3ds Max Material IDs

[rmccoy]

Is there a way to have more then the default 15 material ID's?

 

I need to render out my MatID's with the final rendering for correcting in post. I have around 50 different materials and would like to be able to have all of the materials with a different matID.

[cgrant3d]

Unfortunately no - that's a limit within 3ds Max. When we've had this problem in the past we put the most important materials as mat id's then use object id's for the rest. Obviously that's not a perfect solution - the main problem being it won't work with multi-sub obj materials (whole object is one id) and if you change the material on an object you have to remember to change the object id as well...

[rmccoy]

That's what I was afraid of. Thanks for the input. I guess I could render it out multiple times with different sets of matids. For now I'll just have to prioritize my materials.

 

Is this a capability that could be expanded with a little scripting?

[JonRashid]

U could always combine your texture maps into a bigger texture page. That would give you access to many more materials for your "buck"

[rmccoy]

I don't quite understand what you mean by that. could you give me an example?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

It could be a bit cumbersome, but if you are using Vray you could stack 17 MultiMatteElements in the Render Element rollout. Not a solution for the faint at heart though.

[JonRashid]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39556[/ATTACH]

 

This is an example of a texture page containing more than 1 image. This technique is used in the games industry to collate multiple textures into one image for ease of use.