Chameleon Chameleon is a collection of five plug-ins for 3D Studio MAX. It contains one material, one map, and three helper objects. The material behaves like a Multi/Sub-Object material, except it places sub-materials based on the location of the gizmos. This is (hopefully) clearly explained below.

The shockwave in the image above was created entirely with Chameleon. The geometry is simply a flat grid with a noise modifier applied to make it slightly bumpy. All noise and gradient effects in the shockwave were created using Chameleon. The only materials in the scene are simple block colors. Now for a quick explanation of how Chameleon works.

The image above shows how the Chameleon material appears in the material editor. At first glance, it appears similar to the MAX Multi/Sub-Object material. However, notice the pick and remove buttons, as well as the drop down list below each sub-material. These three new controls allow the user to pick the Chameleon gizmos located in the scene. In this case, the black sub-material has a Chameleon Sphere gizmo assigned to it. Wherever the sphere gizmo is, the material will be black. Everywhere else it will be gray. Any number of sub-materials and gizmos may be used to create intricate shade trees.

In the image on the left there is a Box object, as well as the Chameleon Sphere helper object. The box has the Chameleon material assigned to it. Notice in the rendered image on the right that everywhere the gizmo is, the box is rendered black, everywhere else, it is gray. The two materials blend in areas between the inner and outer gizmo ranges. What about the other gizmo types? Here is an example with a box:

Notice that the Chameleon Box gizmo has been rotated, and the sub-material is rotated the same way. In fact, all transformations applied to the gizmo will also be applied to the sub-material. This includes scaling, rotating, and transformation. All of these effects can be animated, as can the gizmo parameters and the sub-materials. Here is a Chameleon Box gizmo that has been skewed quite a bit:

I snuck one more interesting effect into that image as well. You can choose to have the entire effect located only between the inner gizmo and outer gizmo ranges, creating a shell effect. This works with all three gizmo types. You can also control whether the shell is weighted towards the inner radius, or the outer radius, as was done in the shockwave image at the top of the page. If plain old falloff blending isn't good enough, each gizmo can also have its own noise parameters. All the standard MAX noise types are supported. This was used in the shockwave image to add chunks to the gradient, and can be used to add fuzziness to blends. Here is an image that shows how noisy Chameleon gizmos can be used to add dirt or scuff marks to objects with precise control:

Adding precisely positioned and animated effects like this would be extremely difficult with texture maps, but Chameleon makes it quite simple. Chameleon is available now from Digimation for $95. Copyright © 1998 J.J. Hoesing - Page last updated: 4/23/98 9:48 AM CT