Material Presets_How to Save and Apply Questions

inquire

I have several iray shaders I made myself for David 3 characters, Michael 3 characters, and Michael 4 characters. Since I like what I've done, I would like to be able to apply these iray shaders to other characters. Should I save each shader as just a regular material preset, or as an hierarchical material preset?

If I apply the material preset to another figure, should I select all parts of the figure and then apply the preset? That is, will it apply correctly to the eyes, nails, skin, etc.? Or, must I select each part of the figure, such as the eyes, or just the eye surface or the pupil? If I need to select just, say, the eye surface, then doesn't that mean that I need to save multiple presets, as, for example, skin, corona, pupil, nails, etc.? If it's an hierarchical preset, and I selected all parts of the figure, would each preset then be correctly applied to all of these parts, such as skin, iris, nails?

What about the character maps? I don't want to save those. I'd want to retain whatever character maps there are on the new figure to which I'm going to apply the preset. I just want to get the iray shaders onto the new figure. Do I have to do something special so that the chracter maps are not saved with the preset? Or, does saving a preset automatically exclude the character maps?

 

Richard Haseltine

Just save a Materials preset, if it's just the figure that you have chnaged. Hierarchical presets are for sets of items (clothes, props, etc) parented to a figure - and I'm not sure they work on legacy content.

Just having the figure, or any bone, selected is all you need to apply the preset.

To do what you want there are two options - one is to use the options menu in the options dialogue (the button part-way down on the left) to select only values when saving; the other is to hold down ctrl (cmd on a Mac) when applyinf the preset and in the dialogue that appears select Ignore for maps.

inquire

Thanks. I got how to accomplish this for the Macintosh, by holding down the cmd key and then choosing "Ignore" for Images, instead of "Replace Images." But, I don't understand what you said about the "options menu in the options dialogue." I'll keep trying again.

Is it after I select "Materials Preset" and then find in the upper right an "Options"? If I right click on the "Options" (Macintosh) one of the choices is "Uncheck all Images." Is that what you mean? I'll try to include a screenshot.

Richard Haseltine

Check Only>Values was what I was thinking of, assuming there are no properties you want to exclude entirely.