Swap Materials

[xEndlessxUrbiax]

Hello all,

 

I am trying to have all the objects in my scene which are assigned Material(A) to Material(B). I know there is an easy way to do this in the materials editor but I can't find it. I am using 3ds Max Design 2012.

 

I will explain the problem further: I made the model using SketchUp which has everything in groups and components. I assigned materials in SketchUp to the objects in my scene and everything imported nicely into Max. In my materials editor, I edit one material at a time by bringing it into the editor via the eye-drop tool. I don't like to use the "get all scene materials" from the materials editor because it ties all the materials together that are in the same group as multi_Group materials and so on... Anyway, I eye-dropped the translucent glass material and I can edit it fine but I would like to change it to a default Autodesk Glazing material. I need a way to either tell the program to take all materials assigned to the translucent glass material to move to the new autodesk glazing material. Is there a button for this? The other option I can think of is to select all the objects assigned to the first material and reassign them to the new material. I cannot do the ladder because All my objects are in groups and I can't select individual panes of glass...

 

Hope someone can help.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Sorry, have to do this less than sleekly...

 

On the materials editor there is a button that says what kind of material (or map or what have you) the currently selected slot is. It might say "standard" or "noise" or "arch & des" or something. On the small editor this button is on the right. If you click it, it brings up the available materials dialog. Here you can select the kind of material you want. This changes the existing material. There's a button on the left that brings up the same dialog but it creates a new material for editing in this slot and leaves the previous material alone. Don't press the one on the left. Press the one on the right.

[xEndlessxUrbiax]

I didn't realize you could do that. That helps a lot but still isn't exactly what I was looking for. I guess it's better doing it this way (choosing a different template for the existing material) that way I don't get stuck using the default autodesk materials don't have much editing capabilities.

[xEndlessxUrbiax]

I found the answer. It was stupidly easy.

 

If you right clik on a material, go to "Change material/map type" and select the other scene material you want to change it to.

 

Thanks to a co-worker.