Need more materials in max

Soccerman18

I'm working on a scene in Max and right now the material editor had 24 materials in it, 6x4, all of them are being used but I have objects that I need to put different materials on. I see the scroll bars but they don't seem to want to work (probably because there's nothing to scroll to at the moment). How would I add more materials without losing the materials already in the scene?

arshlevon

you can clear all those materials and not lose any materials in the scene.. they arent stored in the mat editor.. they are stored in the scene.. just make sure to name them all different things...

MoP

yeah, if you select a material in the mtl. editor and hit the "X" icon button just below all the preview spheres, it'll probably ask you if you wanna reset the material in just the editor, or in the scene too - just make sure you choose the option to only reset the material editor material!
then bingo you can make a new material in that, just give it a different name.

you can pull back existing materials from the scene by doing Get Material (top left icon button, blue sphere + arrow), then using the option on the left to select only materials in the Scene. Then either double-click, or click and drag an existing material into one of the slots.

Soccerman18

Wow, that was fast! Thanks! Get Material, or the eyedropper, won't overwrite the material that's in the slot?

MoP

nope. it'll only overwrite it if the material in the slot isn't in use anywhere else.
if the material's applied somewhere in the scene, it'll disappear from the Mtl. editor, but it'll still be in the scene and you can just Get it back the same way.

Soccerman18

Sweeeeeet. Thanks!

arshlevon

another thing i like to do when working with large numbers of materials is a make a few sub object materials with instances of my scene materials in them.. that way i can have as many materials as i want in the material editor and not have to worry about hunting them down in the scene if its really complicated..

Soccerman18

that's a good idea, is there an easy way to get them into the sub object material, or do you just do it by hand? I've got several dozen materials going right now and trying to hunt them down and stick them in manually would be a pain at this point.

Eric Chadwick

FWIW, I constantly use Blur Studios' ClearMedit script to clean out the Editor. Speeds up redraw a huge amount, especially with animated mats.

Eric Chadwick

[ QUOTE ]
is there an easy way to get them into the sub object material

[/ QUOTE ]I don't use arsh's setup, but one quick way is to select all the objects you want, shift-move-copy them, hide everything else, select one and Attach all the rest to it. Auto-creates a M/S-O material.