copy-paste of surfaces, not consistent behavior
lbartels
Posts: 65
Hello,
I'm working on a project with many parts, and those parts have many common surfaces. What I usually do is make one part the "master".. meaning all the surfaces are what I want. Then I copy-paste a given surface from the master to all the other parts.
Most times it works, some times it does not. I believe the surfaces that work have all the iray parameters, is base color, diffuse roughness, etcetera; all the paramters under the surfaces tab. And the surfaces that don't work, don't have all of them.
So, questions are: Why do some surfaces have them, and others don't? ( I selected Iray shaders under the presets tab)
And how can I modify (if possible) the surfaces that don't work, so that in the future they do?
I hope that makes sense.. Any help is appreciated.
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Comments
Right, copy-and-paste carries over settings but it doesn't change the shader applied (which is not a setting in the pane, it's just read-only information at the top)
Question: Do I apply the uber shader before or after the shader I want? Or does it matter?
You only really need to apply it if you're copy-pasting between surfaces (or building the surface settings from scratch and manually plugging in the maps). If you're applying a shader to a surface, then that will apply the uber shader automatically (if the shader has been built using it).
You need to look at top-left of the Editor tab of the Surfaces pane with the surface you wish to copy selected - that will tell you which shader (as opposed to shader preset) is being used. You need to aply that shader to the target surfaces, then paste the settings to them to match the source.
Just to clarify. The menus are named "copy selected surface" and "paste to selected surface". So it is a non-sense that the shader is ignored. If I want to copy a surface it is essential that the shader is copied too. Otherwise you can name the menus "copy shader settings" and "try to transfer shader settings", that's another thing entirely from copy and paste of surfaces.
That's just bad design.
It's not bad design. The menus are named and work properly. There are many times that I want to copy just the graphical elements of a shader and paste them into a different shader. What you are suggesting would make this almost impossible.
Three thumbs up.
In addition to the above, I'd like to add on that the copy-paste doesn't seem to carry over the "use limits" on a parameter. So even with the correct shader applied, if you still see discrepancies make sure to check that it's not truncating a value somewhere to within allowed limits.
Copy and paste never changes the "use limits" parameter in DAZ. Not with poses, not with morph shapes, and not on surfaces. While it might make things simpler in one use-case scenario, it would make many other situations more complicated.
Come on folks, it's really not that hard to apply a shader, or check if you've got limits on or off, before pushing a couple of buttons to perform a complicated operation.