Confused about maxstart.max

[philvanderloo]

A serious rookie question I know but, I have all of my materials in the compact material editor defaulting as vray materials in maxstart.max.

So why, when I reset or open a new file, are all of the materials standard?

I thought all new files would startup with maxstart.max and all of it's settings?

[Josef Wienerroither]

materials in the material editor are not loaded via maxstart.max, but are loaded from "3dsmax.mat" sitting in the "materiallibraries" subfolder. "3dsmax.mat" is for material entries what "maxstart.max" is for initial scene parameters.

If no "3dsmax.mat" file is not found, the "Medit.mat" file in your chosen "Defaults" folder gets loaded. You can set this default in the "Custom UI and Defaults Switcher" dialog. Vray comes with a specific entry ( as there are entries for iRay, Mental ray etc... ). But changing this setting does have effect on other Max settings too, so your preferred way might be using a "3dsmax.mat" in the "materiallibraries" folder

 

Addendum: With Max 2016 ( and 2015 + Extension ? ) there are templates too, but i don'T know if this affects material editor setup too or provides means to influence the inital materials in the old Material editor

Edited July 12, 2015 by spacefrog

[philvanderloo]

Ok Josef, so I thought I could save my maxstart.max scene as 3dsmax.mat and put it into my material libraries subfolder and that would do the trick but it didn't.

[Josef Wienerroither]

Looks i was wrong with my previous explanation: the 3dsmax.mat does'nt fill the standard material editor slots, but the default material library that gets loaded at startup. The one mat library you get when you press "Get Material->Browse from Mtl. Library" in the legacy material editor... ( or loaded as temporary library in the new slate material editor ).

So it seems the best option for you ( if you want to get vray materials as default ), is to use the "Customize User Interface -> Custom UI and defaults switcher, choose "MAX.vray" on the left list ( leave the right list alone , as this is actually the UI setup, which you might not wanna change ) and press "set"

There is another potential risk here: as far i remember this dialog was broken in some of the past Max versions ( when they introduced the new template mechanism), and it might bring up some error dialog. A 3ds Max restart fixed this as far i remember ...

Might sound adventurous, but well: no pain - no gain ;-)