Is it possible to create a material hierarchy

[caleb]

Hi there,

  I'm kind of a beginner to 3ds max rendering, so sorry if this is a stupid question, but here goes:

I'm trying to model a plastic device with several buttons.  The shell of the device, and the buttons are all molded out of the same material, but each button has a different graphic on it (say, printed in light gray).

I have created a separate material for each button, with a map to layer on the buttons' graphic (as well as a UVW map on each button).  

However, if I want to change the visual appearance of the device from, say white matte plastic to black glossy, I need to go and change all the materials for the base device, and each button.

Is there a way to build a material hierarchy, where the base plastic is specified as the root node in the hierarchy, and each texture map is added on later.  So, I could make the change from white matte to black glossy by changing it only in one place?

Thanks,

 -Caleb

[Stefan_L]

There are multiple ways - as always 🙂
Take a look at the "Blend"-material, you have your instanced base material, the instanced button graphic material and a black/white bitmap to control which material is shown where.
To avoid the "one material per button"-thingy, you could create the bitmap containing all button graphics and map the appropriate button by uvw-mapping...