2021: What happened to bitmap materials?

[Anonymous]

I actually have two questions. I have used max for about 15 years. I just got 2021 and change is hard. The material editor defaults to something called physical material which is totally foreign to me. I just want good old fashioned bitmap textures. I did a knowledge base search and it said to do it the regular way:

Material Editor > Material/Map Browser > Maps > General > Bitmap

The problem is, there is no Bitmap option on my UI. I have Physical Material, Blend, DirectX Shader, etc. -- but not Bitmap. There is also a set called Arnold and I have no idea what those are.

Can anyone help me get back to using a bitmap material? I just want to put a jpg on the face of a poly and that shouldn't be so hard.

QUESTION TWO: I opened a file that does use bitmap materials. The ones that are composites are displaying as solid colors (e.g. tan, gray) and not as bitmap textures (e.g. sand, galvanized metal). I tried changing to "realistic" in the viewport settings but no luck. I went to each submaterial and made sure that they are set to display in viewport. This is also really frustrating. I did not have this problem in max 2017 and earlier.

Thanks in advance for any help. (Please only reply if you actually have a viable solution. Don't suggest that I Google it.)

[madsd · Accepted solution]

Don't seek to use the old stuff, it has all kinds of bad things attached to it.

Use Physical material at all times and plug an OSL Bitmap into the base color map.
Set viewport to HQ and make sure the material is set to display in HQ view.


Material editor is slate, use it, you will need to train using it going forward so you are familiar with using this kind of shading canvas in the future.

------------------------
Mads Drøschler
TD/Artist & Developer.

Your daily dose of OSL Shaders
https://gumroad.com/madsdroschler

[CAMedeck]

I think you are looking for 'Standard' materials, not Bitmap materials.  A Bitmap is a Map not a Material.  You'll find that under the Scanline rollout instead of General.  But like Mads said, you probably should not use Standard materials anymore.  

And +1 to his suggestion of using the Slate Material Editor versus the old Compact Material Editor.  Check out my AU Class on Slate here for some good tips: https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/class/Slate-Material-Editor-Dont-Be-Afraid-2017

[Anonymous]

I see. Thank you. I appreciate your reply and the information. I have some learning to do. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Awesome! Thank you. I will check out your resource. I've fallen behind on my skills.