Material Editor / Slate Editor toggle

3ds Max 2011 introduced a new Material Editor, the Slate Material Editor, which was based on Maya's Hypershade. Since Autodesk owns both 3ds Max and Maya, they are trying to bridge the gap between the two programs. Personally, I don't like Maya's Hypershade, but the Slate Editor is much better than the Hypershade. Regardless, I like the old Material Editor.

Slate Editor

How to switch to the original material editor:
With the Slate Editor open, go to Modes -> Compact Material Editor...

This will close the Slate Editor and launch the original Material Editor.

The new Slate Editor isn't all bad, so I will give a quick run down on how to use it.

On the left side, you have your starting defaults that you would find if you were to click the Get Material button, or the button that says Standard. To start, just double click the material you want to start with. I chose Standard for the image above.

Now you should see the blue box in the material editor. To get the paramaters to show up on the right, double click the name of the material in the blue box in the middle of the editor. So, for this example, you would double click on the words Material #27.