Autodesk 3ds Max 9 3D animation software uses the latest technology advancements, such as 64-bit workstations, enabling you work with more complex scenes and create stunning 3D.

3ds Max 9 - MR Arch & Design Material by Joshua

The mental ray Arch & Design material is a monolithic material shader designed to support most materials used in architectural and product-design renderings. It supports most hard-surface materials such as metal, wood and glass. It is especially tuned for fast glossy reflections and refractions (replacing the DGS material) and high-quality glass (replacing the dielectric material).


The major features are:
Easy to use, yet flexible - controls are arranged logically in a most-used-first fashion.

Templates - allow fast access to settings combinations for common materials.
Physically accurate - the material is energy conserving, making it impossible to create shaders that break the laws of physics.

Glossy performance - advanced performance boosts including interpolation, emulated glossiness, and importance sampling.

Tweakable BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) - the user can define how reflectivity depends on angle.

Transparency - “Solid” or “thin” materials: transparent objects such as glass can be treated as either solid (refracting, built out of multiple faces) or thin (nonrefracting, can use single faces).

Round corners - simulate fillets to allow sharp edges to still catch the light in a realistic fashion.

Indirect Illumination control - set the final gather accuracy or indirect illumination level on a per-material basis.

Oren-Nayar diffuse - allows “powdery” surfaces such as clay.

Built-in Ambient Occlusion - for contact shadows and enhancing small details.
All-in-one shader - photon and shadow shader built in.
Waxed floors, frosted glass and brushed metals - all fast and easy to set up.

Using the new Arch & Design Material makes life easier to create materials such as glass.



To start with, I choose to use MR Spotlight with Raytrace Shadow.



Turn On GI and make a test render.



Use Logarithmic Exposure Control.



Turn on Final Gather (FG) to enhance the GI quality.



Select the Preset to Medium to obtain better quality of the FG.



Try an Arch & Design Material -- Glossy Plastic.



You can also try the Ambient Occlusion option under the Special Effects of the Arch & Design Material. This will give very subtle but important shadow effect to the scene.



Try another Arch & Design material such as Glass (Physical).