Material Browser: Folders

[cjwidd]

It would be nice to be able to organize materials in the material browser with a folder system. For example, if I have multiple products, each with a unique color scheme, it would be *much* more convenient to sort them into folders rather than relying on a naming convention; which is currently the best way to distinguish materials active in the scene.

This extends from another item that appears on the wish list, that it would be nice if materials could appear in the material browser *even if they are not active in the scene*. This behavior is, more or less, what the material library is supposed to achieve, but unless you are constantly saving and updating the materials in the library from the browser, the materials that appear in the library may not reflect the properties of that material that could have been changed in the last hour or so during look dev.

[mattjgerard]

It would be nice to be able to organize materials in the material browser with a folder system. For example, if I have multiple products, each with a unique color scheme, it would be *much* more convenient to sort them into folders rather than relying on a naming convention; which is currently the best way to distinguish materials active in the scene.

This extends from another item that appears on the wish list, that it would be nice if materials could appear in the material browser *even if they are not active in the scene*. This behavior is, more or less, what the material library is supposed to achieve, but unless you are constantly saving and updating the materials in the library from the browser, the materials that appear in the library may not reflect the properties of that material that could have been changed in the last hour or so during look dev.

So, theres a couple ways of dealing with these- None of them will give you what you are looking for, which is an option to create folders in the in -scene materials list, but while that requests goes to the developers, you can try this-

Create each product as a model set, then under the in-scene materials list, click the funnel and select "By Model Set". That will only display the materials for the model sets that are visible. Not great, but is better than nothing.

On the second request, I am on your side, but I see why they make it work the way they do. It is different from every other rendering software out there as far as I know, but what I just learned how to work with on this issue this week at RenderWorld is MultiMaterials. Its like a bucket or folder that can hold many materials assigned to a part, where only one is visible on that part at a time. You can drag a material form the library onto a part, make it a multi-matieral which essentially just puts it into a folder that is attached to that part. From there you can duplicate and change the current material, making iterations and experiment without loosing your original material. You can drag other materials into the Multi-material from the library, as many as you want to. Then if you are playing with different versions of your material, make some tweaks that you want to keep, you can either individually save that new material to the library, or just select the iteration that you like, click the Multi-Material button again and it deletes all the other materials and keeps the one you selected as the single applied material, and it now behaves as a normal material. Its pretty cool the way it works, and after seeing and playing around with how they are integral to the product configurator I think its a different but smart way to work.

[cjwidd]

Yeah, I had a feeling we were approaching multi-materials. To be fair, I have not taken the opportunity to familiarize with multi-materials, as far as how they fit in my workflow, but it is a good suggestion.