Materials

[iToo_Butler]

Hi all,

We've setup a rail clone to model a bridge. Each Bridge segment has a material applied on the base objects, These are separate objects, not one mesh attached together.

We have wood, metal, concrete etc but for some reason the railcolne object renders without these materials but with the Railcone wire colour.

I've tried creating a multi-sub material, applying that to the railcone and adding in the material node after each segment, changing the id in it, but it doesn't work.

It seems odd to me that by default Railcone doesn't want to use the materials applied to the objects, by default.

How can i get the materials correctly rendering on the railclone object?

Cheers.

Andy.

[Paul Roberts]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the question. At present you will need to create a Multi-Sub object material that uses material IDs set on the source geometry, so the same material applied to both RailClone and the individual components yields the same results. There are certain restrictions on using the Material node, especially if you are using a renderer other than V-Ray.

In our original design for RailClone we expected material creation to be a part of the preparation to create a style. For example Forest includes the ability to consolidate materials because it's much more dependent on using multiple plants from different sources. But in RailClone each segment is usually designed uniquely for a specific style, so part of the design includes preparing the materials.

However we've had a few requests for this feature so we are currently evaluating whether to use the same method in RailClone as Forest (create a multi-sub material on the fly), but the concern is that this adds an additional level of complexity to the plugin. In the meantime, if you don't want to create a multi-sub object shader and re-assign IDs manually, an easy way to consolidate materials is as follows:

• Attach all bridge section into a single mesh. Use the default options, so Max creates the multi-sub object.
• Detach each element in separate objects.
• Re-adjust the pivots if necessary.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have further questions.

Many thanks,

Paul.

[iToo_Butler]

Awesome.

FYI to anyone else, you need to add a material modifier to each object and change the id to correspond to the multi sub material. Not change the ID of each object in it's prperties (which is what i tried first, it does nothing)

Thanks Paul.

Andy.