Wiring Nodes

To map a material component, you wire a map node to the input socket for that component’s slot. Drag from the map socket to the material socket or from the material socket to the map socket.

Play this to see how to wire a map:

Tip: You can also drag directly from the Material/Map Browser panel to an input socket.

While the Select tool is active, you can select a wire by clicking it, just as you select a node. The selected wire turns white.

When you click the left half of a node and hold the mouse button, 3ds Max opens a context menu that lets you choose among the available input parameters. When you click the right side of a node and hold, the menu shows the available outputs. If you move the mouse without making a menu selection, the menu display goes away. This method can help you wire two nodes when the active View is zoomed out, and it is hard to pick individual sockets.

3ds Max gives you a great variety in the way you can combine maps, so the map tree as it appears in the view can take various forms.

A material with one map for diffuse color and another as the bump map

A material with a single map used as both diffuse color and bump maps

Some maps combine other maps, and some materials can combine sub-materials, so a material tree can have more than two levels.

A four-level tree that uses Multi/Sub maps and a Composite map

To apply a map to a material component:

To remove a map or map connection, do one of the following:

Alternative Wiring Methods

The Slate Material Editor gives you various alternative ways to wire a material tree.

To replace one map with another:

To insert a node into an existing wire, do one of the following:

To disconnect an inserted node: