Improve your 3Ds Max viewport quality

Here’s an image of a little light bulb with simple materials
Its not a render, its a screenshot of a viewport in Rhinoceros 3D

Guess what ? You can get the exact same result in 3Ds Max by following this little tutorial I wrote for you
But before we start Id like to speak a little bit about Rhinoceros 3D and what tools I used to get this result

If you are a Rhinoceros 3D user you probably know what’s the trick, Its a plugin called Auxpecker. It use a simple trick to shade the objects in realtime, it use the same trick than cubemaps in video games. Basically its just images used to fake reflections, the effect is impressive, specially when you rotate the view and look at the object from various angles…

Now let’s do the exact same effect in 3Ds Max using a simple shader

First you need to download Auxpecker from Jewelslab website
(You need to create an account to access the download links)

Open the downloaded archive and extract the folder called EnvironmentMap anywhere you want (This folder contain all the image files used to fake the reflections separated by categories)

Before you jump into 3Ds Max you need to download a shader called Matballz

You can find the download link here (Bookmark it, worth it !)

Now load an object in 3Ds Max and open the material editor

Pick one of the default material and click on the Standard button

Pick the DirectX shader in the list
(choose discard old material if asked)

Now click on the filepath button and browse to the matballz.fx you previously extracted
(By default 3Ds Max open his own shader folder, put the matball.fx in this folder for quick acess)

The matballz.fx shader has very few settings. The only one you should care is the LitSphere map button

Click on this button and browse to any image file. The file need to have a 1:1 aspect ratio (squared)

And the projection must be spherical. Use any of the images extracted from the Auxpecker folder

Here I loaded the Satined semi-glossy black file from the Auxpecker folder
I used this one for the light bulb body as you can see in the first image of this tutorial

Then you just need to repeat that for every material on your model

Here’s another example using different reflection spheres

Using reflection spheres is not only for the look. Its also usefull when modelling, to get more visual feedback of the curvature of your models, its also good for your clients when they are behind you looking at your screen

You can create your own reflection spheres with Photoshop or any simillar software.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and sorry for all those days without any posts

Edit: Also read this cool topic about the subjet on the Polycount forum !

(This light bulb model was done in Moment of Inspiration 3D using a Rhinoceros 3D tutorial located here It was done in both software for comparaison purposes. Check the other tutorials also, on the same website)