Using mental mill® shaders in 3ds Max

Using mental mill® shaders in 3ds Max

This document describes how to export shading networks, shaders and
Phenomena from mental mill that they can be used as DirectX materials
right away in the 3ds Max viewport.
A basic knowledge of how to work with mental mill or 3ds max is assumed.
If you’re not familiar with these applications yet, please take a
look into the help documents of mental mill and 3ds max if you want to
learn more about the applications themselves.

Preparing the shader in mental mill

1. Create your shading effect inside mental mill by building a shading network
that creates the look that you want to achieve.
2. Once satisfied with the result, go to “Scene > Scene Settings…” and make
sure that the following items are set correctly:

3. Set the required number of lights in your mental mill scene. Lights are
created by adding a light shader node to the “graph view“. This does not
create a light source yet. An instance of the light source needs to be created.

4. Go to “Scene > Scene Settings…”, click “Add light” and select the light
shader of your choice. You can create multiple light instances from one
shader which will share the input data like color, falloff, etc…. (Note
that parameter sharing happens only inside mental mill. Outside the
application each light instance will have its own dedicated set of parameters)
5. If your shading network contains nodes that do reflections of any “Component_
reflection”) you have to create an instance from an environment
shader on the “graph view”. You must enable this envirshader by selecting
it under “Scene > Scene Settings…” from the “Environment Shader’”
dropdown menu.
6. Before exporting, make sure that the root node, that is your final node
of your network, is selected.
7. Select “File > Export…” ans select “3ds Max” from the “Export Format”
dropdown list.
8. Choose a filename or folder where to write the exported shader to
9. Finally click “OK” to export your shader
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