Attaching master materials before export

[GeordieJames]

Hi all,

One thing I'd like to be able to do is to attach master materials to objects so that when you export them as fact and then import them to a new project they have their material intact.

I generally set up generic master materials for things like road surfaces etc. (architectural work) and then link them to multiple objects. If for some reason I want to export that object and bring it into another project I have to go through the objects and paste in the textures directly so that when they export they have them in place.

The workaround is to merge projects, during which the master materials come with the project, but sometimes that's not convenient as to just get those objects in the merged file I have to delete everything else out.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this would be a useful feature, another checkbox in the export fact dialogue that says 'attach master materials to objects' or some such thing.

James

[Nutley]

Apologies that this isn't really relavant to the above question, but it feels such a newbie questions I'm a little embarrased to ask it in a new thread,

::clears throat::

How do I import a model into an existing scene and get it to be the right scale. The model in quesiton is made of a gazillion peices (pre-textured in other project) and I don't want to go in and individually alter their scale. I've tried parenting them all to an object and scaling that, but failed.

Obviously there is a way to do this, but I cannot find the answer in either the manual or this forum.

::looks around sheepishly::

[S. Houtzager]

You will want to use an effector as the parent because you will have more control of the base of the scale. Then scale the effector and make sure that all the children have "inherit scale" checked.

[GeordieJames]

Hi Nutley, just watched your transformers video - very cool :-)

As the above post says the only way is to use a parent effector and ensure that the children have 'inherit scale'. I, like you have had to import a model and scale it 'en masse' to fit another project. Barring my issue related to hard wiring the master materials into such a model it works fine.

Cheers

James

[RichardJoly]

Nutley,

If you have a gazillion pieces, when choosing "Inherit scale", hold down the right button to see the options as Set to all, set to children etc. It kinda save time...

[rtrowbridge]

One of the first things I did was to make sure "Inherit Scale" was selected by default in Preferences.

Ross

[Nutley]

Thankyou very much for your replies gang, I can honestly say I would never have worked this out without your input.

The manual mentioned this process, but the inherit scale preference (off by default which is just odd) wasn't something I picked up on at all.

As with all things it's simple when you know how - but often I don;t even know where to look in the manual in the first place.

Basically if Ian hasn't done a video tutorial on something I'm scuppered :)

Thanks again for the help. \^^/

P.S. Richard, your 'Set to all' tip is a godsend. I've spent too long going through each individual material adding Blur Mode > Motion Vector (or whatever) knowing there must be a shortcut, but not knowing what it is.

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Nutley,

Feel free to ask us.. EIAS have lots of easy ways to do each task.

Thanks

Tom