I want to make a ball of ice for a project of mine but I don’t really know how to make an ice material, I’m trying to stay away from glass materials and modifying them from there. I found a post online that can be found here, http://gfx-sl.blogspot.com/2006/04/creating-ice-material.html
it a great material however the guy is really vague on the details, I’ve been trying to get it to work but so far to no avail, if anyone can help me figure this out I’d really appreciate it, thanks

Intel Core i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
Windows Ultimate 64 bit
ATI Radeon 5900 Series
3DS Max 2011

Hey,
I have been searching to do the same.  I came upon the same tutorial, and yes he lacks details.  i didn’t get quiet the results he shows.  but this is what I got so far and my settings.
somethings i missed… that i found later.
Shading - Metal
Enviornment - Ryatrace
Indext of Refrac - 1.3
I also played with the Relect color. _ Black to white and inbetween.

yeah i used all of the same settings he used as far as I can see in his images but he doesn’t show what his settings were for the mix and raytrace maps, it also looks like he added a noise map on there because of the texture of his material

Intel Core i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
Windows Ultimate 64 bit
ATI Radeon 5900 Series
3DS Max 2011

Ice cube using Raytrace material and Scanline Renderer.

Adjust the Color and Fog variables in the Advanced Transparency group in the Extended Parameters rollout.

This is an old file. Then again that link is using Light Tracer. I don’t too many people use Light Tracer anymore.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

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raytrace_icecube02.zip

Hey Tim that’s a nice texture you got there, as much as I like it I have one small issue with it, I was trying to mess around with the settings you had for it so that it would be more suited for a sphere than for a cube. it looks great on the cube but when I add it to a sphere it ends up lacking the mild transparency on the outer edges that the cube has. You can see the comparison between the two in the picture

Intel Core i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
Windows Ultimate 64 bit
ATI Radeon 5900 Series
3DS Max 2011

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Change the Start and End values for the Density: Color and Fog.
I believe those measurements are in Max Generic Units, but I could be wrong.

I also changed the IOR value from 1.5 (glass) to 1.4. Water is 1.33. (Info from the 3ds Max Help)

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

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Ok looks good thanks again Tim you’ve been a great help with everything

Intel Core i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
Windows Ultimate 64 bit
ATI Radeon 5900 Series
3DS Max 2011