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Materials in an xref'ed scene


zhopudey
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I have a scene with 8 buildings, which I have modeled separately and xref'ed. All buildings have the same color scheme. Now, if the architect wants to change the color, I have to do the change in 8 different files and then update my main file. Is there any way to ease this process?

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create a material library that you can change in one file and then import into the others. You'll still have to open all the files, but at-least it'll just be a material swop instead of having to adjust them in every file. hopefully someone can come up with an idea that's faster and easier.

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You can also xref your materials. It'd take a bit to setup but works well. Only annoying thing is you don't have access to material parameters so you can't verify mat id's, mapping channels, etc except in your master material file.

 

In any case - if you want to go this route I'd make a materials.max file with your materials on a bunch of spheres or something along those lines. Then using xref objects - reference those material spheres into each building file and apply those materials to your building. Note that you can skip the whole xref object step and do them one at a time by creating an "Xref Material" in the material editor but personally I find the xref object process more intuitive.

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Ohh...xref'ed materials! I didn't know about that, thanks :) But I can't change materials on my xref'ed buildings, can I? That means I'll have to xref the materials into each building file and apply them there - and then xref the buildings into my final file. I'll have to create a "materials" max file for each project...

 

Now how do I explain all this to everyone working under me??

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