Hierarchical materials

asbrainiac_d0d9ea3447

Hierarchical materials often don't work properly if the target nodes are not where the preset expects them to be in the hierarchy. Also, sometimes I want to apply just one material of a hierarichical preset to an individual material zone, not the entire preset. Is there any way to pull out the individual materials/shaders in an H.Mat preset and apply them one by one? So far my workaround has just been to keep a second, identical object fitted and parented as the preset expects, apply the desired material preset, then copy the individual shaders over one by one.

felis

You can select the surfaces you want to change, and then hold <Ctrl> while clicking on the Hieracical Material, then you should get a dialogue box where you can select "Selected".

NorthOf45

When you make a Hierarchical Material Preset, it takes the top node as the root element, and the tree below it will always be expected. If you want to have only a subset of a particular setup included in the preset, unparent the element (and its accompanying nodes) from wherever it is (it should drop to the root of the scene). It must be the first node in the new tree, and will be the root element of the preset. You can exclude any element below the root, but not the root itself. It might be handy to create a wearable preset that corresponds to the materials preset so that they are coordinated.

If you want to create several h.mat presets, do them all now before re-parenting the the sub-tree where it would normally go. You can then apply the Hierarchical Material preset(s) by selecting any node that is included in the hierarchy of the preset.

To apply only part of the preset, select the piece you want in the Scene and then the Surfaces tab pane (all or just some Surfaces), and hold the CTRL key whan applying it. In the ensuing pop-up, change [Apply: Surfaces:] All to Selected, (make sure [Apply: Images:] is set to Replace) then click Accept. It is best done using the Surface Selection tool to see which Surfaces are actually being targeted. Selecting the node in the scene does not necessarily change the selected Surface.

Richard Haseltine

Apply the Hiearchical preset with the correct parenting, then save out regular presets for individual items.

asbrainiac_d0d9ea3447

felis said:

You can select the surfaces you want to change, and then hold <Ctrl> while clicking on the Hieracical Material, then you should get a dialogue box where you can select "Selected".

Thank you!