[feynman]

I open an old scene.
I hit FIRE.
Modal window opens with "Data preprocess failed. Render cannot continue. Check Studio console for details".
Reason is that now the textures used therein are on a different drive than a year ago.
So I click Edit.
Modal window opens with "The following texture could not be found: K:\Texture images\texture-noise.tif Used in material: lacquer-aged-eggshell. Do you want to find a replacement?" where K no longer exists.
I click Yes.
I navigate to the new texture location on a network drive.
The Maxwell Material Editor opens.
I click UPDATE.
The material preview renders, now that it knows the new texture location.
I save the material.
I hit FIRE.
Modal window opens with "Data preprocess failed. Render cannot continue. Check Studio console for details".
I click Edit.
Modal window opens with "The following texture could not be found: K:\Texture images\texture-noise.tif Used in material: lacquer-aged-eggshell. Do you want to find a replacement?" but I just pointed the MXM to where the textures are now and saved?!

: (

What am I doing wrong?

[Mihai]

If you close and re-open the scene?

And btw, you can also set texture paths in preferences in Studio and Maxwell, so it will know to look for them there, especially useful if only the drive letter changed.

[feynman]

Thanks, but no joy.
I save the MXM that UPDATE renders its preview (so it obviously works) to the desktop locally.
I click Edit.
It still looks for the K drive although I pointed to the Z drive.

To me, it looks as if in V3, a material edit does not update the materials actually used and listed in the Materials list window, because when I click edit, it wants to use the K based old material, although I made a change. This does not occur on V3 scenes, by the way. It's not a most urgent matter, but something is odd, like when you edit a material in V3, the Material Editor window shows the old preview and there is no "update/re-reference/reload" button selection in V3 anymore (unless I'm too stupid to find it). Is there something in the documentation/knowledgebase regarding the buttons/selections/options when updating old materials or when things are in other places? Like, I can't find what "Fix texture paths" and "Textures list" in MXED are actually useful for.

[Mihai]

like when you edit a material in V3, the Material Editor window shows the old preview and there is no "update/re-reference/reload" button selection in V3 anymore

You mean to update the material preview? You don't have a yellow 'Update' button right below the preview? You can also double click on the preview itself to re-render it, just like in V2.

We will add info about the fix texture paths thing, it's pretty simple you choose it, and it will ask you for a folder of MXM files and it will go through all of them and update any missing textures links with ones you specified in the MXED or Studio preferences.

So, if you just open this MXM using MXED (forget about Studio for a moment), I mean browse to it with Explorer or Finder, double click the MXM. Now it still asks you for the missing texture, you specify it, and now you click the Save and Close icon (it's like a small CD icon). Now if you double click it to open it again?

[feynman]

Not quite... I meant the "update" or "reload" (can't remember the name now) in V2, where in Studio you could update the Materials list and the preview displayed of referenced materials after changing a referenced material. In V3, when I change a material in MXED, I have to reload the changed material manually in Studio. I don't have V2 anymore to show a screenshot of the Material editor window when a referenced material was selected. There was a drop-down menu button near the Edit button, as I remember, that did the job correctly, and I can't find comprehensive screenshots of all window states in the V2 documentation...

I understand the "Fix texture paths" function now. The reason why it does not work is that one of the render node PCs has a mapped network drive (with all MXMs, HDRIs, textures, etc.) to which I cannot write from my control laptop for some reason, although all PCs (all render node PCs and the laptop) are in the same homegroup and see each other via the WLAN network (the license is shared correctly). But that's a different problem, maybe the Firewall I switched off, or whatever; I'm no network expert...