by Didik Wijaya
This tutorial needs you to understand basic use of 3dsmax.

This is Part 2 of Earthquake tutorial. After you created objects in Part 1 tutorial, now you will texture these objects. This tutorial explains how you add bitmap to visualize a surface. But, if you want to create a cracking ice surface, you can skip this part, and just apply color for material. Let's begin.

7. Continue exercise from Part 1. Open Material Editor (press M in keyboard). Choose one empty material slot. Name it if you wish. I name this material "ground". Activate Show Map in Viewport if you want. In Material Editor, click small button right next to Diffuse. Material/Map Browser window will appear. Double click on Bitmap. Then, use your own image. For this example, I use "dry dirt.jpg" found on "maps/ground" directory of 3dsmax installation.

8. When finished, click Go to Parent button. Open Maps rollout. You will see your chosen image filename listed right next to Diffuse Color. Click and drag Map# (filename) to Bump slot. Use Instance as cloning method. Now, select all object in viewport (Line01 and Line 02), then in Material Editor click Assign Material to Selection to apply material to these objects.

9. Make sure Line01 object is still selected. Open Modify tab. Add UVW Mapping to this object. Next, in Alignment click Bitmap Fit. Select previous image you used in material. By the way, Bitmap Fit is used to set material coordinate based on image size and location.

10. In modifier stack, click plus (+) sign left of UVW mapping, until you find Gizmo. Select Gizmo row. Because you have selected Bitmap Fit, UVW Gizmo's size is like your image size. Now, you can scale or move this Gizmo to find proper mapping coordinate. Scale it, so Gizmo covered all object in viewport. Move Gizmo so its bottom left corner exactly fit bottom left part of object.

11. After that, set Mapping type to Box.

12. Select another object (Line02). Repeat the same procedure in step 9-11 Still, move Gizmo using bottom left point as reference.

13. After finished doing all the steps above, you will have continuous mapping between two objects. Next, in Part 3 we will learn how to animate the cracking.

Earthquake Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Any question or comments regarding this tutorial should be sent to:
Didik Wijaya, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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