Material Archive Idea

[CAClark]

Hi Folks

I'm currently working on a project which involves cross sectional models of medical equipment. Each one has besically the same (extensive) surface/material names, and I had an idea which is like a rehash of the material templates functionality. It would work thus:

• Surface a cross section model with all the materials
  Export an archive of every material from the model
  Create a scene with the next cross section variation of the model
  Import the earlier created archive of materials, and keyshot will apply any material to the matching material name on the new model, and ignore any that aren't present or are different.

This way I only have to go through applying materials to the first one, and I can just re-apply the materials from one to the next in one go.

Cheers!

[fario]

yes I agree completely.

Antoine

[PhilippeV8]

At this moment I am using the material template by creating new ones and joinging all valid entries in notepad in a single file.

e.g.  I've got color 255:255:255 on import, I aply "glass" to it and save the file.  The next day I open the file and change the glass to green glass .. and re-make the material template.  The 255:255:255 entry will be lost and it'll have glass to green glass in it.  Also sometimes it makes entries that are like: green glass is green glass ... totaly useless.

This all might have changed in the latest release, I don't know .. I'm still waiting for IT to come over and update my KS.

On the other hand, I've mastered my work-around and now if I import my basic scene, I don't have to texture any of it, even if I made changes to it.  Which is a great deal of work saved.

[fario]

just read this:

http://keyshot.com/forum/index.php/topic,2202.0.html

http://keyshot.com/forum/index.php/topic,3540.0.html

I personally have never liked ... and understood .... the use of the palette: "template material"

I find this feature really not very ergonomic and visual enough.

Sometimes it drives me crazy.

I think a pallet containing the history of the materials used, by project, is better and easier to use.



Antoine

[KeyShot]

If you load a previously created bip file with materials assigned then you can import a new piece of geometry with the retain material option enabled. That will assign materials based on your previous model. Material templates can provide a more powerful and flexible way of doing this. With material templates you can also do it by part name for example and you can include wildcards.