topic Scroll through existing materials in Maya Forum

Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:04:51 GMT

Hi! I'm pretty sure many of you are aware of this issue. As far as I'm aware, we are unable to scroll through our materials via the list (the existing materials list). It can become very annoying when we need to use the same materials on different objects. You could simply add an arrow on both top and bottom of the list so we can scroll through them, that would be a real timesaver.

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Florian.Coenen — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 14:26:53 GMT

Hello @Anonymous

do you mean the list that is opening up on the "right mouse click > Assign Existing Material", like shown in my screenshot:

Regards,

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 23:48:40 GMT

Hi! This is indeed the list I'm talking about. I'm currently using a LOAD of materials in my scene and I always have to assign a new material to an object to add a texture I'm already using because I can't reach it in the list.

Re: Scroll through existing materials

pshwayka — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 02:58:58 GMT

While it's not as convenient as right-clicking on the object and selecting an existing material from the list, you can always select your object and right-click on the material in Hypershade, and choose "Assign material to selection." (Hypershade does let you scroll through all materials.)

I agree, though...it would be nice if the viewport list were scrollable.

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:22:59 GMT

I didn't know I could do that hahaha! I never used Hypershade that much but that definitely does the trick. Thanks!

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Tue, 02 May 2017 23:41:34 GMT

Is there a way to see the entire list when "assign existing material"? Its not listed alphabetically and sometimes the list is too large. I understand you can go to the hypershade for this, however is there a way to edit and see complete materials from from this menu? The snapshot you posted is exactly what I am asking about.

Thank you,

Carol

Re: Scroll through existing materials

lauris4747 — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 07:09:41 GMT

I am having the same issue, but more silly. My list is too large so options are not visible, but they are must for me. I need to select objects that material was assigned to, and I cannot see such option, because it is somewhere at the top.

Re: Scroll through existing materials

mspeer — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 08:35:32 GMT

Hi!

Use menu in Hypershade:

Edit -> Select Objects with Materials

Re: Scroll through existing materials

lauris4747 — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 11:10:18 GMT

Awesome thanks. I also used this script eventually:

string $array[] = `ls -sl`;

for ($item in $array)

{

hyperShade -objects $item;

}

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 10:41:45 GMT

exept hypershade always crashes and the dropdown list doesn't...

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 13:53:40 GMT

You can apply it from hyper shader 1st select object which you have to aply existing material then go to hypershader option right click and hold on which material you have to apply on that object and select Asign material to selection you will get that

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Fox4445 — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:54:53 GMT

Eight years later and still no arrows. I always used to use the hypershade but I recently encountered a problem where my scene was randomly hanging when trying to work in the hypershade to assign shaders to my scene which has 160+ shaders. I'm not sure what was causing it, might have been converting instances to objects, but anyway when I switched to working with the same shaders in the node editor everything was fine. However, this is obviously not satisfactory because you can't browse your shaders in the node editor, and 160 shaders is too many for the right-click pop-up menu which doesn't scroll or have arrows! BUT... I just realised you can browse and assign your shaders from the outliner. Just turn off Display>DAG Objects Only and then in the search field you can filter the results, or scroll until your heart's content. I'm in the habit of naming all my shaders with the suffix "_Shader" or "_ShaderSG" so I can just type this in the Outliner's search field. However, if you don't have a common text string, you can just select any object in your scene that has a shader, then in the attribute editor go to the shader tab and then click the 'Select' button. Then in the Outliner go to Show>Show Selected Type(s) and just find the shader you want. You can right click it and select 'Assign Material To Selection' in the usual way.

(Having said that, Autodesk please could you just add the arrows to the right-click menu and/or make the hypershade more stable, not to mention fix the annoying thing where everytime I open the hypershade, which I like to use with just the Browser and Node/Graph, it opens with the material viewer, create window and property editor before then closing those three windows again... oh and also the annoying thing where sometimes the nodes are all stacked up against the very left hand edge of the graph area, which still happens in Maya2024 from time to time 🙂 )

Re: Scroll through existing materials

Fox4445 — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:15:36 GMT

Eight years later and still no arrows. I always used to use the hypershade but I recently encountered a problem where my scene was randomly hanging when trying to work in the hypershade to assign shaders to my scene which has 160+ shaders. I'm not sure what was causing it, might have been converting instances to objects to use a shading switch in Arnold, but anyway when I switched to working with the same shaders in the node editor everything was fine. However, this is obviously not satisfactory because you can't browse your shaders in the node editor, and 160 shaders is too many for the right-click pop-up menu which doesn't scroll or have arrows! BUT... I just realised you can browse and assign your shaders from the Outliner. Just turn off Display>DAG Objects Only and then in the search field you can filter the results. I'm in the habit of naming all my shaders with the suffix "_Shader" or "_ShaderSG" so I can just type this in the Outliner's search field. However, if you don't have a common text string, you can just select any object in your scene that has a shader, then in the attribute editor go to the shader tab and then click the 'Select' button. Then in the Outliner go to Show>Show Selected Type(s) and just scroll to find the shader you want. You can right click it in the Outliner and select 'Assign Material To Selection' in the usual way.

(Having said that, Autodesk please could you simply add the arrows and/or make the hypershade more stable... not to mention fix the annoying way that every time I open the hypershade, which I like to use with just the browser and graph windows, it opens the material viewer, property editor and create window, before then closing those three same windows again... oh and the other annoying thing where every once in a while when you graph a shader all the nodes will be stacked up against the left hand edge of the graph 🙂 )

Re: Scroll through existing materials

shane.z — Wed, 14 May 2025 20:16:36 GMT

Autodesk saying this is solved is just ridiculous. It's 2025. You should 100% be able to scroll that list by moving the mouse.
Simple UX wins the day. This needs to evolve.