[Primus]

Hi

The weight map of a layer in a maxwell material i could use as the alpha mask , i learned. I use e.g. the same texture in the BSDF channel.
When i adjust the tiling or position of the BSDF i have to manually adjust the texture tiling also in the weight map of the layer.

Is there a possibility to link the adjustment of the tiling between BSDF & Weight map ?

Best,
Thomas

[simmsimaging]

The ability to instance maps would be a big asset in this regard.

[eric nixon]

I've got no idea what Bretts means by instancing maps?

[simmsimaging]

You dont want to position your maps with MXED offsets, thats crazy, use C4D mapping coords, unless you meant something else.

And I've got no idea what Bretts means by instancing maps?

When you instance a map (as you can in Max, and the Maxwell/Max plugin allows for this, but Studio does not) you can copy a map into multiple slots as an instance of itself, so any changes you make to the map parameters (e.g brightness, UV tiling) get replicated to all versions of the map.

Very useful if you are using the same map in several places.

[Primus]

My question was in the way Brett has answered. Using the same textures in different places and all modification of an texture ( tiling etc.) should be automatically assigned to the same texture, all in all , instances would be the solution, as Brett said.

I understand that this not possible yet.

[eric nixon]

There is a solution its called Photoshop, leave it open at all times and drag and drop from any maxwell file dialogue into it, you might want to avoid jpg format if doing many changes.

Its a great program check it out!

Ok changing tiling across several maps takes a few clicks thats true, but what you ask for can lead to unintended consequences that wouldn't be spotted most of the time. This is the kind of bloated complexity that plaques software like max.

[polynurb]

for us rhino users there is a simple sneak built in by JD, where you simply press ctrl+shift while changing inside the mxm material and it will affect all textured channels.

still i'd much like to see such a way of linking individual maps together in one logical package.

i think this would actually help to remember what one was doing inside complex mxm with several layers or multiple uv projectors.

[simmsimaging]

There is a solution its called Photoshop, leave it open at all times and drag and drop from any maxwell file dialogue into it, you might want to avoid jpg format if doing many changes.

Its a great program check it out!

Ok changing tiling across several maps takes a few clicks thats true, but what you ask for can lead to unintended consequences that wouldn't be spotted most of the time. This is the kind of bloated complexity that plaques software like max.

I am not sure how you think Photoshop can solve instancing related problems, but trust me: I have a more than passing familiarity with the program.

Instancing is core functionality for most 3D programs, and in various ways - it's not something most would consider 'bloat'. However, to say that changes are only a few clicks misses the point.

A "few clicks" add up, unless your material requirements are much lower and fine-tuning or complexity are not major factors in your workflow. There is potentially a lot of time to be saved. Perhaps more importantly: instancing common maps and linking parameters prevents inadvertently missing one or two when making iterative changes. It's a built-in failsafe that helps make maps line up across multiple layers/materials etc. In that respect it *prevents* unintended consquences, rather than creates them.

[JDHill]

Using the same textures in different places and all modification of an texture ( tiling etc.) should be automatically assigned to the same texture, all in all , instances would be the solution, as Brett said.

I understand that this not possible yet.

It's not instancing, but in the Cinema material editor, you can apply changes to the current component (BSDF, etc), its parent layer, or the entire current material, by using CTRL/SHIFT/ALT key modifiers while changing a parameter.

[feynman]

...Instancing is core functionality for most 3D programs, and in various ways - it's not something most would consider 'bloat'. However, to say that changes are only a few clicks misses the point...

+1, definitely agree - even the prehistoric shader model of Alias has a copy parameters function; so when you change the tiling or offset of a map, you can propagate the changes. A nice asset of Alias, and probably other 3D modeling softwares, is also that you can change very diverse properties of a map within the shader editor, without having to resort to an image editing software - and the editor's map preview image visually reflects all these changes which is ever so useful. Should be simple to implement in Maxwell Studio, too.

Oh, the post I answered now just disappeared. A typical example: I have, right now, 11 MXMs (different colours) representing film-coated plywood. What a pain it is to manually propagate a map change within each MXM and then across all remaining 10 MXMs.

[eric nixon]

re photoshop; That was becasue I thought you wanted to sub in new map to several slots at once, In which case I just change the map in PS and resave with the same name.

Re, typos and tiling, the issue for me is that I might not want all versions of the same map to line up, it just depends, and chances are if your changing the tiling for one set of maps you would also be changing others, so not much time saved, you would just have another potential issue with background automation.

I guess its a bit of a trade off.

[simmsimaging]

re photoshop; That was becasue I thought you wanted to sub in new map to several slots at once, In which case I just change the map in PS and resave with the same name.

Re, typos and tiling, the issue for me is that I might not want all versions of the same map to line up, it just depends, and chances are if your changing the tiling for one set of maps you would also be changing others, so not much time saved, you would just have another potential issue with background automation.

I guess its a bit of a trade off.

Looks like you have answered a couple of the points you raised in the deleted post. Instancing as an option doesn't imply a trade-off. As normally implemented, you can use a copy of a map *or* an instance, so in your example if 1 out 5 uses of the map is different, then that one you would use a copy for, and the other 4 would be instanced. Then you have only 2 places to make changes instead of 5.

If the numbers were reversed and only one map was a duplicate/instance (so 3 of 5 were unique) then it may not be worth your while to instance the other two, but it's always possible to come up with cases where *any* tool is not useful or necessary. Clearly this is not something that affects your workflow so it may never be useful to you, but there's nothing to say you have to use it.

re: Photoshop - I understand what you meant now. That is a workaround that I use from time to time and it's certainly viable, but I find it more intuitive and easier to track versions of the maps the other way. In any case, that only would be useful for bitmap level changes and not other parameters.

@Feynman: fully agree that better image manipulation inside of Maxwell would be great. I would guess Eric might argue that as bloat/unnecessary, and clearly Photoshop can fill that gap, but you lose a ton of time going back and forth finessing sometimes very small differences, plus you lose all real advantage of having Fire to fine-tune materials. As it stands now, I do use Photoshop mostly because there is no choice, but when working with other render engines that allow fuller use of the built-in Max tools I make *most* of the bitmap changes inside of Max. It dramatically speeds up and simplifies my workflow when developing even modestly complex materials.

[eric nixon]

Does that mean when you initially setup the material you also have to specify which maps are related to each other? That isnt so complicated I guess, but overall it seems a bit geeky - for want of a better word.

EDIT: Oh i see everyones editing the heck out of their posts so that I only needed to re-read the 'new' thread and all is clear, maybe you should apply an intstancing tag to your post for multi editing

but you lose a ton of time going back and forth

Not neccesarilly? just leave PS open with the bitmap open, maxwell picks up any saved changes because it reloads the file on render.

I remember a while ago talking about implementing a hue control in MXED, and that seems nice, but actually it damages the quality of the output because if you were in Photoshop at the time, you would rarely apply such a crude colour shift.

The point is its not good to get stuck in one software, when we have a multitasking OS we should use the best tool for the job, assuming you have enough ram (in PS preferences you can tell it to use less ram..)

[simmsimaging]

Clearly we will have to agree to disagree. I'm more interested in convincing Next Limit of its value in any case. You are free to use it in whichever way strikes you as cooler than my geeky approach

/b

[eric nixon]

Yeah, geeks always want more buttons to press, bless em

The issue is that the efficiency gained by not having to re-type things, is lost by both making the initial link and subsequently deleting that association as you need to make further changes. Its becomes another issue to think about while adding some inflexibility. Occasionally it would be quite useful but overall not owrth it, so I think NL chose not to implement it.