Octane for 3dsmax

The Metallic material has similar attributes and surface characteristics as the Glossy material. However, its default settings produce a more accurate metallic surface without any adjustments (figure 1).

Figure 1: The Metallic material and its associated parameters 

Metallic Material Parameters

Material Layer - Adds a Material layer above the base material. See the Material Layers topic in this manual for more details.

Diffuse Color - The diffuse texture for the Reflection channel.

Specular Color - The specular reflection channel, which determines the metallic color. If the IOR is set to a value less than 0, OctaneRender® adjusts the color brightness to match the Fresnel equations.

Edge Tint - The color of the edges of the metal material, only used with Artistic and IOR+Color modes found under the Metallic Refl. Mode.

Specular Map - Controls the blend between the Diffuse and Specular channels.

BRDF Model - The BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) determines the amount of light that a material reflects when light falls on it. For glossy materials, you can choose from six BRDF models. Specific geometric properties (the micro-facet distribution) of the surface affects each BRDF, which describes the surface's microscopic shape (i.e. micro-facet normals) and scales the brightness of the BRDF's reflections (figure 2).

Figure 2: The various BRDF models available for specularity

Roughness - Determines how much the specular reflection spreads across the surface. In CG terminology, this is also known as reflection blur. A value of 0 simulates a perfect smooth reflective surface such as a mirror. Increasing the value simulates microfacets in the surface, which causes the reflective highlights to spread. For example, to create the look of worn plastic, increase the Roughness value. This parameter accepts a value or Texture map (Procedural or Image).

Anisotropy- Adjusts the amount of change that a surface's reflectance has, depending on viewing direction.

Rotation - Controls the Anisotropy effect's orientation.

Spread - Determines the tail spread of the specular BSDF.

Metallic Refl. Mode - This attribute, along with the IOR attributes, provide options to control the IOR across a surface.

• Artistic - Uses the albedo color.
• IOR + Color - Uses the albedo color and further adjusts the surface brightness using the IOR.
• RBG IOR - This is the most-used mode. It uses the three IOR values and ignores the albedo color.

Index Of Refraction - Complex-valued IOR (n-k*i) controlling the specular reflection's Fresnel effect, where n = the refractive index and k = the attenuation or extinction coefficient. For RGB mode, the IOR for red light (650nm).

Index Of Refraction (Green) - For RGB mode, the IOR for red light (550nm).

Index Of Refraction (Blue) - For RGB mode, the IOR for red light (450nm).

Allow Caustics - If enabled, the photon tracing kernel will create caustics for light reflecting or transmitting through objects with this material applied. 

Sheen - The subtle lustre's color on the material's surface.

Sheen Roughness - The Roughness channel for the sheen that is present on Metallic and Glossy materials.

Film Width - Simulates the look of a thin film of material on the surface. This is useful when you want to create an effect such as the rainbow colors that appear on an oil slick surface. Larger values increase the effect's strength.

Film IOR - Controls the thin film's IOR by adjusting its visible colors.

Opacity - Determines what parts of the surface are visible in the render. Dark values indicate transparent areas, and light values determine opaque areas. Values in-between light and dark create the look of semi-transparent areas. Lowering the opacity value lowers the object's overall visibility, and using a texture map varies the opacity across the surface. For example, if you want to make a simple polygon plane look like a leaf, connect a black-and-white image of the leaf’s silhouette to the diffuse shader's Opacity channel.

Bump - Creates fine details on the material’s surface using a procedural or image texture. When you connect a grayscale texture to this parameter, light areas of the texture look like protruding bumps, and dark areas look like indentations. You can adjust the bump map's strength by setting the Power or Gamma values on the image texture. These attributes are covered in more detail in the Textures topic in this manual.

Bump Height - Determines the strength of the bump map. A value of 0 provides no bump height and negative values will invert the bump map.

Normal - Creates fine details on the surface. A normal map is a special type of image texture that uses red, green, and blue color values to perturb the normals of the surface at render time, giving the appearance of added detail. They can be more accurate than bump maps, but requires specific software to generate.

Displacement - Adjusts the surface vertices' height at render time using an image texture map. Displacement maps differs from bump or normal maps in that the geometry is altered by the texture, as opposed to creating details. Displacement mapping is more complex than using a bump or normal map, but the results are more realistic, in particular along the surface's silhouette. Displacement mapping is covered in more detail under the Textures topic in this manual.

Smooth - Enables or disables normal interpolation. If normal interpolation is disabled, triangle meshes appear faceted.

Smooth Shadow Terminator - If enabled, self-intersecting shadows are smoothed according to the polygon's curvature.

Round Edges - Rounds off geometry edges by using a shading effect instead of creating additional geometry. It’s best used for rounded edges that will appear small in the final render. The Fast mode uses the rounding method introduced in OctaneRender® v3. The Accurate mode produces better-looking results, but may be slower. Accurate mode can select the affected edges by using the Concave Only or Convex Only options.

Radius Div - Radius divider, use a high value (10,000) for small scale scenes or geometry. 

Rounded Edges Radius - Define the size of the rounded edge by radius. Bevels the surface edges at render time without altering or subdividing the geometry. Using this option enhances object realism by eliminating sharp edges. The value refers to the rounded edge's radius. Higher values produce rounder edges.

Rounded Edges Roundness - Controls the rounded edge's shape. A value of 1 is completely round, while 0 is a chamfer. 

Consider Other Objects - Controls how rounded edges are applied to different objects. When enabled, intersections between different objects are rounded. When disabled, only the current object is considered.

Rounded Edge Samples - Set samples for rendering edges. 

R. Edge Samples - Determines the number of rays to use when sampling the neighboring geometry.

Compatibility Mode - The Octane version that the behavior of this node should match. The default is Latest (2022.1.2). The 2022.1.1 compatibility mode will always factor in the edge sharpness instead of just when the material smooth flag is enabled. 

Priority - Used to resolve the ambiguity in overlapping surfaces, the surface priority control allows artists to control the order of preference for surfaces. A higher number suggests a higher priority for the surface material, which means it is preferred over a lower priority surface material if a ray enters a higher priority surface and then intersects a lower priority surface while inside the higher priority surface medium.

Custom AOV - Writes a mask to the specified custom AOV.

Custom AOV Channel - Determines whether the custom AOV is written to a specific color channel (R, G, or B) or to all the color channels.

Compatibility Mode - The Octane version that the behavior of this node should match. The default is Latest (2023.1). The 2022.1 compatibility mode is the legacy behavior where Bump map strength is active but Bump Map Height is ignored. 

Conceal Layer - Hides the Material layer (sub material) of this material from 3ds Max requests. This is to be used temporarily as a work around for the Ornatrix hair viewport display. Note that this layer is still used by Octane but will not be accessible from the Slate editor when Concealed. 

Export Octane Material - Opens a dialog window that provides options for exporting the Material to ORBX, the Local DB, or the Live DB. 

Convert - Provides options for converting this material to other Octane-specific material types.