Materials

[Anonymous]

So, I get a material in slate material aditor, select my object (Element so the whole object is selected) click apply material to selected object....... nothing happens...... Doesn't render it with material, nothing. also, in realistic view, everything is black. that might be relevant. one more unrelated thing, I have a spotlight but the light creates a 'cirlce of visibility' when rendered then the rest of the image is invisible. How do I diffuse the change from light to dark, if that makes any sense, and dimly light the rest of the scene. The image shows what I mean here.

[CAMedeck]

For the material part of your question, you may need to add UVW coordinates to your object for any mapping to appear.

And for the lighting, it depends on the type of light and which renderer you're using.  I'll assume it is a Standard spotlight.  You can adjust the size of the cone, which gives you two values to change.  One is HotSpot/Beam, which is the size of the direct light cone.  The other is Falloff/Field, which controls how far out the light will fade.  These two values are very close by default, but increasing the second one will give you a wider, smoother transition to black.  And if you want to light the whole scene, you'll want to add more lights for ambient lighting or use some sort of Global Illumination.

[Anonymous]

ummm, how do you add uvw's? I found a tutorial that said something about unwrapping uvw and I can apply that, but it appears to do nothing except give me another menu to work with.... btw, thank you for the lighting answer, not far away from completing my first project! (Image)

[CAMedeck]

First off, what is your material supposed to look like?  This will determine how you map your UVW coordinates.  The most basic way to add UVs is to add a UVW Map modifier to your object.  But there are some different options there, depending on how you want the material to appear on your finished object.  UVW Unwrap can work, but is a little more involved than you may need.

[Anonymous]

The cube is wood, and I have a custom marble colour scheme for the cog so it looks like metal

[darrenporter]

I think the help I sent you on the mapping box question (your other post) might help you with this..

If you are very new to MAX you might need to set up UVW MAP and UNWRAP UVW buttons in the modifier list. (this is explained in the other post)

If you add UVs to your object, assign the material, and switch on the button in material editor to show textures, it will work in render and viewport, this is explained too.

If your viewport is just black, delete ALL the lights, that should fix the issue, then re-add a new spotlight. Like the other poster said, you can changed the falloff of the light in the modifier list.

The viewport in realistic mode should show the box lit up...