Material and textures instances

[Gil-G]

When working on animations where we have a lot of max files to use, sometimes having the ability to use the materials as an instance would be great.

My suggestion would be to be able to do 2 things.

1. When importing a material from a material library, give the ability to copy as an instance (like for a model). That way, if we edit the library all the scenes would be edited also. The basic benefit of an instance.

2. When duplicating a map, give the ability to edit it as an instance. That way, we can have muyltiple color correction doing the same thing in the scene.

Please tell me what you think about that.

[electrotoast_old]

Is this something like Xref Material? If you use Xref Material and point it to a Max file, you can load materials from it. If you change materials in that referenced scene, they update in any of the scenes the materials are referenced. Check out this link with some info.

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I don't know if I can resume this request or if I have to start another one.

In my case, electrotoast's suggestion is not useful. I have a large scene with several Xref objets. There are many materials shared by the Xref objects. If I want to change the settings of any of the shared materials, do I have to change it in every referenced object?

It would be great if I could change the "referenced material" in the material library and automatically see how the material is updated in every Xref Object.

Is there any way to do it?

Thank you.

[Gil-G]

I think you would need to re apply a material and redo the references.

It will only work for your scene but you would have only one material to do that.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Gil-G.

It is not an optimum way to proceed. Your first suggestion in the first post would be perfect.

It would be very useful if Autodesk could implement it.

Regards.