Material Image Fade not working?

[BBP-Arch]

ACA2016

See the attached video.

I've got an image of board and batten siding. I want it to be the same green of the windows within that wall. So I created a .JPG of the siding as grayscale. Then I adjust the image fade and the cube in the appearance window changes color with it, but as you can see, the wall does not.

Thanks in advance...

Scott

[Victoria.Studley]

Hi @BBP-Arch,

Thanks for posted the video of the issue you're experiencing - that helps clarify what's happening.

• How did you create the new material? By creating a copy of the original in the Materials Browser?
• After you created the new material, did you assign it to the component in the wall style, or is it still pointing to the original material?

If you've done that, and it's still not updating for you, could you eTransmit the file, to include the materials, and post the ZIP here? I'll be happy to take a look.

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Victoria.Studley]

Hi @BBP-Arch,

I'm just checking in again to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion I provided yesterday work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[BBP-Arch]

Sorry for the delayed response...

I'll verify if the material is referencing the original. Yes, I copied it and went from there. If this doesn't work, I'll e-Transmit. Thanks for reaching out.

Scott

[BBP-Arch]

Ok, I made an experiment.

I opened a different drawing. This time I want to change the masonry color...lighten it, really.  This masonry material came straight out of the Styles that came w/ the program and is unedited. I tried to change the color utilizing the same technique I referred to previously. I made another video of it, and created an eTransmit package of it.

Thanks,

Scott

[KathyMoffa]

Are we actually supposed to be able to edit the color of a jpg in this product?  I've never been able to change the color of a material that uses an image.

[ntellery]

You maybe able to change the colour depending on how it's setup.
You may be able to add a tint depending on which base render material is used.
You may be able to adjust colour in the material bitmap editor depending on which base render material is used.

If your map is basically one colour, such as concrete paving, then you can just use it as a bump map and set the colour. This will mean it wont show in views other than the full render views because the image is based on shadows and texture.
It's better to have a bitmap with great black/white variation over just using a map of cream pavers so a little photoshop to produce a stark map is helpful.

For simple colour materials I don't use a bitmap and set the colour by object.  So for a wall colour, I avoid setting the colour in the RMAT interface and allow it to be set back in the material settings.  This way, the same RMAT can be used for various walls, various colours.  I use this for example for a rendered wall where a bumpmap provides the texture. This way it's much faster to edit colours and even change them on the fly by picking the object itself (ie a wall) and changing the colour using the autocad method.  Of course, ACA interface hides the colour selection dropdown and I have had to bring it into my own CUIX from the AUTOCAD.cuix so it's now included in my own MyStuff.cuix.
Using bitmaps for straight colours seems way overkill and not just because the RMAT interface is clunky and slow but loading your drawing up with many instances of the same thing (just a colour change) makes maintenance more laborious too. It's much quicker to deal with the MaterialsStyle editor.

[Victoria.Studley]

Hi @BBP-Arch,

Thank you for posting the sample files for analysis.

The AEC Objects are still referencing the same Material Definition, although you've renamed the actual render material in the Materials Browser. I was able to get your materials to show the Image Fade changes as follows. I'll post a Screencast in addition to the steps:

• Check the Style Manager to find the Material Definition that's assigned to the object.
• On the Other tab, check the Render Material to see what the render material is named.
• Open the Materials Browser.
• Pick the actual material and edit it, adjusting the Image Fade to suit your needs.

Here's the Screencast where I edit the corrugated metal wall material in your file as any example:

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Victoria.Studley]

Hi @BBP-Arch,

Did any of the suggestions/explanations that @ntellery, @KathyMoffa, or I provided in the past couple of days help you with this issue?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[BBP-Arch]

Thank you so much for the screencast. So, I followed it to the T.  Even doing it with the galvanized walls as you did. It still didn't work and reacted exactly like on the video I sent last time. I am on the correct material and still the fader does nothing until it's brought down to 1 or 2 and then the color beneath shows up full blast. Is there a SETVAR that I may not have on that tells the system to interpret transparency or something?

To troubleshoot further, I opened up the Materials drawing that came in the program in the Styles directory and tried getting this to work on multiple materials...still no result.  Not sure why the system isn't reading this...

Scott

[Victoria.Studley · Accepted solution]

Hi @BBP-Arch,

I think I may have figured out what's happening. Since the materials fade visually for me here on my machine, but they don't on yours, it does seem to be an environment-specific issue. So, I tested on a different machine I have here, and the materials would not fade there, except when they reached the 0-5 range on the slider. (I tend to have more graphics issues with that machine than the one I initially tested on.)

However, when I rendered the image, it reflected the correct Image Fade settings, even when they did not display onscreen.

I checked the Graphics Configuration settings (3DCONFIG command), and discovered that the Advanced Material Effects option was unchecked.

When I checked this option and regenerated the drawing, the Image Fade settings were visible in the model onscreen.

Could you try this and let me know if makes a difference?

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[BBP-Arch]

THAT WAS IT!!!!!!    Thank you so much for your help!!!!!

Scott

[BBP-Arch]

One last question:

How is the material treated with xref's? I adjusted the material color in a drawing that is xref'd into another...reloaded it in the other and it didn't change. Does the drawing that the original is inserted to retail the original material as a precedent?

Thanks again,

Scott

[ntellery]

If the host drawing contains that render material then it's definition holds.  So edit RMATs in the drawing you are creating the rendering in.  If you want to bring a RMAT in, you must delete or purge it from the host drawing.  So drop all the x-refs and ensure the RMAT is gone by purging and or deleting and then reload the xref and it should come back in.
I'm not sure though, if the RMAT is connected to something else in the host it could detach it which is why a purge is a better idea.