Comparing two materials

Started by Shorse, January 18, 2019, 03:05:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Shorse

Is there a way to compare two materials? Sometimes I have materials that are similar in different files and I would like to see what is different between the two.

INNEO_MWo

Just start KeyShot twice and open the scenes. Then you'll see the differences at the material settings.
Also you can save each material as a file and open both in a text editor (I prefer notepad++), to compare the parameters.

Hope that helps.


Cheers
Marco

mattjgerard

Couple ways
1)Create a multi material out of the 2 materials and switch between them
2) duplicate the object and apply one material to each side by side.
3) Create 2 spheres somewhere in your scene and use those to apply both materials to and compare.

Shorse

MWo, opening in a text editor worked. Thanks for the tip.

mattjgerard, Thank you. I should have been more specific. My workflow with materials is to save different revisions and occasionally I go back to a file and want to see what it was that gave me the result I liked. You did pique my interest though. We have parts with smooth and textured areas and I never thought about using a multi material for the different textures.

mattjgerard

Quote from: Shorse on January 28, 2019, 08:11:48 AM
MWo, opening in a text editor worked. Thanks for the tip.

mattjgerard, Thank you. I should have been more specific. My workflow with materials is to save different revisions and occasionally I go back to a file and want to see what it was that gave me the result I liked. You did pique my interest though. We have parts with smooth and textured areas and I never thought about using a multi material for the different textures.

Yeah, I am just figuring out how to make the most of Mm's without making it more confusing that just having separate materials saved. The project I'm working on now is a large set of safety interlock hinges, 8 models with a bunch of variations of each model, and then to top it off each one can come in 2 (and maybe now 3) different finishes. Where this is great for Mm's is setting up studios, I can just use one model set for each model, not 3 (one model set for each finish) I can keep my model set list more manageable while using the studio list to assign the different Mm's to each one. Its still a huge list of of studios that I have to render out, but now I'm only having to wrry about assigning materials in one list, not both Studios and Model sets.

Big bonus is that if Engineering decides to add a 3rd material option (which I just found out thes did) I only have to add that new material to the MM and its available in the Studio drop down list, I don't have to go and duplicate a model set for each model and assign the new material a couple dozen times. Works a treat in this situation. I also use Mm's for material iterations. Keep the material I like, and duplicate it to play around with some other looks, then easily clear out the ones I don't like and turn it back into a single material. Great for R&D of materials.