Creating an Ancient Letter in 3ds Max

1. Creating and Unwrapping the Paper Mesh

Step 1

Create a plane in 3ds Max with width and height dimension as 80 each.

Step 2

Apply the Unwrap UVW modifier on the plane.

Step 3

With the Polygon and Select By Element XY Toggle options selected, click and select any of the faces of the plane. It will automatically select the entire faces.

Step 4

After that, click on Planar map and then Fit button.

Step 5

Then click on Open UV Editor button. It opens the Edit UVWs window.

Step 6

Inside Edit UVWs window, go to Mapping > Flatten Mapping. It opens the Flatten Mapping sub-window. Here click on OK.

Step 7

It opens the UV of the plane in a planar manner.

Step 8

Go to Tools > Render UVW Template.

Step 9

Set the Width and Height values to 2048 each and then click on Render UV Template button.

Step 10

It renders the UV image. Click on Save Image icon to save the image.

Step 11

Save the image as UV.jpg in your hard drive.

2. Creating Textures and Maps

Step 1

Open Photoshop. Go to File > Open and open the UV.jpg file.

Step 2

I have an old paper texture which I bring in the scene.

Step 3

Make a new layer filled with black color and put it beneath the old paper texture layer.

Step 4

With the help of Lasso Tool, make a selection around the page as shown in the following image.

Step 5

Press Ctrl-Shift-I to invert the selection.

Step 6

Press Delete key to delete the selected part. The paper looks torn from the edges now.

Step 7

I have a Greek Text image in PNG format which I bring into the scene. I have put this layer above the paper layer.

Step 8

With the Greek Text layer selected, change the mode to Overlay. It makes the texts embedded  with the paper.

Step 9

Make a duplicate of the text layer to make it more prominent.

Step 10

Now it’s time to make the Displacement Map. Turn off all the layers and make a new layer and fill it with white color.

Step 11

Make one more new layer and create some dark patches as shown in the following image. Then save it as displacement.jpg.

Step 12

After that, turn on all the layers and turn off the white layer. Apply the Color Balance effect on the patches layer and change its color to orange pale. Finally save it as color_diffuse.jpg.

Step 13

Now turn off all the layers except the White BG layer and then save it as opacity_map.jpg.

Applying Textures and Maps in 3ds Max

Step 1

Open 3ds Max file. Press M to open the Material Editor. Select an empty slot and put the color_diffuse.jpg file in the Diffuse channel. You will see the texture has been applied on the paper.

Step 2

Press Shift-Q key to render the scene. You will see the black border around the edges of the paper. You need to eliminate this black border with the opacity map.

Step 3

Put the opacity_map.jpg file in the Diffuse channel.

Step 4

Press Shift-Q key to render the scene. Now you won’t see black border anymore.

Step 5

Now it’s time to apply some displacement. So, apply an Edit Poly modifier on the paper mesh.

Step 6

Click twice on the Tessellate option to make the mesh tessellation dense.

Step 7

Now, apply Displace modifier on the paper mesh.

Step 8

Click on Bitmap channel and select the displacement.jpg file.

Step 9

Set the Strength value to -0.8. You can increase the map’s Length and Width also to make it fit. You can see the paper mesh being displaced in the viewport according to the displacement map.

Step 10

Press Shift-Q key to render the scene. It looks pretty good.

Step 11

For variation, you can make some black patches in the opacity map in Photoshop and save it again. It will automatically update the 3ds Max scene.

Step 12

Now if you render the scene in 3ds Max, you will see some holes in the rendered image. This is due to the black patches made in Photoshop.

Step 13

I have put some lights in the scene. After rendering, it looks like this.

Conclusion

In this tutorial I’ve shown you how to create an ancient and torn paper in 3ds Max using various textures and maps made in Photoshop. I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial.