Tutorial 3 Adding materials to objects - Plank of Wood

Today was my first lesson in learning how to add textures to an object. I found this really interesting because it makes the 3D objects I create more life-like.

The first object which I tried to recreate is a simple plank of wood.
The first step was to google an ideal image to use for the wood texture. I had to make sure that the image was big enough so that it would fit on the object.

This is the image I chose to use.








Then, I opened 3D Studio max and drew a box shape. I opened the Material Editor and created a new material and imported the image as a bitmap. Then I changed the shader basic parameters to anisotropic because I felt that this shader would create the most realistic effect. Modifying the specular highlights makes the gloss on the object look more shiny however care had to be taken to ensure that the gloss was not too shiny, otherwise it would look too fake. Finally, to make the object look even more realistic, I used the bump modifier to make the texture appear more detailed.

After applying this to the object, this is my final result:

Perspective View

A close up of my rendered plank of wood