conserve the layer of the material when converting

[big K]

hi,

when you convert the materials from cinemas to vray materials it would be nice to conserve the layer the materials have been assigned to.
i often use quite a lot of mats - and after converting i have a big mess which i have to reorganize.

cheers
michael

[Fluffy]

Yes, big vote here.

[JakeL]

Hear, hear!

Better still, if we could choose a layer or define a new one for the converted mats (by Ctrl clicking, for example).

This would be handy for situations where you need your assets for both AR and VRay and have to deal with many materials.

Cheers,
jake

[Tong]

when you convert material that on object, that material replaced on object by Vray Material, so why You need assets for both AR and VRay if assets for AR not assign to any object, only for for "backup" i think? Needs some other way :(

maybe, some way old Layer name but with VR suffix, i mean we have layer water with AR material, aftee convertion we have layers: Water & Water (VR). ;-)

ps: Simple trick: After conversion - Materials - Select All (Ctrl+A) then Functions -Remove Unused Materials, and all AR materials that not assing will removed, in Materials manager will be only vray materials.

[Fluffy]

What we really need is a way to switch between AR and Vray materials easily.
So I guess proxy materials would be fine, along with a tool to switch or manipulate material types.

That way, we could use any render engine along with Vray.

[Tong]

Fluffy http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/good.gif http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/madhouse/crazy_pilot.gif

[JakeL]

I did not have backup in mind either, but like Fluffy said, to make it easier to switch to and fro.

You still need AR for some stuff (volume lights, anyone? ;)), as great as vray is.

[big K]

some great ideas here.
a switch to change between different materials (for different renderers) would be awesome.
but this sounds as a bigger project - so i would prefer a quick solution for now where the new vray mats are stored in the same layer as the cinema mats. (or a new layer with added "vr" - but here i would prefer to add a "vr" to the material names so you can easily distinguish between the two)

[big K]

another possibility would be to have the option to only convert selected materials. (this would include the automatic assignement to the objects which use the material)
in this way you would be able to convert the materials layer by layer and assign the new mats to their "old" layer.

btw. i have noticed that if you have the material of an object animated (only the type of material assigned to an object - i.e. it changes from one frame to the next) it does not assign the new vray materials.
is it possible to do this ?

[stefan]

already now if you select materials only those will be converted.

also we use a system that will be compatibel with c4ds new material system.

ah ok i see, yes we will try to keep the c4d layers for vray materials, good idea.

be sure we want to improve the conversion. only we donnot want to waste too much time in support of the old system as the new c4d material system will be much cooler and fit more directly to vray. so they will be both very similar in the end.

cheers
stefan