Time required to complete: 5-10min
Category: Materials (basics)
Hello and welcome to another 3Ds MAX Tutorial. Today we will learn how to create a CD or DVD by using the power of Multi/Sub-Object materials.
The tutorial result will be similar to this:
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| Creating a CD/DVD in 3Ds MAX - Tutorial result |
To complete this tutorial we will need 2 materials for our CD/DVD. One is our top part (Label) and the second is our bottom part (rainbow type reflections), download them by clicking the thumbnails and save them onto your computer:
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| Top texture |
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| Bottom texture |
I'm using NFS Shift Label for this tutorial but after you learn how to texture the CD/DVD in 3Ds MAX you can create your own custom label in programs like Photoshop.
So let's get started !
Step 1: Open 3Ds MAX and from the Create > Standard Primitives > Tube and create a tube in the perspective view having the following parameters:
Radius 1: 4.724
Radius 2: 0.591
Height: 0.043
Height segments: 1
Cap segments: 1
Sides: 120
NOTE: We are using these values because a CD has 120mm for the outside diameter, 15mm for the inside diameter and 1.1 mm for height and inside 3Ds MAX these are the converted values from mm to generic units.
Step 2: With the Tube selected Right Click and choose Convert to > Editable Poly:
Step 3: Inside the Editable Poly select Edges (no. 1 in image) then select an edge from the top part of our tube (no. 2) and then click on the Ring button to select all the top edges:
Step 4: With all the top edges selected hold down CTRL on your keyboard and click on the Polygons selection:
Step 5: Now with all our top polygons selected go down to Polygon: Material IDs and Set the ID to 1:
Step 6: Head back to the Edge Selection, select one edge from the inner circle, one from the outer circle and click the Ring button to select all edges (like we did in step 3) as you can see in the image below:
Step 7: Hold down CTRL on your keyboard and click on the Polygons selection to select all the inner & outer circles polygons (like we did in step 4). Then with those polygons selected go to Polygon: Material IDs and Set ID to 2:
Step 8: Now we need to select all the polygons from the bottom part. Select one edge from the bottom part, then press on Ring (see again steps 4 and 5 if you don't understand):
Step 9: Hold CTRL and then press on Polygons to select all the bottom part polygons. Then scroll down to Polygon: Material IDs and Set IDs to 2:
Step 10: Our Material ID 1 will be our CD/DVD Label and our Material ID 2 will be our bottom part of our CD/DVD. Press M to bring up the Material Editor and select an empty material, then click on Standard and pick Multi/Sub-Object from the list and hit OK. Discard old materials if you are asked:
Step 11: Inside Multi/Sub-Object press on Set Number and in the pop-up dialog change the Number of Materials to 2 and hit OK:
Step 12: I renamed the first material to Top and the second one to Bottom (just to make things easier). Click on the Top material box (Material #25 Standard in my case) to open it:
Step 13: Inside the Top material click on the Diffuse Box, select Bitmap from the list and hit OK. A pop-up dialog will appear and ask you for the Bitmap Image, choose the Label Image from your computer:
Step 14: Now by clicking Go to Parent button (the last but one button) head back to the Multi/Sub-Object material and click on the Bottom material (Material #26 in image):
Step 15: Like we did before, press on the Diffuse Box inside the Standard Material, select bitmap from the list and choose the Maxell Bottom Scan image:
Step 17: With our Tube selected from the Modifier List apply a UVW Mapping modifier and change the mapping type to Box:
Step 18: Press M on your keyboard to bring up the Material Editor and go into the Top material and hit Show Standard Map in Viewport button, do the same for our Bottom material:
Step 19: Now we will see the maps into the Viewports. Go to the Bottom Bitmap Image and modify the Tiling to 0.9 for U, 0.9 for V and the Angle for U: -0.5 and for V: -0.1 to center the Bottom material to the CD:
Step 20: Inside the Top material go to the Bitmap and modify the U Angle to 0.5 to center the Label to the CD:
And that's it ! Now you can render it out.
You can also add some Glossiness and Specularity to the materials to achieve more realistic results.
You have learned the basics of using Multi/Sub-Object material which is a very powerful tool when you want to assign more materials to the same object. You can assign as many materials as you want by assigning IDs to the polygons as we did in this tutorial, then apply maps to the Material IDs like we did with our Label and Bottom texture of our CD.
Hope this tutorial and the technique used helped you out!
Feel free to comment or ask any question about this tutorial into the comment section below.
See you next time with another tutorial!
