Step 1 - Reset 3D Studio Max
Step 2 - Go to the Front View
Step 3 - Go to the Create Panel
and make a cilinder. It does not matter what dimensions, whatever your like. Go to the Modify Panel
and set the height segments to 3. Now that you have done that you should have something that looks like this:
Step 4 - Now go to the Modify Panel again and apply an Edit Mesh modifier to the cilinder. Choose Sub-Object => Face (or Selection => face). Now select the bottom one third of the cilinder. Scroll to the bottom of the Edit Mesh modifier panel and set Material ID to 1. Now deselect the bottom section and select the middle third and set Material ID to 2, and for the top third to 3.
Step 5 - Deselect the Sub-Object mode and open the Material Editor (m). Instead of Standard choose Multi/Sub Object. At the pop-up choose 'discard old material' because we are going to make new ones.
Step 6 - Set number of materials to 3. Now that you have three little sphere's in front of you with the 3 Material ID's next to them. You can make the three materials any way you like: I made a Dent, a Brick and a Planet material.
Step 7 - Do not exit the Material Editor yet, because it still has to be applied to the cilinder. So click on the cilinder without closing the ME and apply the material: the 'sphere-to-cube' button. Now every Material ID has it's own material.
Step 8 - The final thing to do is apply an UVW-map to the cilinder: because you have applied an Edit Mesh to the cilinder, Max doesn't understand in which way he has to apply the material. An UVW-map simply solves that problem. Go to Modify
and apply UVW-map. Click cilindrical as Mapping and at alignment click Fit.
Step 9 - After this tidying up, you can render it by pressing Shift + Q and you should have an image resembling to this:
This of course is a very simple tutorial, but still: this way of adding more than one material to a single object can be very handy and useful. So no time wasted!s
More 3D Graphics: 
