Metal shader in 3ds max is used to create metallic surfaces and variety of organic looking materials. Metal shader has a distinctive highlights. It calculates its own specular color which can vary between its diffuse color and color of light. There is no option to set the specular color for metal shader.

How to set a material’s Shading type

1. Under  Shader Basic Parameters rollout, open the shader drop-down list.
2. Click the name of the shader type to Metal to use for the active material

Shader Basic parameters

Wire

Renders the material in wireframe mode. You can set the size of the wire in Extended Parameters.

2-Sided

Makes the material 2-sided. Applies the material to both sides of selected faces.

Face Map

Applies the material to the faces of the geometry. If the material is a mapped material, it requires no mapping coordinates. The map is automatically applied to each facet of the object.

Faceted

Renders each face of a surface as if it were flat.

Parameters of Metal shader in 3ds Max

• Ambient – Ambient color is a color in a shadow. The lock button to the right of the Ambient and Diffuse settings, when on (the default), forces them to use the same map.
• Diffuse – Diffuse is the color in direct light. I.e the color of a material.

• Specular Highlights
• Specular Level –It is the intensity of specular highlight. As you increase the specular level, the highlight grows brighter.
• Glossiness – Highlights get smaller and material gets shinier. It affects the size of Specular highlights
• Self illumination- It makes the surface Self Illuminated. Self-illumination creates the illusion of incandescence by replacing shadows on the surface with the diffuse color.
• Self illumination Color – It uses color if the color option is enabled.

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