[Steven Houtzager]

Just would like to know if there are some strategies to keeping track of those materials settings. Do people keep all the of the settings with each 3d file?

I just switched computers and made an attempt to keep everything the same. However, I could not keep one file name the same as before. As a result, all of my Maxwell materials are not linked.

SHoutzager

[brodie_geers]

I'm not sure I fully understand your question but here's my material setup.



As you can see I have all of my materials on an external drive mapped to Z:. I then go through some subgroups until you get to the particular material you're looking for. In the same folder you find the material is a folder named Textures that contains all of the textures for that entire group of mxm's.

The advantage to having it on the external hard drive is that you don't have to worry so much about pack n' go's if you work on two different computers a lot. In my case the Z: drive at work is actually a NAS which stays at work. But I also have an portable hard drive which I sync that mxm folder with all of my materials to for home use. At home I've got that portable drive mapped to Z: as well so the computer just follows the exact same path.

The only problem I've run into is when I want to rename folders or move materials around from time to time. Opening them in MXED is pretty smart and it seems to reckognize that they've been moved and still tends to find them in the associated Textures folder. However, plugins seem to be less smart and tend to have issues with that. Often I'll open the material up in MXED and just save it so it saves that mxm with the new paths.

-Brodie