Material instancing control in max?

Eric Chadwick

I'm looking for better control of how instances are made/broken within material ingredients in 3ds max. Like I want to change the UV channel for a map that's being used by multiple materials, or whatever. Instances save me time.

If when I make a new material I instance it, then use Make Unique on it, well it breaks ALL the instances for all the maps within it, not just the main Material-level instance. I need the material to be unique, but certain maps within it to remain instanced to the previous material's maps.

I can control things by instancing controllers in the Track View, but what a mess to wade through. Although maybe someone can give me some pointers there.

Anyhow I recall the now-defunct Schematic Material Editor purporting to have this kind of control. Anything else like this around?

Delaney King

Well, You can copy and paste controllers really quickly in trackview now. Just make one material 'master' and make another that references it using whatever controller you preffer, then copy and paste its controllers into all the other materials. If you do this early on, you can just clone the slave material and adust this for all the others.

I do this to control bump and shineyness across all my skin textures on seamless monster skins.

Regarding schematic, You'll spend so much time in the schematic trying to find the controllers for materials it will probably kill you.

Eric Chadwick

Thanks Dave, I'll play around with it some.

Delaney King

I would personally love to be able to drag wires around the interface to do this. Sigh.

Delaney King

how did you go Eric?

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, it's possible with Track View. Not fun scrolling around though, and opening all the material trees to get at and see things. I'm still not getting the whole Auto-Expand thing... whatever happened to Expand All?

Nice that instanced things are in shown in bold, but not helpful that I have no visual connection editor. That's what I was hoping for with SME, too bad it was shelved. Guess I'm pining for Hypershade.

Have you tried Bobo's TMG? I'm going to give this a shot next...
http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/darkmoon/tmg/

Delaney King

No, I haven't tried it.

I think the fastest way I found yet is to use wire parameters. Apply your materials. Right click and go wire parameters, select the (for example) glossiness, and then wire it both ways to the glossiness of the other material.
You can do a character with about ten materials in a minute.

Eric Chadwick

OK, cool. I'll play with wiring. Thanks for the input Dave.