Material IDs in ChaosScatter Geo Displayed as Full in Viewport

[Joelaff]

It would be great if Material IDs came through in the display of Chaos Scatter objects displayed as full geo in the viewport. So we could see the different colors (or textures) of the different IDs in the viewport. Right now I only seem to be able to display them as a single Material ID.

Thanks.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting.

Material IDs came through in the display of Chaos Scatter objects displayed as full geo in the viewport

could see the different colours (or textures) of the different IDs in the viewport

What do you mean? One thing is to display the individual instances with colours corresponding to a material ID (a single colour for a certain material ID) and another is to display the materials of the models that are scattered in the viewport with textures, etc.
Displaying materials with textures is not practical and in many cases impossible. We have the IPR if we wanted to see a realistic preview of our setup.

[Joelaff]

So say you want to clone 1000 instances of a beach ball that has two colors (like two stripes).

In Max these two colors are two material IDs. So they show up in the viewport as either the wire colors or the material colors (depending on settings)-- but you see two distinct colors.

If I instance these with ChaosScatter I only see Material ID 1 for all polygons (with the scatter set to show full models, not boxes). It would be nice if we could see the effect of the different material IDs.

Of course we have IPR or final renders, but I am talking about the viewport... Why? Because clients want to see previs or rough animations before render, and they would like to see multiple material IDs. Now I suppose I could break the object into multiple objects by material ID, but this opens its own can of worms, especially if the objects are animated.

Forest does this. So I am hoping Chaos Scatter can as well.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, we discussed your idea and we will log it for review. It does not seem like it is going to be implemented any time soon though. Lest see if other users want this feature as well.

clients want to see previews or rough animations before render, and they would like to see multiple material IDs

You could use Vantage for that. Set it up to the lowest quality possible, It is very fast and the images are incomparably better that a viewport preview