Connecting the dots in physical material's

[n_maasdijk]

Hallo!

I have kind of gotten a grasp on how MAX works as of late (finally).

And after having spent many hours fooling around with toon shaders i finally have a project where i can work with hyperrealistic materials.

But here comes the catch, i have found a few site's online where i can "download" materials, but these are ofcourse just the building blocks of the material, but i can not for the life of me figure out how it actually works.

The one's where its function is in the name i can figure out (Color, metalness, ...), but all those others i cant get a hang of. 

Could someone maybe help me out? All downloads look like this so if i have it figured out once i have it on all materials.

Thanks already!

-Nick

(Linked images are all options and the ones i have figured out by myself)

[n_maasdijk]

P.S. i also read somewhere on these forums that you can use a texture that looks like the texture you want but with the wrong colors, and change it to the desired color with color-correction but i cant find the post anymore?

[wernienst]

The site your materials come from should clearly state what type they are of.

Looking at your docs image (2nd file with .mtlx ending), I assume it's a MaterialX material.

There are two way to get this into max (just guessing):

1. Create a MaterialX material, then pick the mtlx file.

2. In the Arnold menu, click Import/Export /Import Materials, then select the mtlx file.

[n_maasdijk]

Would that be the complete material instantly?

Also, the site sadly does not clearly state what it does, at least not where i can find it. its: https://ambientcg.com/list

But i can imagine you have a bit more experience with this them i do. What would you reccomend doing? Do do get your somehwere else? Or how would you approach this situation?

[Diffus3d]

The important thing to remember with PBR (Physical) materials is they are extremely dependent on an environment map in addition to normal lights.  Without a decent environment map to reflect/refract, they don't look correct.  Especially outdoor glass.  

Many game engines have things called probes which will render the immediate 'room' to use as an environment map on the fly, and apps like Substance Painter have a number of them built in to test how things look in different environments.  May websites call these reflected environment maps HDRIs.  

You have two types of PBR.  Spec / Gloss (older), and Metal / Roughness (newer).   Spec Gloss uses a simpler setup that doesn't work perfectly for metals and reflective objects, but responds directly to lights in the scene.  In Metal / Roughness materials, metalness basically means "only accept light from the environment map".  So a highly metal material will ignore some of the diffuse component from say, a directional light.  

If your downloaded materials look weird, it's probably because you need an environment map to give them something to reflect beyond nearby geo.  You can plug them into environment slot for the scene or in some cases by material.

Best Regards,

[n_maasdijk]

I have an HDRI installed ineed. Maybe i need to change to another one ad that that will give better results.

But i am kind of wondering what a good 'realistic' material should have for external plugins. 

Because my material still looks nothing like the real deal sadly.

Thanks for your help!

[wernienst · Accepted solution]

Ok, I've downloaded that metal049 material form the site you mentioned. As I suggested, I've created a MaterialX material, loaded the .mtlx file and got this (using an HDRI file from the 3ds Max 2025\maps\HDRI folder):

The mtlx material is not editable, but you can click on Explode Permanently and get this Physical_Material with all maps wired:

If you wish a different metal color you could either disconnect the base_color map and choose a color or better set a Clearcoat color. If you want to see all the fine details of that material you have to get very close though.

[n_maasdijk]

You are amazing man!

Thanks for these replies, once again saved me from hours of frustration.

Only thing is that my renders look no-where nearly as sharp as yours so haha.

This is the render i got, a lot better then what i was doing on my own, but still not very sharp.

Do you also use Arnold renderer by chance? I dont think so, but if it is the chance, could you maybe post a screenshot of your settings? I wish my renders looked as crisp as yours do ;).

These are my settings.

(camera exposure and scene exposure both 9)

Thanks again!