3ds Max 2012 - Material Editor

[Anonymous]

Hi guys!

Why does my compact material editor look like this? It's confusing the **** out of me since every other video on youtube looks so different!

[Steve_Curley]

I assume you mean the editor slots looking very light? It would help if you made it clear what the question is rather than leaving us to guess.
1) Rendering > Environment > Global Lighting section > Ambient colour (normally black)
2) Customise > Preferences > Gamma and LUT > Affect Material Editor (checkbox).

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your quick reply! But I meant that other people's materials editor interface looks like the one attached here, while mine looks so different

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

1 & 2 is because you're comparing Max2014 with (presumably) Max2010 (or maybe 2011) - the Icons are different in the different releases. They're in the same positions though (for the most part) so that's just something you'll have to get used to.
3 & 4 is because the one screenshot is of a Standard Material, the other is an Arch&Design material. They're very different materials so you can't expect them to have identical rollouts (and they don't). Try looking them up in the Help to see what the differences are (there's a lot).

[Brock_Lafond]

Yours has more preview materials visible, which isn't a problem.

The main difference that I see is that you are comparing 3DS Max Design to 3DS Max. The Design flavour comes with a few different features, such as material reflectance and transmittance values.