[Maya] Material Manager 5.0.0 has Arrived!
Hey guys, just wanted to do a quick plug of the latest and final edition of my Material Manager tool for Maya. Any feedback is welcomed, and I'll keep an eye on this thread for bug reports. Thanks!
Material Manager 5.0.0
The Material Manager is an all-in-one interface for quickly interacting with scene materials. Quickly sort, search, filter, create, rename, delete, search, and assign texture files with the click of a button! This tool comes equipped with material presets that won't clutter up scene files and can be loaded in when they are needed, as well as an on-board color ID map baker.
Supported Maya Versions: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, all Maya LT versions
Read more and download at these locations:
- https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/material-manager-for-maya
- https://gumroad.com/l/MaterialManager
- http://cbr.sh/xw5m6f
Primary Features
- One-click Material Interaction
- One-click Texture Map Assignment/Removal
- Harden UV Border Edges Tool
- Color ID Map Baker (not available in Maya LT)
- Automatic Color ID Tool
- Quick Lambert/Blinn/StingrayPBS & Checker Materials
- Handedness Indicator/Flipper
- Namespace Removal Tool
- Vertex Color from Material Tool
- Customizable Material Presets
- User-customizable Variables
Breakdown Video
https://youtu.be/s8BjqM4DEiQVersion History
(full history now in Google Docs)11 March 2018 -- Version 5.0.0
General
Material Manager 5 has arrived! This version comes with another massive overhaul to all the code. The information flow should be much more clear and easy to read, and much of the functionality should be more compartmentalized for easier modification, if you’re into that sort of thing.
This overhaul marks the 5th time I’ve rewritten/reorganized the code which is why i’ve decided to make this release 5.0 instead of 4.4… and because it’s so much better!
New Features
Master config .txt file allows you to customize MM5 to initialize with your favorite settings and custom prefixes (for the Load Textures from Folder tool)
Master presets .txt file allows you to reorganize and add your own material presets to the Color Presets tab. You also have control over what type of material the presets are when they are created
Added a Load Textures from Folder tool which assigns all texture channels at once
Window width control
StringrayPBS Support (for applicable versions of Maya)
Material indicators now work on selected groups (will report all materials on children)
More general support for all materials including mental ray, turtle, arnold
You can now assign/remove files to/from metallic & roughness channels on StingrayPBS materials
Multi-string material searching (separate each string with a space)
Material search results now update instantly
Improved Harden UV Edges tool - now solves for UV islands that wrap back around to themselves (such as cylinder bodies & spheres) and will appropriately soften those edges. Works exactly like 3ds Max’s smoothing groups now
Swatches have been added to the Presets tab for quicker access to material ID colors
Material List indicators can now be suspended so assigned materials are not calculated when dealing with massive component selections
Presets can now be sorted per column or alternating left to right, top to bottom
Auto Assign Color IDs tool now works per object or per mesh element
Added an option to auto-append “M_” to materials as they are created
Added a cleanup tool to add “M_” to existing materials if they don’t already have it
ID Map Baker HP/LP/Cage fields now have an icon to list large amounts of loaded models which will be visible if something is loaded into that field
ID Map Baker now supports multiple low poly and cage files
UI
UI in general has been overhauled. Nearly all of the UI has transitioned from a gridLayout format to a formLayout format.
ID Map Baker has been overhauled
Harden UV Edges tool now has a progress bar
The “Force Refresh” button has been removed to reduce button congestion. Close and re-open MM5 if the indicators are not working as expected
Replaced Quick Checker material with a Quick StingrayPBS material. Quick Checker has now been appended to the end of the preset swatches.
Bug Fixes / Performance
Auto Color ID tool now processes meshes MUCH faster and with more correct results
Selection-only material matching is now MUCH faster than before
Duplicate Material has been overhauled. Hypershade is no longer required to be open and all shadingEngine and down stream nodes will automatically rename according to the new name.
Binding a hotkey for the Material Manager should finally work
Material Control buttons are now smarter: they will look at your selection even if nothing is marked and react appropriately
Many functions that deal with material channels are now smarter and will attempt to pick the most relevant channel if one exists. This also means that materials not necessarily listed as being supported here may still work and/or it will be very simple to implement support.
Materials with namespaces should be accurately represented and interactable
Escape now properly cancels out of a quick material assign prompt dialog
Checker pattern contrast has been reduced
Fixed a bug where an object’s assigned materials were being queried multiple times per selection change
Fixed an issue where the material list updated significantly slower if “sort assigned materials to top” was enabled
ID Map Baker now remembers the most recent meshes you loaded as well as the file destination.
Other
The Smart Exporter has been removed from being part of the Material Manager. Development will be conducted separately from now on, however it is currently backlogged.
Replies
31 March 2018 - v5.0.6
General
The Quick Phong button has been added to the Material Control area
Added a warning for matching marked materials that are not assigned to anything
Redshift materials have been added to the list of valid materials.
Updated the code for the hotkey and shelf button commands. You should reassign your hotkey and create a new shelf button using the menu options
Bug Fixes / Performance
Fixed a fatal error when using a hotkey to open MM5 as the first command in a new session of Maya 2017 and higher. You must re-bind your hotkey for this fix to work
Fixed an “unknown object type” warning for the aiShadowCatcher material in 2018.2
Fixed an issue where MM5 would update extremely slowly in scenes that had a very large number of materials (hundreds). Response is now much faster but still hangs for a short period when the list updates that many materials
Duplicating a StingrayPBS material will no longer create duplicate Textures Global maps and will instead use the maps from the original material
Fixed an issue where deleting a range selection of materials did not delete all materials
Removed some superfluous warnings
Full version history here
Everything is broken!
This messge appears wherever I click on the UI.
DM me if you end up having more issues. Thanks!
Hi, thanks for reporting this. Can you answer these questions to help me troubleshoot:
- Are you using macOS or Windows?
- Which button are you pressing that causes the warning?
- Can you duplicate the issue with other models / in a different scene?
- Can you provide a step-by-step process to duplicate the error?
- Can you provide the file in which you are experiencing the issue?
Thanks.A good usability improvement would be that the material manager would remember what settings I have been using previously.
For example I always turn on the "Report children" checkbox and "sort assigned materials first". Now i have to set them on each session...
As for your sorting options, I got you covered! In your installation directory, you will find mm_config.txt which contains a lot of global settings. You want to look for the mm_cb_children and mm_cb_sass IDs and set their values according to the annotations.
While you're in there, check to see if there are any other settings you might want to set as your default.
Cheers