more than 24 slots in max 2011?

NAIMA

Hello , I still have max 2011 and Iam having right now the limitation of 24 slots for materials , my scene would need to have at least 30 different material slots, how can I do to increase the little spheres with the material on ?

thanks for any sugestion .

LaurentiuN

you can make a in one slot a multi/sub-object material

NAIMA

Yes but I do not want to apply to a item that because I have a lot of different items and not al are connected each one needs to be separated .

Obscura

Those materials will be "separated" materials after you export the meshes. So the multi/subobject material is what you need, it will work fine. Or maybe you can use the slate material editor. I don't really remember when it was added, so maybe you can't use it in max2011.

JohnnyRaptor

the slots in the material editor are just the amount of different materials you can view at one point.

That means once you have applied the material to an object, you can remove it from the material slot, without removing it from your scene. That should free up a slot for you in the editor. You can repeat this for any of the slots etc. A popup should ask if you want to remove the material just from the material editor window, or from the entire scene. Choose the first option.

Mark Dygert

Yup, what Johnny said.

Why do you need all of those materials in the editor at one time? You aren't locked into 24 materials in your scene, but you can only have 24 materials on your "workbench" at one time.

That's all the material editor is, a temporary spot for you to put materials that you're working on.

If you reset your material editor materials don't disappear from your scene unless that's the only place they exist. If a material is applied to an object it goes into a "Scene Materials" list that houses all of the materials in that scene that are being used.

If you need to work on that material you can just eyedropper it from the object or pick it using the "Get Material" button.