Noob: Can't assign a material texture to a selected poly

[Anonymous]

(Yup. Looked around and looked at the forum suggestions.)

I have a model (an anime flight helmet) originally an OBJ file imported into Max. As I wanted to be able to assign different materials in Poser, I separated the components of the original one-piece OBJ file into several named sets (which named sets, ironically, don't show up in Poser, although I'd swear a few years back when I tried this the named sets carried over... but I digress). No joy texturing in Poser, so I elected to master texturing in Max (hence the 'noob').

I had to cap some holes in the mesh as well; those were my initial texturing targets, as the caps didn't inherit the surrounding texture.

I opened Material editor. The only texture there so far is the MAT file for the original OBJ file. It has/shows all the textures, including the decal bitmap I added that was all I originally wanted to apply.

I selected (for example) one of the poly caps I applied (and collapsed, so it doesn't seem to be a conflict with being part of the stack 'in progress'). I click on 'Assign Material to Selection.' I click and drag the texture from the MAT textures. Nothing applies; nothing even acts like it's trying to apply. I tried dragging any of the mat textures to new slots in the globular material displays above, thinking maybe Max only wants to apply 'its' materials; nothing still happens.

Being still pretty new to Max, I'm not even sure what question to ask ("why won't my materials apply to the selected face?"); any time I think I know, it turns out it's called something else. 🙂 Most of the things I found when googling seem to indicate that I'm doing the right thing; it's just not taking now.

(Even tried exporting the helmet object as a 3DS file and importing it into a new scene. Same result, although the MAT textures followed it faithfully.)

Granted, at this point, I can just create new Max textures that match the imported old MAT textures (assuming that worked; I've no reason at this point to think it would) but I'm curious why applying these textures from the originals isn't working. What might I be doing wrong, need to check or need to look a second time at?

Thanks!

Davey

[PROH · Accepted solution]

Hi. Hard to say exactly what's going on from your description - some pictures would help 🙂 But anyway, there are two things that you might wanna check out (if you haven't already):

1) There are "maps" and there are "materials". Materials can be assigned to objects, maps can not. They have be put into a material to be assigned to an object. So make sure it's materials you are trying to assign.

2) The best way to assign more materials to one object, is to use a multi/sub-object material, which consist of several materials, each assigned to a specific material ID, corresponding to the material IDs of the polygons in the model. Check it out in the help files (F1). It's explained much better here than I can do. Alternatively you can detach the different elements of your model, and make it to several objects, and then assign one material to each object.

Hope it helps

[Anonymous]

Argh. Yeah, I know; I'd've posted pictures, but I didn't think we could actually upload those things, and I have neither a website nor a hosting service (comcast is penny ante in all respects).

Knew about the difference between maps and materials; the original model just had materials (simple ones, too) assigned, and those were all I wanted to do. After the initial spate of "select this face, assign this mat to it" efforts didn't work, I went ahead and recreated the original mats as separate color mats themselves. Even then, nothing happened; for some reason, that model just won't let me assign a material to it. (I know this because I hauled other models--me-built and downloaded from elsewhere--and in pretty much all the cases I was able to assign or change materials. Even did a Decal tutorial wherein I learned yet more about mats and maps. But that helmet remains impervious as a diamond, and I'd love to know why.)

Material IDs of the polys in the model, huh? That's not a concept I'd've tried (or thought of...). Let me check that when I get home.

In terms of the helmet object itself, yeah; the original modeler (may he achieve fame somewhere, as I don't have his name after all these years) did the whole complex thing as a single object. Using Clone and some selective deletion, I've got it in four or five distinct chunks now. And no, applying mats to those separate chunks didn't work either. I thought there might be a setting where you can put a note in a model about "don't you dare assign new materials to my precious model" but that's paranoid even for me. 🙂

Let me see what it might show me in terms of Material IDs; that cropped up in a couple of tutes I did in the past week, and I need to learn more about it anyway.

Thanks!

Davey

[Anonymous]

As a quick and undeservedly-late response, I'll add this and mark the above as a solution (as even if it wasn't, it led me to it).

Found where the old Maya MAT had been included (for some reason, stuff just keeps getting dumped into the Material Editor when I work, I can't delete any of the @#$%^ things, and old ones seem to get pushed to the bottom. For the problem faces I selected "who needs this?" materials and re-purposed them. Plain white, gleam yellow, faceplate transparent, main black, and so on. When I (re-)applied these 'new' materials, most of the problems seemed to go away.

Still can't delete the useless materials--now that's a useful feature--but at least this particular prop looks like what I want it to.

And i'd've probably taken a lot longer to figure it out, so thanks for the brief on materials and maps and what-all. 🙂

Davey