[bjorn.syse]

Hi everyone,

JD, I know you have been doing some rework in the area of block definitions lately, but I just wanted to ask about them.

I have a model I would like to insert as a Block instance in my file, and then duplicate 2 times so that I have 3 instances of this very same model.

I would like to assign 3 different materals to this model, but if possible, still retain the link to the block instance.

How to I do this? as of now, I can not assign materials at all to block instances...

If I assign the material to the model in it's original .3dm, I won't get 3 different colors when added as block instances in my scene.

- Björn

[JDHill]

Hi Björn,

This (and general block-strangeness) is related to the same reason I'm not able to export blocks as Maxwell instances - there's one important function that I'm missing in the current Rhino .Net SDK that will help with block-handling in general. The way blocks are handled is fairly esoteric, and it took me quite some time to even realize that alot of trouble stemmed from not having this function. So there will be some general revision in that area when the first post-SR3 plugin is able to be released.

Cheers,

JD

[polynurb]

Hi Björn,
HI Jeremy,

maybe I don`t understand the issue.. but I have Blocks rendered fine in
my scenes. and I can duplicate them, and they still render ok.

I created this stove modell in a seperate file and assigned all materials then saved it and inserted that rhino file as a block.
(made a quick 12min testrender):


By polynurb at 2008-01-14



It`s true that blocks in Rhino are still a bit pseudo.. but there is this plugIN
on the RhinoLabs page for editing Blocks in place:

http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/ ... ditor.html

maybe it can help you (havent`t tried it much myself, however)

Otherwise it should work to change materials in the original seperate Rhino file, and update the block manually.

pleas correct me if I missed something!

_daniel

[JDHill]

Hi Daniel,

You should also be able to apply a material to the entire block once it's imported, overriding the material you have on it in the source document. Imho, blocks/materials in Rhino documents can be confusing enough, even before I get to the code...but things should be better in time.

Cheers,

JD

[bjorn.syse]

Hi daniel,

Hey, that looks real nice!

Yep, I have too made it work by assigning Maxwell materials to the block definition before saving it, and inserting it. The problem is the other way around, just like JD says, that I want to be able to assign a new material to a copy of a block instance... but perhaps that's not the way it is supposed to work. Perhaps I should settle with the way it works now.

How would you like to be able to use it?

- björn

[JDHill]

The plan is for our materials to work exactly the same way as the native Rhino ones, i.e. by layer, parent, or object. Really, it's necessary to do that in order to make the viewport match the render. Right now, it's a matter of not being able to retreive the material attribute the plugin has set when iterating through the list of render meshes - but the McNeel guys have apparently already added this for the next SDK.