The Standard and Raytrace materials let you specify a shading type. A "shader" is an algorithm that describes how the surface responds to light. One of the most noticeable features of each shader is how it generates specular highlights.
Samples of different shading for a standard material
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1. Anisotropic
2. Blinn
3. Metal
4. Multi-layer
5. Oren-Nayar-Blinn
6. Phong
7. Strauss
8. Translucent
Some shaders are named for what they do, such as the Metal and Translucent shaders; others are named for the person who developed them, such as the Blinn and Strauss shaders.
Warning: When you change the shading type of a material, you lose the settings (including map assignments) for any parameters that the new shader does not support. If you want to experiment with different shaders for a material with the same general parameters, copy the material to a different sample slot before you change its shading type. That way, you can still use the original material if the new shader doesn't give you the effect you want.
Several different shaders are provided with 3ds Max. Some of these are not available for the Raytrace material.
Note: In addition to the shaders described in this section, 3ds Max supports plug-in shader types.