Is there a way to copy material settings between 2 different objects?
dracorn
Posts: 2,345
in The Commons
I'm looking for a way to get advanced material settings onto another object.
I work in 3Delight, but I would also like the info for Iray as well.
Comments
Yes, save a shader for the 3DL and apply it to the surfaces. You will need to manually set up the iray settings. That is if I'm understanding what your asking.
You can copy from and paste to surfaces using the Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste menus - note, however, that copy and paste affects only the settings and not the shader used so you will have to apply the base shader to the destination surfaces first if it doesn't match the source.
Thanks for your comments. How about if you don't have a shader? For example, can I copy the settings from Wonderous Wares to another glass object without using shaders?
A surface always has a shader, which one it is is listed near the top of the Surface pane.
Note: Surfaces with different material IDs cannot use the surface copy method, and materials generated with a particular material ID will not apply to surfaces with a different ID.
As mentioned, the name of the shader applied to a surface is listed at the top of the surface tab. Shaders that are MDL are made for Iray and RSL are made for 3Delight. If you see the name of the shader for the surface you are copying, make sure that shader is applied to the surface you are pasting to. I know PAs make their own shaders on their products sometimes, so I'm not sure what to do in that case. Most products use the standard DS shaders, though. Also, when you copy and paste surface settings, it also applies any image maps on the surfaces. If they are painted to match the UV of an item and you paste the surface settings to a different object, then it won't look right. For example, if you copy a G8 skin surface and paste it on a shirt surface, it will look wrong. If the surfaces use the same UV or if the image maps are fully painted square images, then it should work fine. That's why generic shader presets don't use image maps or they use seamless square image maps.