Cameleon Paint tutorial

by Daniel Buck
www.danielbuck.net

Start with a basic ray traced material, with a fresnel falloff in the reflection slot, and higher specular and Glossiness values.

For the Diffuse slot, insert a "Gradient Ramp". This works almost exactly like a gradient ramp in Photoshop.

Set the Gradient Type to "Normal", which will change the color according to the angle at which it's viewed. Also try "light" in this spot, that will change the color according to what angle the light hits the surface at.

Change the colors to what ever values you like! On the gradient scale, the color all the way to the right will be the color at the least angle (as if bending down on your knees, and looking strait on at a car door, at eye level), and all the way on the left will be the color at the greatest angle (as if moving to the front of the car and looking at the door at an angle).

For my example, I chose the typical green-blue-purple color shift that is sometimes seen at custom import show cars. You can go absolutely crazy with the colors, or have a very slight color shift just to make the color 'pop' at the viewer. See the example on the bottom.

Things to keep in mind:

On the car, the colors might look slightly lighter if they will be reflecting lighter colors.

When you apply the color to an object and hit render, Max will ask for UVW Map coordinates. You can apply a UVW Map to the object if you want, but it won't change the results (other gradient types may require UVW map coordinates however)

Beware, all the color shifting can potentially ruin a model if the curves aren't all correct. Odd/incorrect angles in the model will show up greatly with higher contrast color shifts.

Try to keep the color fades as gradual as possible, real cameleon paint shifts very smoothly on gradual curves.

That's about it! Have fun with it, and as always, play around with the settings and see what you come up with!