rectangled window which is The Material Editor.
3ds max users will probaly reciognize the window, but not everything in here is the same as in 3ds max. The
Material Editor is the place to set up your materials and apply them to your model if that is needed. As
mentioned before Re-Volt supports 10 textures (res 256x256) for each track and all names of the textures ends
with a letter between A & J. So, let's start the setup by finding the "Set Number" button
. Aside it there is a grey field where the number of subtextures is shown, currently
showing that there is 2 subtextures. Press the "Set Number" button and write into the little new window "10" & press
OK. This will add 8 more submaterials as you see below the "Set Number" and the other buttons. Now we have all the
materials we need for making a typical extreme track and even though we aren't going to use them all, this won't
cause any problems when the model is going to be exported.
- Now, to keep everything nice and organized, start by giving the whole Material name in the Name field you see below
the sphere picture in the top-left corner of The Material Editor. I will uggest to call it the same name as the model
you are making is named, but the descision is up to you. But by even giving it a name, will help you finding it in the
Material Library when you need it again. After you've named the whole material, we also need to give each submaterial a
short name, so it is easier for us to find what we want. Usually I am just giving each material it's letter, so Number 1
is named A and Number 10 is named J, but you could also write a short name that reminds you about what this material contains.
The Numbers you see in the next left column is ID Numbers for each material. This is the way Gmax organizes and remember
what Material to use. As the fields are white, you can change the ID Numbers for each submaterial, but as they aleready are
in the right order, I don't see why there is a reason to change them to something else. When you are done organizing
your material, it will look pretty much like mine does on the picture to the right.
- Time for loading textures into Gmax, which also is the reason to that we are setting up materials. Let's start with A,
by finding the button, which is at the right of the Name of our first submaterial. On the button there is a name, but this
name is just a random name including a number, which you can rename, by pressing the button. The button will lead you to the
same window, but with different parameters to change. The Material Editor looks now pretty much like you see it to the
right. If you want to keep the organized line, rename the Name field that is similar to the Name field before. Afterwards,
we need to load the diffuse texture, which is the normal texture we also is going to use in Re-Volt. To load this texture,
find the diffuse button
which is to the right of the word "Diffuse:" and a little box.
Leave the box untouched and instead press the little button.
This button will lead you to a new window of The Material Navigator, where you can choose between "Bitmap" and "Checker".
Bitmap is the one we need to load our texture so simply press the "Bitmap" button and find your bitmap on you harddisk, on
your desktop, or wherever you placed your .bmp files you need to load.
- When you pressed the "open" button, The Material Editor window will show you the Map on the Sphere in the top-left
corner and it will show you the parameters of your texture below. You don't need to touch any of theese parameters,
except the usual name field that is currently named something like "Map #1" or any other number. Also if you want to
change your bitmap later, you can simply change the loaded bitmap by looking just under "Bitmap parameters" and pressing
the button where the destination is written.
To get back to the main Multi-Material press the back sign 
which is to the right of
the Name field inbetween the other buttons. Pressing 1 time will lead you back to the submaterial. Pressing 2 times will
lead you back to the Main material. Repeat Step 4 & 5 to load the texture in the other submaterials.
Tip! Press 1 time and press the 
on. This
will make the texture shown in the Perspective Viewport.
- Re-Volt understand the color 0 0 0 as a transperant color, so we got the oppurtunities to create things like
trees, bushes & fences that is too high poly if we created them fully with no use of transperancy. Gmax is able
to handle transperancy too, but only using Alpha Maps we can make Gmax avoid showing the black color. Alpha maps is
constructed in a way so everything that is white on the bitmap file, will be visible, while everything black will be
invisible.
To load the Alpha Maps, go to the submaterial you wish to have an alpha map in, and find the Yellow-green bar
named "Maps" at the bottom. In the left site of the bar there is a "+" which means that we are able to open it up,
so press the +. You will now see a list of alot of other maps we are able to load with Gmax, but we are not interrested
in all of them. Find the map named "Opacity" and check it before pressing the button (currently named "None") to the right.
This will lead you to a Material Navigator window. Follow step 4 & 5 to finish loading the Alpha Map.
Top
in the Material Editor window. By pressing it The Material Navigator Window will
appear. To the left, Choose "Entire" under "Scenes" which is under "Browse From". Now all your materials,
submaterials & textures will be shown in the light-grey box to the right. Select the Multi-Material and go to the
Perspective window, where you select the objects you want to have the textures on. Go back to The Navigator Window and
find & press the "Apply Texture To Model" button 
. Your model will now turn grey,
because this is the way Gmax shows that the model is textured.
