3Ds Max - Is it possible to get more than 24 Materials?

[Rhino]

well ehhh, at the moment I'm cloning all my current mats used on my LOD0 mesh, then removing all there dump maps so that when they are applied to the LOD1 mesh, low gfx users who only use the LOD1 and not the LOD0 mesh will not have to load the bump maps and while doing it, running out of materials for even just doing that, let alone assigning materials to the my collision mesh...

soo ye, I cant see any way of getting more than 24 materials but is it possible and if so, how? cheers!

[Talon]

I believe it's possible to just reset the material slots to be a clean slate. The slots there aren't the only materials you can have in the scene... they're just options to edit 24 of them. If you reset the slots, you'll have to pull the materials back off the object to edit their options though, kind of a pain.

Another option would be to use a multi-sub object if the exporter supports it, where you can specify something like 100 (or might be 999) textures in there.

You might need to double check, though. I'm not a seasoned Max user.

[Rhino]

well all the LODs, Cols etc all need to be in the same max scene to export them (afaik, dont see any way to do it otherwise).

Not sure what a multi-sub object is but if its something like a material type, then thats not possible as the material needs to be set to one that the exporter comes with which is only 2 types and you can only use one type at a time.

soo would there be any other way or could thous methods still work, otherwise low gfx users are going to be loading large bump texture pallets which they didn't need to before

[doylle]

I think the material editor is just a visualisation of a collection of materials in the scene. And even though some meaterials are not in the editor, they are in the scene. you should be able to acces them in the material library of your file. Long story short, i'd give talon's method a go, i'm pretty confident that it will work...

[Rhino]

ahhh cheers I think I understand, just need to save them etc.

Also found this when doing a quick search on google: Super Material PRO | ScriptSpot

Think that may help?

[Rhino]

well that program has appeared to help which it looks like it basically just keeps the mat in the scene like you guys said but it helps you organize them a little better, but not much thou thats mainly cos it takes quite abit of getting use to

[IronTaxi]

Rhino..I cant imagine why you would need more than 24 material slots for your static ...thats sounds a bit nuts.considering loading overhead etc...im sure youve thought of that mind you...good luck

[chris89]

ow i've had money times that i ran out of material slots. But thats more on scenes than just single statics.

Anyway, what you might want to try to make a habit off is the use of Multi/sub object materials. Lots of exporters use that anyways, and during modeling you could add an ID to parts easily. So yeah, if you use that you have unlimited virtually.