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Hi is there a quick way to overide all materials with just one grey material ?
So I can do quick lighting tests ?

This would indeed be useful.
Perhaps post to the wishlist... an overide materials option

That would be great, very useful.

Duncan, I seem to remember you use XSI?

If so, just set up a Partition in the Render Pass, put all the objects into this Partition and assign a default material to it. Works a charm.

When you want their original material back, just take the out of this new Partition and put them in the Background Partition, their original materials will be returned.

Not sure how you'd replicate this in Studio, however?

In Studio in Render Option panel under Output there is an option "Disable Bitmaps".

Then you will get render without bitmaps but still with material colors.

There is also command line switch -bitmaps:0 or -b:0 which should also work. I do not know why but it does not work directly from Cinema plugin for me...

Thanks guys,
Oz you have a good memory I use to use XSI but went back to 3dsmax, sorry I should have mentioned that. Its good to see Maxwell is capable of using XSI partitions !!!

MS: I guess disabling bitmaps wouldn't disable reflection which is something I need to get quick render tests out.

Duncan, your guess is right. Sometimes I also wish that "no material render" was possible.

If I need it I use a workaround - there is weak point in 1.7 plugin of Cinema - it does not support materials in Xref files - so if I need a quick "default material preview" I convert desired objects to Xrefs (which is a two button clicks procedure) I hit render and I get what I want.

Everything bad can be good in some circumstances

Duncan, serves you right for going back to the 'Dark Side'

Although we've recently been caught in the Death Star's tractor beam

MS - I'm sorry to say that I will be breaking that xref 'feature' in the next version. I will see what I can do about putting the functionality into a regular option though. I can confirm that -bitmaps:0 switch seems not to be working here either, but it's not a plugin thing; the plugin just passes along your command-line arguments to MXCL. I tried starting MXCL manually, and it looks to be broken there (v1.7.1), unless I'm not using it correctly; maybe you can confirm this.

Another question, since I have your attention.
In 3dsmax how do I set the material preview to render longer so I get an acurate material preview, like I can do in the other renderer ?

Sorry, but I know nothing about 3dsmax. If that info is not in the plugin's manual, I guess that you should be able to find out pretty quickly by asking in the 3dsmax plugin forum.

edit: just found it under preferences

Thanks JDHill,
I just had a look at the Max manual and didn't find it mentioned.
I was hoping there is some kind of hack to make the material preview render longer.

cheers

JDHill wrote:MS - I'm sorry to say that I will be breaking that xref 'feature' in the next version.

I hope you will!