3dsmax material creation

#1

I have been using 3dsmax for probably just about 10 years now. One of my frustrations with material creation is how it is not easy to make adjustments to the various material maps when you are trying to tweak certain material parameters. For instance, using a PBR workflow, lets say I want to adjust the tiling of the various maps being used. If I have a map for diffuse, specularity, normal, reflection, etc, I have to go into each map to make these adjustments. Is there a way to be able to universally change an aspect like this in all of the maps at one time?

My second question is on the Slate Material Editor. I have finally decided to give this a go after using the Compact Editor since I started using max. I like it as it is somewhat similar to working in Unreal and Unity. My one thing I have noticed is there seems to be nowhere to adjust the map “amount” as there is in the Compact Editor. For instance, if I have a displacement map or normal map, I could adjust the “amount” of that map’s impact on the Material. You could have that set to 1% or 100%. Where is this control in the Slate Editor?

Thank you!

Kevin

#2

2 ways to do this (that I know of), if you use

Slate Editor:

  • Create a Bezier Float Controller (right click > Controllers > Float Controller > Bezier Float)
  • Right click on your bitmap or gradient node etc > Show/Hide Parameters > Additional Params > Coordinates > U or V Tiling
  • Wire the Bezier float to the U Tile, you can wire this bezier to as many bitmaps or whatever as you like.

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Compact Editor:

You need Batch Material Editor script
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/batch-material-editor

Select all the objects you want and you can adjust anything within the material you like such as

  • Tiling
  • Turn on/off any of the slots
  • adjust all settings to be the same for multiple materials like bitmap blur or reflection amount, bump on/off
  • etc

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With batch editor its for vray, fstorm, corona. Not sure what other engines you can just check scriptspot but as far as I know not standard materials.