topic Re: Materials being assigned to group rather than individual objects in 3ds Max Forum

Materials being assigned to group rather than individual objects

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 15:23:15 GMT

In the previous version of 3DSMax, I imported from an Inventor a 128 x 16 LED display which I had modelled to mimic a product display panel. The display panel is '8 character', comprising 8 x (8 x 16) arrays of LED assemblies (each LED assembly being a base and a bulb). I was able to turn off or on individual LEDs by applying glowing or dull materials to each bulb component as required. This worked well. Today I have opened the file in 3DS Max 2020 as I need to update the displays. However, when I now drill down to an individual LED bulb via the 'Group >Open', or 'Open Recursively' option and apply a glow to the bulb, the resulting render shows ALL LEDs lit. If I then select another LED bulb and apply the 'off' material to that, it renders ALL bulbs as off. I am pretty sure that I am doing exactly what I did in 2019 but not getting the same results.

Re: Materials being assigned to group rather than individual objects

10DSpace — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:41:45 GMT

I have no experience with importing Inventor files, but the behavior you describe sounds like the same material is applied to each individual LED.

"I was able to turn off or on individual LEDs by applying glowing or dull materials to each bulb component as required."

So it seems that applying glowing or dull material now affects every single LED if I understand your post. Did you try to separately assign a new material to an individual LED and then change that? Are the LEDs instances of each other or individual copies? You should still be able to assign a separate new material to an instance, I believe although there is a "propogate material to instances: selection under Options in the material editor. Maybe the import from Inventor somehow activated this selection? Hope this helps.

Re: Materials being assigned to group rather than individual objects

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:55:39 GMT

Hello and thanks for your reply. I tried everything you suggested but still got the same results. In tests I even created in Inventor an array of several LEDs imported separately (as opposed to the rectangular pattern of a single LED I used in my original file). 3DS Max still applied the material to all LEDS, despite them not being in a pattern or a group.

After much trial and error, The solution I found was to re-import the model from Inventor, but to uncheck 'Reference Duplicate Parts' in the Assembly Options pane of the Import screen. I don't know if this option was in previous versions of 3DS Max, and whether it is now enabled as a default, but I have never had to do this step before. I am not even sure what it actually means, but it does appear to work for me. Thanks again

Re: Materials being assigned to group rather than individual objects

10DSpace — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 13:53:12 GMT

"....but to uncheck 'Reference Duplicate Parts'.... I am not even sure what it actually means...."

If you look up "reference" in the max documentation you will see that it is related to "Instance". In other words, the objects are linked to the point in the layer stack below the Reference, but any modifiers above the reference line in the layer stack do not propagate to any other object. This sounds more confusing than it is if you play with it. Anyway, the solution makes sense to me. Glad you could work it out.