How to save a node graph as a material template?

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I have a question: what is the way to save your Hypershade node graph along with material settings as a template to be reused for other materials? I use a certain texture set (Albedo, Glossiness, Reflection, Normal), rearrange uv nodes, make certain changes in shader settings every single time I create a new material. All these actions are repeating, which makes it so tedious and stupid to do them every time without any automation or templates. Saving a preset saves only shader settings, but I need to save file, uv and other nodes connected as well. How can I save a node graph and the reuse it, keeping empty file nodes connected and all the other stuff I do every time?

PS I use Maya 2018 + Redshift

[robbins98033]

Hi Alex.  I'm in the same boat except I use Renderman but, that shouldn't make a difference.

I've been researching different options and scouring the internet for ways to do this but, I've come up short.  I've tried Maya Referencing, Maya Scene Assembly, Maya Asset and Renderman Archiving but, they all have their caveats I haven't been able to find a way around.  I simply want to have a set of Renderman shaders that have many node connections and referencing them (or whatever) into multiple Maya scenes (props for a scene) and then reference those Maya scenes into a master scene that share the shaders.  It would great to be able to edit the referenced shaders in the master scene but, it doesn't seem possible.  Everything I found on the internet focused on referencing models, animations, rig, etc but, none of them touched on shaders which boggles my mind.  It seems like it should be a simple thing to do and maybe it is but, I feel like an idiot because I can't figure it out.

I'm still researching so, I'll will update if I figure something out.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it!

I look forward to hearing from you when you get something, at least sounds like you have much more experience than me in this research 🙂 

What I have been suggested to do recently is to save a material node network as a .ma file and later import it in another scene when you need it. And for my purpose, I suppose, I will simply duplicate that template material network every time instead of creating a new one for the next material from scratch. But that certainly won't give a referencing freedom..

PS I may return to Renderman after version 22 comes out with CPU/GPU or as they say XPU support 😉 and inability to dock the Image tool in the Maya layout drives me crazy ))

[mspeer]

Hi!

Export Selected Network seems to be the right suggestion.

But if you do something in Maya again and again, why not using scripting and create your own command (and maybe assign a hotkey to it)?

[robbins98033]

Alex and I are probably asking for two different things so, I may start my own thread. It just seemed that Alex could also benefit from having a way to have a library of custom shaders that you can easily reference into a scene without Maya duplicating them everytime you create a new reference.

Anyway, my question is if you export, let's say 15 shaders and their networks to a single file using Export Selected Network, how do you reference those shaders into multiple Maya files and then reference those Maya files into a single scene without Maya duplicating the shaders with every imported reference?

Thanks!

[mspeer]

Hi!

Yes my answer was to @Anonymous only.

For referencing don't forget to set the correct Shared Reference Nodes.

But when referencing 2 times node names may change due to Namespaces and this would break this functionality.