state sets.. vrayswitchmtl.

[super gnu]

Tor about the 5th time im trying to get state sets working so i can render all my extra passes without using separate max files ( i know, old school..) i keep hitting seemingly odd behaviours.. stuff im sure i have recorded in a state but then doesnt change back when i return to the base state. theya re either things that cannot be recorded or bugs.. one of these is the vrayswitchmtl setting.. obviously this material is extremely useful for doing custom render passes, but it seems not to be recorded by state sets.

is this correct? how do people go about recording material swaps in state sets at the material level? im trying to avoid doing it at the object level (selecting some objects and assign a new material while recording a state) since this wont work with any newly created or merged objects added after the state was recorded. a material -based change would apply globally, even to new objects.


ive seen many suggestions regarding alternatives to state sets, however when ive tried looking into the various options in the past, they all look really clunky and time consuming to set up. The concept of state sets, and how it works (tick record, make the changes, untick record, done) seems very elegant, but it seems like its still flaky as heck.

i merged a new object into a scene with state sets already set up, went to my "depth fog pass" state, and hit record to add a material change for the new object, to the existing state, . boom, maxscript error. i ended up having to delete all the states i had created because they all started getting messed up.


on a related note, scene states, state sets... whats the difference? i confuse the two continually. i read somewhere that one replaces the other but they are both still present in max 2024..

[hermit.crab]

Seems like a 3ds Max thing, since I too cannot record material changes any material changes even with Arnold and Standard Surface. Scene States, however, do work for both engines.

on a related note, scene states, state sets... whats the difference? i confuse the two continually. i read somewhere that one replaces the other but they are both still present in max 2024.

I presume the case is similar to Render to Texture and Bake To Texture.

[Joelaff]

You end up cloning your objects into layers, and charging the materials. Then use state sets to control the layer visibility.

Do state sets record object ID? I can’t recall, but that could work too.

[super gnu]

You end up cooking your objects into layers, and charging the materials. Then use state sets to control the layer visibility.

Do state sets record object ID? I can’t recall, but that could work too.

yeah i can of course duplicate the objects and have multiple layers, but that does not resolve the issue of it getting messy when i add new geometry to a scene during tweaks.. since these scene management tools are supposed to help with automating stuff, the thought that i have to check ive duplicated any new geometry to the correct layers, with the correct new material assignments is... annoying.

in my current scenes im constantly moving, duplicating and deleting trees for the various shots and comments from client, they all share a material which needs swapping for several render passes.

if i could just find a way to tell it that "all objects present in this layer should have a material swap" or "all objects with this material should swap to this one" id be a happy bunny, but so far ive not seen a way.