[jimminy]

Does anyone know if there's a way to change the material of triangle groups across multiple objects all at once?

That may be confusing, but I will oftentimes have a single object that has 2-3 different materials assigned to the faces (triangles) of that object, so each object may have faces in it with different materials. And I may have many, many objects like that.

The problem is that if I want to change any of those materials I seem to have to select each of those objects one at a time, then in the triangle group list for that object, change the material. But I seem to have to do that procedure one object at a time, and sometimes I might be changing 2 or more of those materials for each object. Ouch. Time consuming and tedious.

I love the way you can select all objects of a certain material with a right click and change them all at once (objects with no triangle groups and a single material) and I wish I could use the same procedure on the triangle (face) level, but this doesn't seem to be an option.

Am I wrong and I've just missed it?

[eric nixon]

Cant you just swap out the mxm for a new one?

Sorry to state the obvious, but I dont understand the problem here. Which plugin are you using?

[jimminy]

I'm talking about inside Maxwell Studio, not a specific plugin. Most modelers allow you to assign different materials (or colors) to different faces of a single object so this would apply to any plugin I think.

If there was a way to just replace a material such that removed & replaced all instances of the old material for the new, including triangle groups, I would, but how would you do that in Studio? To my knowledge there's no way to do this.

[eric nixon]

Its not hidden... click on a material, then click file-open..

[jimminy]

Eric,

I appreciate that you are a man of few words, but a few more than that will usually be necessary to be of any help whatsoever. Besides which, your solution obviously isn't going to do anything but open another MXM.

So, if you are suggesting that I can select a material in the material list, say the one I want to change, and then simply open a new MXM from the Material Editor window (since opening an MXM is not possible from the File pulldown menu in the main application that most would assume you are talking about) that will replace that MXM and all of it's assigned faces and objects with the newly opened MXM, you are mistaken, it doesn't nothing of the kind.

Imagine if it worked that way how stupid I would feel!

[JDHill]

If there was a way to just replace a material such that removed & replaced all instances of the old material for the new, including triangle groups, I would, but how would you do that in Studio? To my knowledge there's no way to do this.

Here's what I think you're looking for: select the material you wish to replace; right-click anywhere in the material editor's layers tree, and select Embed MXM. Browse for your MXM, then answer Yes, to overwrite the top-level attributes of the existing material (matte, shadow, etc), and then No, to get rid of the old material's layers. This basically rewrites the existing material using the chosen MXM, so it affects geometry, triangle groups, instances -- everything that uses the material. I'm not sure what happens with UVs, should you choose an MXM which has textures that use projectors higher than currently exist on your geometry; probably you run into the old 'not enough projectors' error, and have to create some new UV sets.

[eric nixon]

Sorry jimminy, I thought It worked that way, it works that way in C4D, but your right it doesnt work. Imagine how stupid I feel

[jimminy]

Brilliant! Thanks JDhill, that worked perfectly. I knew there'd be a workaround.

And thanks for the suggestion, Eric. I wondered if you were perhaps thinking of one of the plugs, it usually does work that way. That's why I was surprised when I couldn't find a solution right in Studio.

Another problem solved. Thanks again!

[eric nixon]

I've noticed in studio, there is a command 'select assigned triangles' and then 'apply to selection' ... perhaps that command combo does the job, I cant say for sure, right now.

[jimminy]

That's what I assumed too. I'm not sitting in front of it at the moment, but I think it does select the triangles assigned the material like you would think, but only those triangles within a single pre-selected object. So you would have to go object by object and that's too tedious for me in a large model with lots of objects.

That limitation would be a good thing for NL to address down the road along with a whole lot of other needed workflow improvements.