uninstall Autodesk Material Libraries?

[timothyc]

I'd like to save some disk space on my all-too-small SSD.

I have several versions of 3dsMax on my cmputer and they each install their own versions of the Autodesk Material Library package.

e.g.

The 3ds MAx 2012 installation created:

Autodesk Material Library 2012

Autodesk Material Library Base Resolution Image Library  2012

Autodesk Material Library Medium Resolution Image Library 2012

and the 3ds Max 2014 installation created:

Autodesk Material Library 2014

Autodesk Material Library Base Resolution Image Library  2014

Autodesk Material Library Medium Resolution Image Library 2014

and presumably once I install Max 2015 these 3 packages will be installed all over again.

Is it possible to uninstall the earlier Autodesk Material Library versions and direct those earlier versions of 3ds MAx to use the latest Max 2015 versions instead? (This could save me a couple GBs of space).

TC

[spacefrog_]

I'm not sure that it brings much though, as the textures themself, which require the most harddisk space are shared already ( i think )

You can verify this by checking the following reg key and it subkeys ( 1, 2,3 )

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\ADSKTextureLibrary\]

But it would be an interesting experiment nevertheless,

If you try this, please report back if its working and you still have access to the Autodesk Materials

There are some potential problems though , as there might be specific Mental Ray version related shader includes etc...

If you dare to do it ( and take the risk of breaking it 😞

Essentially you have to adjust the registry paths accordingly

i already tweaked them on my rig to target the data to some different data drive. This even works after re-einstalls ...

So the steps would be the following:

* uninstall all Autodesk Material Libraries except the most recent, there is a chance that this might break something

   so maybe its better to uninstall them all and reinstall only the recent one from the extracted 3ds Max Installation package

   ( MSI packages should be somewhere below Content\ADSKMaterials\ ... )

* adjust your registry settings for each Max installation you got

  They settings come in the following format for each release (Max 2012 in this example )

  NOTE: i customized the paths to the files, so your paths are definitely different

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\ADSKTextureLibrary\1]
"LibraryPaths"="E:\\_Stock\\_MiscData\\Autodesk_Materials\\Textures\\"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\ADSKTextureLibrary\2]
"LibraryPaths"="E:\\_Stock\\_MiscData\\Autodesk_Materials\\Textures\\"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\ADSKTextureLibrary\3]
"LibraryPaths"="E:\\_Stock\\_MiscData\\Autodesk_Materials\\Textures\\"

make an entry for each of your installed Max versions and point it to your one installed *.adsklib file

Again: NOTE: i customized the paths to the file, so your path is definitely different

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Autodesk\ADSKAssetLibrary\2012]
"LibraryPaths"="E:\\_Stock\\_MiscData\\Autodesk_Materials\\2012\\assetlibrary_base.adsklib"

[timothyc]

Spacefrog, thanks for that.

There are a few unknowns there, so I'm going to ask the same question at Autodesk support and see if I get an official response. I'll come back to update this thread.

TC

[timothyc]

This is what they said:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Timothy,

Good day! I'm from the Installation and Licensing team, the case has been routed to me for assistance.

The Material Libraries of each product/ version have different contents, although it takes up a lot of space on your HD, we recommend you keep them. They contains a lot of materials and they're useful when you use the product.

The detail information of Autodesk Material Libraries please refer to the below link.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/Inst...

Hope it could help you.

Thanks for contacting Autodesk!

Grace Liu
Autodesk Inc.

-------------------------------------------------------

So it sounds like they aren't universally compatible between Max versions. Oh well.

TC

[Stefan_L]

There are lots of tools out there to compare files not only by size and date but by their content. If you run one of these on those library directories you'll notice that the most texture files from 3dsMax, Autocad, Revit and whatnot are identical - since ages years.

Some files like those substance *.sbar may change, so you may want to keep them in their original location.

But the space consuming bitmaps can easily been thrown together. 3dsMax only needs to know the path via Customize/Configure User Path/External Files.

I always wondered about those REG-Entries; guess they're for uninstalling only...

[PROH · Accepted solution]

AFAIK the "AutoDesk Material Libraries" are not part of the "Configure User Path/External Path" system. They are "hard wired" installation vise, and it's NOT recommended to uninstall them. Once uninstalled, you may not even be able to install them again.

Note, that if you work with files coming from AutoCAD, Revit etc. or you send files to NavisWorks or others, then the "AutoDesk Material Library" is needed to make things work as intended.

What you can reduce is all the bitmaps placed in the "Maps" folder during installation. These paths can be altered via "Configure User Path etc.". The same goes for the "Sampling Files" and tutorials. Most of these are the same in all versions, so if you keep the latest version you'll most likely have it all. Only the newest tuts will need recent version to be opened.

Hope it helps.

[timothyc]

Stefan and PROH, thanks. I will look into this.

TC

[spacefrog_]

---

Once uninstalled, you may not even be able to install them again.

---

I never had troubles to uninstall or reinstall them

The only time you ca nget in troubles is when your windows installer database gets corrupt.

But that's nothing to do with the autodesk material libraries

And the registry paths i listed above are NOT only relevant for installing, these are the folders Max will look into to load the libs and the textures. If they do not fit your actual disk paths and the content is not there, your Autodesk Materials Library will not show up in the Material Editor ...

[PROH]

"I never had troubles to uninstall or reinstall them"

Great 🙂 But I had!