What material can be applied, what can not? Why?

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Let's say I created a cube, and want to apply material on it, its shader is already in iray uber.

Now I found most iray materials (preset_material) can not be applied on it, with some materials (preset_material samely) can be applied, why? and how do people know which preset material should work, which not?

Paintbox

I actually have the same question. Following.

Togire

A material and a shader are different. A material is associated to a specific asset, it uses its UV, may have transparency zones, and it relies on the surfaces defined in the asset. It is generally a script that applies some shaders on specific surfaces, and hence cannot in general be applied to another item (except is the surface names are identical, but the result is far from being guaranteed).

What can sometimes be done if you want to reuse a shader is 1/ create an instance of the asset with the original shader that you want to reuse. 2/ apply the materail. 3/ select the interesting surface and copy the shader in the surface pane and 4/ paste this shader on another surface of your item. There is no garanty that it will work, for instance if the shader uses an image map.

 

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alainmerigot said:

A material and a shader are different. A material is associated to a specific asset, it uses its UV, may have transparency zones, and it relies on the surfaces defined in the asset. It is generally a script that applies some shaders on specific surfaces, and hence cannot in general be applied to another item (except is the surface names are identical, but the result is far from being guaranteed).

What can sometimes be done if you want to reuse a shader is 1/ create an instance of the asset with the original shader that you want to reuse. 2/ apply the materail. 3/ select the interesting surface and copy the shader in the surface pane and 4/ paste this shader on another surface of your item. There is no garanty that it will work, for instance if the shader uses an image map.

 

Thanks for the explaination, it is helpful, that means don't apply any strange material to a new node, apply the material to its original instance, then copy that instance's surface and paste to the new node, good idea. Guess it is because some materials contain maps, and due to the specific relationship between maps and geometry. 

By the way, shader has same problem, e.g., can not apply a default iray shader - Car Paint to a primitive, how to apply or copy and paste a different shader?

Richard Haseltine

The short form is that a Materials preset is for settign specific, named surfaces on selected objects while a Shader preset will apply to any selected surfaces on any selected objects.

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Richard Haseltine said:

The short form is that a Materials preset is for settign specific, named surfaces on selected objects while a Shader preset will apply to any selected surfaces on any selected objects.

Thank you Richard, but for shader, I can not apply a default iray shader - e.g. Car Paint to a primitive cube, so how to apply or copy-paste a different shader?

PerttiA

function said:

Richard Haseltine said:

The short form is that a Materials preset is for settign specific, named surfaces on selected objects while a Shader preset will apply to any selected surfaces on any selected objects.

Thank you Richard, but for shader, I can not apply a default iray shader - e.g. Car Paint to a primitive cube, so how to apply or copy-paste a different shader?

In order to apply a shader preset to a surface, you need to be in Surface tab and select the material property (from the tree) to which you want to apply the shader preset to.

Material presets can be applied by just selecting the object in the viewport and applying the material preset, but it is not how the shader presets can be applied

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PerttiA said:

function said:

Richard Haseltine said:

The short form is that a Materials preset is for settign specific, named surfaces on selected objects while a Shader preset will apply to any selected surfaces on any selected objects.

Thank you Richard, but for shader, I can not apply a default iray shader - e.g. Car Paint to a primitive cube, so how to apply or copy-paste a different shader?

In order to apply a shader preset to a surface, you need to be in Surface tab and select the material property (from the tree) to which you want to apply the shader preset to.

Material presets can be applied by just selecting the object in the viewport and applying the material preset, but it is not how the shader presets can be applied

oh, select the material property such like Base, got it, thank you! 

Spacious

I don't think he means the Base material.  You need to select the surface or surfaces that you want to change in the surface pane or using the surface selection tool.  Once youve done that you'll be able to apply whatever shader you want to that surface.  You can even apply shaders or materials that are supposed to be for specific items, but depending on the UV mapping many won't work well.  Sometimes this too can be worked around if you sdjuct the tiling settings in the surface pane.  It's trial and error, but worth a try.

Richard Haseltine

Right, it's the surface(s) you need to select, as I said in my previous reply.