Being able to model in 3D Max (or any 3D modeling suite) is one thing, but being able to do that and texture is another thing. You may have noticed that some companies have positions just for dedicated texture mappers. Texture mapping can be very complicated, as it should be, but everyone has to start somewhere. This is a good place to begin...

Fire up 3D Max and open to what is referred to as the Material Editor. You can do this by either:

- Pressing the M Shortcut on your keyboard
- Pressing the Material Editor icon on your top toolbar in 3D Max
- Clicking "Rendering -> Material Editor..."

This will bust open the Material Editor, as shown. I will go through what you first see:

Here you can see that I have numbered eight different points of interest on the Material Editor, follow along for their explanations.

1: This is what your Material you are working on will look like, just to give you a quick example.

2: The Get Material button is shown here. There are many types of materials in Max: Some shiny or dull, some that interact with light differently, etc. More on this later.

3: The Reset button clears your material back to defaults.

4: The Show Map in Viewport button makes it so you can actually see your texture in the perspective window, not only when rendering.

5: The Shader List drop down lists a slew of different styles of shading that will be applied to the material. More on this later.

6: In the Basic Parameters section you can set things like the base colour, base opacity (see-through-ness), etc. More on this later.

7: Basic Parameters continued, here you get to apply more options, like how much luster an object has and how it deals with light. You will deal with sections 6, 7 and 8 a lot, you will notice.

8: The Maps rollout is were a lot of the texturing really gets hectic. In this rollout you apply different texture maps that you can edit individually based on what map you put it into. It sounds a little crazy, but it will all make sense soon.

Section Two Explained:
There are many different types of materials in Max. When you click on that button, you will see which ones are available to the version of Max you have. No material is alike, especially in Max. By selecting different materials you not only select materials that will look different, but sometimes materials that you are able to attach more texture maps onto to give them more depth, or sometimes materials that reflect light differently, etc.

Here is a list of some of the materials you can choose from:
- Standard: What you would normally get by default.
- Raytrace: Good material for dealing with light and colored light. Will reflect realistically.
- Blend: Mixes two other materials together. Can use a mask or a simple amount control.
- Ink 'n Paint: This will give a cartoony cell shaded effect.
- Multi/Sub-Object: This allows you to select many maps and add them to channels.

For now, lets just stay with the default material...

Section Five Explained:
This drop down will allow you to pick from a number of different shading types. The default shader is the Blinn shader, which is a perfectly good all-purpose shader. But you will notice there are a list of others to chose from, as well.

Here is a list of all the shaders you can pick from:
- Blinn: Your default, all-purpose shader.
- Anisotropic: Good for shiny metals. Gives you a lot of specularity controls.
- Metal: Old shader kept around for compatibility issues. Creates a duller metal effect.
- Multi-Layer: Basically allows you to create two Anisotropic shaders at once.
- Oren-Nayar-Blinn: Not very good for shiny surfaces, great for smooth velvety shades.
- Phong: Older shader used, but very similar to Blinn.
- Strauss: Basically a cross between Blinn/Phong and Anisotropic.
- Translucent: This creates, you guessed it: Translucency effects. Think glow sticks.

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