material: Adding more material slots

[3d_man_89]

I asked that question a few days ago. Here is the link.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63990

[jeteral]

I understand that you can have as many materials as you want. I have both read that, and have received that answer many times.
But the million dollar question that I have is.........

HOW?

[Bobo]

Originally posted by jeteral
I understand that you can have as many materials as you want. I have both read that, and have received that answer many times.
But the million dollar question that I have is.........

HOW?


Here is my attempt to bring light into this. Again.
(Of course, you should have RTFM, but I have time today... ;) )

The Material Editor is a palette for mixing materials and maps.
A material placed on a slot can be either "cold" or "hot".

A "Hot" material is an instance of a material assigned to a scene object. Changing ANY property of a material in the Editor would change the material in the scene. It is denoted by white brackets in the corners of the sample window.

"Cold" materials are not currently assigned to scene objects.

Despite this difference, you CAN RESET ANY of the 24 materials seen in the Editor WITHOUT affecting the scene material. In the case of "Hot" materials, you will be prompted whether to affect only the Material Editor material or the Scene material, too.
But in general you can press the [X] icon in the Editor to replace the current slot with a default (grey) material with a new name without loosing anything in the scene. The default settings of the prompt dialog protect you from doing anything wrong.

You can then edit this new material and assign to any scene objects, delete again, etc.
The material that used to occupy the slot before resetting will remain assigned to the scene object if it was hot, or will be lost if it was not assigned to any scene objects...

To avoid loosing materials, you can always store materials from the Editor in a library.

There are a couple of scripts (one from Blur, one from me) that can replace all materials in the Editor with fresh copies.
You get 24 new materials in the editor, but the scene remains untouched.

Another way to start a new material is to drag and drop an existing material from one sample to another. If the source you dragged from was "Hot", this gives you a "Cold" copy with the same name. Since Max identifies materials by name (you cannot have duplicate material names in the scene), you can always easily replace the original "hot" material with the "cold" copy, making the copy the "hot" one and vice-versa. The "Put Material To Scene" (second icon from left) does this. It is only available when there is already a material in the scene with the same name as the selected "cold" sample...

My understanding is that most new users FEAR that removing a material from the Editor could destroy / corrupt / alter something in their scene. This fear is natural and probably even logical, but it has no technical reason since Max has certain anti-dummy prompt dialogs to prevent such things.
You cannot destroy anything unless you want to.
(There are 1000 other ways to screw things up in the scene without even knowing it, but resetting Material samples does not belong to them! )


Ok, these are the basics. Ask if you need to know more.

Need my bank account number for the million? ;)

[jeteral]

Thanks,
That was deffinately my fear. The rendering i am working on now has a ton of furniture and it is a restoration project. So I was definately needing more than the 24, I will have to try this and see if i can get it. Actually i had just finished reading that exact thing that you quoted right out of the book, so thanks
i think that i am headed in the right direction
jet

[JetroPag]

I prefer using the Multi/Sub Object material. With it you can have unlimited amount of materials in only one material slot.

[Bobo]

Originally posted by JetroPag
I prefer using the Multi/Sub Object material. With it you can have unlimited amount of materials in only one material slot.


Yep, this is a nice idea.
Just wanted to mention that the number is technically limited to 1000 sub-materials. In practice, this is pretty close to "unlimited"... :)

Some more Max trivia:
During the Max development prior to 1.0, the number was actually unlimited. In the official Max 1.0 release it was limited to 65535 sub-materials. Later in Max 2.0, the number was once again limited to 1000. The Material Modifier still supports 65K IDs though...

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.