Blend Material issues

[JonasNöll]

Hi, I am noticing issues with the blend material, where the UI doesn't update or doesn't follow commands or crashes 3ds Max completely.
The issue is when trying to rearrange layers in the blend material by dragging and dropping them to different layers. (When the dialog "Instance" "Copy" "Swap" should pop up. Though the "Swap" option somehow disappeared now?)
It then doesn's seem to rearrange and the UI seems to freeze or it seems to crash 3ds Max completely.

Using latest beta + 3ds Max 2023. Present in Classic and Slate.
To reproduce just build a simple blend material and drag and copy several shaders and masks around.
And please bring the "Swap" option back, it somehow disappeared?

[tanya_to]

Hi Jonas, I've managed to reproduce it and I'll log it in our bug-tracking system. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[JonasNöll]

Hi, I also found that if you for example change the blend amount of a layer (f.e. from 100% to 50%) and try to use the undo command, then the undo won't be registered (so won't jump from 50% back to 100% again)

[^Lele^]

Gotta love Qt...

[tanya_to]

Hey JonasNöll I've forwarded the second issue to our developers as well. Thanks for reporting it. I have a question about the unresponsive UI with drag&drop functionality as it turned out to be reproducible quite randomly on our side . Does it happen consistently? Does it happen if there is no VRayCarpaintMlt plugged into VrayBlendMtl ?

[JonasNöll]

Hi tanya_to
For me it also seems to be randomly working sometimes and sometimes not, I didn't manage to get another full crash again as of now. Following issues are consistent though:

- When dragging the base material to the coat material slot there is a "swap" option showing, but when dragging coat materials around there is no "swap" option showing up. Same for masks


- When dragging a coat material from e.g. slot 1 to slot 9 it looks like all the buttons inbetween (coat layers 2 - 8 are pressed and it looks like the UI didn't update. Same for masks


- When changing the numeric blend amount the undo/redo doesn't work.


So I would first try to fix those and see if this is maybe also the reason for the other sporadic crashes/glitches

[JonasNöll]

Oh and one more thing:

- It's not possible anymore to drag a "None" shader to a slot where is a shader. Same for a "No Map" mask is not possible anymore to click/drag to a slot that has a mask to delete it.

[^Lele^]

There'll be layers of issues with Qt, it's unlikely there's a silver bullet for them all.
Alas, thanks for the reports, they're truly helpful.

[JonasNöll]

There is also no option to "copy", or "paste as copy/instance" materials anymore when right clicking on a material in the layer. It just shows a "clear" option. Same issue for the Blend Amound Masks:



And when click dragging and instancing materials from the blend material to a free slot then 3ds Max crashes completely:



So there is no way right now to copy and instance materials to other blend materials. This is all latest beta 2.

[tanya_to]

Hey, there are certain limitations with Qt which are not V-Ray specific, for example paste as copy/instance is not working in Arnold's Layer shader as well. We will fix the issues with undo for blend multiplier and dragging a "None" shader to a slot with a shader. Will take a look into the crash too. Thanks for reporting it!

[^Lele^]

These limitations can currently be worked around of by going one layer deeper, and copying/pasting the shader from there.
The same applies to masks, and for clearing specific slots.
Hardly convenient, but at least not unusable (while any fix may come through.).