Morpher material

[terry.lee]

Hi.

I have created a morph between a start ("unworn") state and an end (worn) state for a part that is essentialy 210 degrees of a flat cylindrical disc. I want to assign the same material to the top and front faces at frame zero. At frame 100 the front faces will still have the same material but the top face needs to morph to a second material.

I have tried using the Max Morpher material but every time I try, somewhere along the line, my cursor vanishes. It is visible if I drag anywhere outside Max windows but inside Max windows it is not visible.

Q.1 Is this a known issue? (I am using 3DS Max Design 2014). Can I get round this?

As an alternative, I tried to use a Multi/Sub-object material. I created a multi/sub-object material with the same material for ID=1 and ID=2 and a third material ID=3 for the worn material. I selected the front face polys of my object and made them material ID=2. The rest were ID=1. I then tried to animate the Polygon material ID's so that ID=1 became ID=3 over the 100 frames. Looks like the Polygon material IDs cannot be animated? I tried adding a Material modifier in the stack (in sub-object/Poly mode) but the animation from this affects the whole object.

Q.2 Is it possible to animate the material ID of the polys in sub-object mode?

Thanks,

Terry

[Steve_Curley]

1) Not sure - not used the Morpher Material for quite a while.
2) No, I don't think you can animate a Material ID, however...<br<>
Simple test case - everything except the top surface = ID1. Top surface = ID2.
MSO Material, Slot 1 the "Basic" Starting material.
Slot 2 a Blend Material, Material 1 a copy of the Basic material, Mat 2 the other material. Animate the Blend amount.

Or you could render an image sequence and use that in place of a single bitmap for the material in Slot 2 of the MSO thus removing the need for the Blend.

[terry.lee]

Thanks Steve.

This is exactly what I did before I left last night.  For some reason the blend animation did not work.  But, I did use a VRay blend material and a VRay material as the Multi/Sub-object materials.  Can you "mix and match" Max/VRay materials in this way?

I am going to repeat the process this morning.  Will let you know!

Thanks again,

Terry

[Steve_Curley]

Mixing them might work though it's probably not a good idea. I don't have Vray so I can't test that, though within Max you already have the situation where you can't use MR materials with the Scanline renderer (and in a few cases the reverse as well). If using Vray I'd stick to all Vray materials.

Btw, you can "nest" the Blend materials so you can have multiple changes (between different materials) over time. Gets a bit messy to set up, but works well.
Oh, you can't see the changes in the viewport (bit of a bummer that) - you'll need to do either create a quick preview, or render a few odd frames to check (as I did when creating the image I posted earlier).

[terry.lee]

Hi Steve.

I recreated it using just Max materials and it seems to work OK.  I got renders from a few key points and they look OK.  I will render off over the weekend and let you know!

Thanks again for your help.

Terry