Saving all Materials in one library/group -> easy way to import many materials?

[maximilianwarwitz]

Hey guys,

 

I had to re-install max and when I opened it I saw that obviously all materials were no longer imported in max. So I had to manually import about 400 materials...It took me more than 1 hour to import all of them one by one..Is there any way to put all of my materials in one group / one container?! or anything else that I only have to import this single file and max will automatically import all of my 400 materials at once? It´d save a lot of time...

 

Thanks for your help!

[markjardine]

Seems like you're just looking for Material Libraries.

[James Vella]

Material Editor > Get Material > Open Material Library > Files of type: *change this from .mat to .max*

 

You can now select your max file, it will import all the materials from that scene into a .mat library. If you have named these the same eg. Glass and right click > update scene materials from library this will update all the items in your current scene with your favourite materials. Good organisation can save u lots of hours

 

[maximilianwarwitz]

Thanks a lot for your replies!

 

I know how to create materials libraries but I am looking for a way to put all of my 400 materials in one single file?! My aim is to import all of them with just a few clicks into the material/map browser in max. Just like importing a huge material library with a few clicks which contains all of my 400 single libraries.

[John Dollus]

so you want a script that will pull the materials from a selected group of .Max files and save them into a single .Mat file?

[maximilianwarwitz]

I made a screenshot That´s probably easier. This is my current material library:

 

 

As you can see there are material libraries like "Vray_materials_01.mat" which contain multiple different materials. I´m not sure if that´s possible but I´m looking for mmh..Let´s say multiple libraries inside of one library. Just like this:

 

- All_of_my_materials.mat

- stone wall.mat

- Stone wall (VRayMtl)

- Swimming pool water by fahd.mat

- Swimming pool water by fahd (VrayMtl)

- tbx-plastic.mat

- TBX-coal (VRayMtl)

..

..

..

 

Just like a different hirarchy. One big material library (All_of_my_materials.mat) with all 400 small material libraries inside. And when I save "All_of_my_materials.mat" I´ll have all 400 materials included. And if I import them into max (if I have to re-install max maybe in the future) I have all of my material libraries with just one click.

 

Hope you can understand it now