Getting Material Textures Paths Working On Other Computers

[skyeg321]

I have been having the hardest time getting materials working on coworkers machines. I have been searching for an elegant solution to this problem to no avail for a while now. We are using Microsoft OneDrive for file sharing. I have a folder called 'Custom Materials' and this is where I put all our .jpg files for the custom materials textures. However, it does not work to keep your textures there because everyone on the OneDrive system seems to have a different file path to get to that folder. So to account for this I've created a folder on my machine called Custom Materials and have copied all these jpgs from the networked folder into this folder at 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\Textures\Custom Materials

My instructions to the team were to create this Custom Materials folder and put it on their machine exactly as the file path above shows. Then copy paste all the materials from the OneDrive folder into it. 

I of course then relinked all the material textures in the template to this new path.

One would think this would work but both other team members experienced the problem when opening the template that Revit just seemed to drop the 'Custom Materials' folder from their file path completely. So for the file on my computer

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\Textures\Custom Materials\Wood.DarkFir.jpg

The Revit materials browser would be looking for the file on their computer at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\Textures\Wood.DarkFir.jpg  - And of course wouldn't be able to find it.

Do you guys think Revit knows my Custom Materials folder is added and won't allow Revit to search there? Where would you all recommend I put these materials and deal with making sure these textures are working for everybody? Also we did add the render appearance path to the custom materials folder under options both in the template and on other employees machines - doesn't seem to work.

Thanks for your advice and help.

[ToanDN]

Add the folder where you store custom image files to Additional render appearance paths under Revit Options.  If everyone have the Onedrive folder mapped/synced as a local folder then they may add that folder instead.

[skyeg321]

This is not working for us. 

To recap what we are trying: I re-pathed a few textures to the shared folder OneDrive folder and added the render appearance path to that custom materials folder in the template. I created a project and a co-worker opened that project and added the custom materials folder on the OneDrive as an additional render appearance path. This did not fix the material appearances in his project even after a Revit restart. Attached are screenshots showing the path to a texture on my machine and the path to the same texture on his machine for reference.

[RDAOU]

@skyeg321 

First off...I have to say this copy and paste strategy is a mess. You do not want to do that.

The images you posted do not tally...

1. one is of the Material/Texture editor on your PC/Revit
2. the other is of your colleague's OneDrive local sync folder

The Render Appearance Image path is saved in the Material asset...so

• you need to re-path all images in the material assets to an absolute path (any not under \Users).
• since Material Browser uses Absolute path, if you are using a shared drive (on a local network or a cloud service), such drives need to be mapped (or Unlinked and re-mapped) properly so that such path may be recognizable from all machines.

Once that is done you can add the path to the Additional Rendering appearance Path

[skyeg321]

This materials thing is still an issue for us. To recap the issue is that we are using Onedrive for all project/file sharing and everyone using it has a slightly different file path because their user name is in the path. For instance my file path is C:\Users\Skye\ArchitectureFirmOneDrive\...

Rachel's would be C:\Users\Rachel\ArchitectureFirmOneDrive\...

Therefore if we have a custom materials folder on the onedrive and all template materials map to this location, texture links are broken on evryones unique machine. Simply adding the custom materials folder as an additional render appearance path is not working for us. Materials are all still broken. 

@RDAOU What do you mean by drives need to be unlinked or unmapped? Won't this break the syncing ability of the drives? I want to be able to add custom materials to the folder and template later and have it all work for everybody.

[skyeg321]

@RDAOU How can we make everyone's path the same if there is a username right in the file path? 

We've had a brief bit of success with the additional render appearance path but when my coworker relinked the texture on her computer, mine went blank and just showed white. When I re-linked mine, hers went white. We can't be fighting for materials obviously.

Has anyone had luck with custom materials on a Onedrive or Dropbox network? We are really struggling with this! 

[edodge22]

I'm struggling with the same issue on Dropbox.  We have a shared folder with our custom materials and are constantly re-linking when a new person opens the model.  Any suggestions?

[skyeg321]

@edodge22 have you tried adding the materials folder as an additional render path? You need to then re map one material texture in the materials browser then all the textures should pop in. This worked for me on one teammates computer but not another. Not sure why.

[edodge22]

Thank you!  I'm not familiar with the process, but I will look into it.  

[emavrou]

 I have this same issue and nothing is working and don't want to go through and reassign all the materials to each individual material.