As always, first of all open up 3D Studio Max and make a new scene (File->New). I¡¯m using version 6 of Max for this tutorial.

Because I already wrote a tutorial on how to add text in 3D Studio Max I won¡¯t explain it again. So, if you haven¡¯t read that tutorial and don¡¯t know how I got the below scene then I suggest reading Adding Text tutorial. I will only add that in this example I used the following settings for the text:

• Font: Impact
• Size: 40
• Extrude: 7
• Segments: 10

If you have read it then continue reading. First of all let¡¯s set up some light in the scene. To do that go to Create Panel and click on Lights as shown in the picture below.

Select the Omni Light and place 4 lights in your scene in the top viewport. It doesn¡¯t matter where you place them because I¡¯m going to tell you the exact coordinates in the following steps so your scene will look very similar to mine.

Select any of the lights you just created by clicking on them. Now select the Move Tool and press F12 on your keyboard. In the dialog box that appears input the following numbers:

Now select your second light and do the same thing. Input the following numbers:

Now the 3rd one:

And finally, select the 4th Omni light and use the following coordinates:

Now that we have finished placing the lights let¡¯s set them up. Select one of the Omni lights and go to the Modifier Panel.

Change the settings I marked in the picture below and leave everything else default.

Note that you will see the options Cicled in Green ONLY if you use Brazil R/S. If you don't have Brazil R/S then use "Ray Traced Shadows" instead of "Brazil Ray Shadows". If you do this then ignore the second picture, and continue reading.

Use the same settings to the other 3 Omni lights in your scene.

Ok, lights are finished, now for the fun part. Because in this example I¡¯m going to use Multi/Sub-Object materials so that I can color each letter individually, I have to first select different material IDs. So, what is a material ID? Well, material IDs work on polygons. It¡¯s like this: you create an object (in our case the text is our object), you convert the object to ¡°Editable Poly¡±, select one or multiple polygons from the object and assign a material ID to those polygons (it¡¯s something similar to Smoothing Groups ¨C read ¡°Loft Modeling¡± tutorial to see what Smoothing Groups are ), and when you create a material you will tell 3D Studio Max to use that material only on those polygons that you want. Easy, Right? Well, not actually, but if you continue reading you¡¯ll understand.

So, let¡¯s apply some material IDs. Right click on the text and select Convert to Editable Poly.

Select the Polygon Sub-Object.

Now, in the top view port select all polygons from the letter that you want to apply a different material. I choose the two X¡¯s. To select the polygons, make sure the "Window/Crossing" is selected and just make a rectangular selection around the letter.

While the polygons are selected, in the Modifier Panel scroll down until you find this:

Select a material ID for this polygons. I choose ¡°2¡±

Now go to Edit->Select Invert to select all the polygons left. Set the material ID of this polygons to 1.

As I said, I'll color different both X¡¯s. So I¡¯ve selected the other X the same way I explained in step 15 and did the same thing like in step 17, selecting the same material ID, ¡°2¡±.

Now to add some little detail to our text, let¡¯s add some chamfer to those edges.

Select the Edge sub-object. Go in the Left viewport and select all the edges, like in the picture. To do that, again make sure you have Window/Crossing enabled, then make a rectangular selection around them.

Now, in the Modifier Panel click on the box next to Chamfer.

Use the following settings in the dialog box that appears then hit OK.

Well now everything is almost set up, all we need is our material.

Press Ctrl+M to go to the material editor, or click on the icon circled in red.

Select an empty material and use the following settings:

Now scroll down a bit and click on Maps Tab, check Reflection, input 50 in the edit box instead of 100 and click on the circled button. From the dialog box that appears select Raytrace. Do the same thing with Opacity but select Reflect/Refract instead of Raytrace.

Now select another empty material and use the following settings.

In the maps tab use these settings:

Ok, we have our two base materials. Now how do we tell 3D Studio Max which material to use with the material IDs that we set. Well, we need a Multi/Sub-Object material. To make this material do this: Select an empty slot and click on Standard.

From the dialog that appears select Multi/Sub-Object. Now we only have to assign our main materials to this one. Because we only have 2 materials I suggest changing the number of materials shown to 2.

Now all we have to do is drag and drop our materials on the material ID that we selected.

If you found this tutorial useful then please Register on Xtreme-piXel.com Forums.

You will also be able to ask questions regarding this tutorial in the designated section Xtreme-piXel.com Tutorial.

Thank You for reading.