Material Editior

Start by firing up 3D Studio and creating an object that you will later apply your texture too. Any object will do such as a tetrahedron or cube. I made this lovely warped blue thing (if you'd like to make something like it, see the 2-Rail Shapes tutorial.

Open the Material Editor by pressing 'M.' Select one of the six spheres that is closest to the color you want to make your material.

For this tutorial we'll make a plastic-like texture. Choose Phong under the Shader Basic Properties menu. Click the 2-Sided check box and then edit the other options to make the sphere looks somewhat like you want it. You can change the colors around and play with the Specular Highlights. Turn the Opacity down to 80% for a nice touch (yeah, I know it says 90% in the image to the left). The preview image will change a little in the next steps, but you can see how mine looked at the left.

Go down to the Maps and choose Reflection, set the opacity to 70%. Click the map button and pick Swirl. I new menu will pop up. Change the colors until your sphere looks trippy again. Then click the drop-down menu on the top of the material editor. Choose the top choice which will take you back to the main material menu. Go back down to the maps and make Refraction map that is also set to 70% opacity and Swirl. Go play with the options again until your sphere once again looks spoonodelic. You really can't go wrong with any of the options you choose on these maps, so I encourage you to fully experiment.

You can add more maps if you want such as Glossiness, but I didn't in my example. Once your material satisfies you, click on your sphere and drag it onto your object. The color will change to look like your material.

Now go to Rendering>Render. Click Render and you will be looking at your new material in full glory.