need help with rendering wood

[marchitecture]

I am a beginner with max and I am trying to give a realistic look to wooden planks. Should i use the materials that came with the program and how should the material be adjusted. thanks a zillion.

[IceAged]

My advice would be to take yourself down to the nearest woodyard, with

a good digital camera, preferably on a dry overcast day, and grab some

high resolution images there of some long wooden planks.

If you find you need to take more than one photo to get the full length

of the plank, (which need to be perpendicular to the camera), you can

simply stitch them together later in Photoshop.

Unless you really need a specific wood type, you can usually get away

with adding filters in photoshop to your images, (eg, to turn pine into

red cedar).

As far as wood is concerned in 3D Max, you can either create each plank

individually and apply a unique texture to each one, or use the

material editor and UVW modifier to apply your materials to the surface

- of course it depends on how much time you have, how much detail you need, etc.

Just remember to use slightly different textures for large areas of wood, as each plank will always be unique.