object is one mesh but with ten pieces how to handle shaders?

[kriscabrera15]

Hey guys helping a friend do a short film and he gave me a model that has been rigged already. But one of the models has like ten pieces but was combined to one mesh. But each piece needs a new shader. How are you guys going about this? I know in max its easy to assign mat ID to poly faces but not sure if maya works the same?

[vlado]

In Maya, you can assign shaders to faces of the object.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Bertjenkins]

Another thing you can do if you have good UV's is create multiple masks from each UV shell in photoshop, and then use those masks in a blend material to divide each separate material.

[Morbid Angel]

Yeah I would try not to assign shaders to faces, its not a good method (compared to max). What Bertjenkins suggested is probably best way of going about it, masking various past of the uv shells and blending those using vray blend mtl.

[snivlem]

In Maya, you can assign shaders to faces of the object.*

*Use at your own risk!

[Morbid Angel]

In Maya, you can assign shaders to faces of the object.

Best regards,
Vlado

Actually this would be an interesting idea, what if you could put faces in a set and pass that to a shader? can vray do that already, would be great if it did or was able to.

[bigbossfr]

Actually this would be an interesting idea, what if you could put faces in a set and pass that to a shader? can vray do that already, would be great if it did or was able to.

And an attribute to set the shader name or the choice to use a connection (message connection)
Another attribute to the set to create regular expression ! If the attribute is not here, all objects in the set are getted, if the attribute is here, the set uses the regular expression.
And the possibility to add a set to a set to override.

Like :
set1 ----> all objects
|
|-----> set2 ---> another objects to override

With this :
- easy to manage : shaders and assignement are independent
- regular expressions : it is light because no connection on the set (with faces or mesh or other), just one regular expression. Solid/security : no broken connections or something like this.

[vlado]

If the attribute is not here, all objects in the set are getted, if the attribute is here, the set uses the regular expression.

Regular expressions would be hell to track for interactive rendering... just saying

Best regards,
Vlado

[bigbossfr]

I think RT will not be a problem. But dynamics assignation with expression and independent assignation (with this we can export/reference assignement on a side, and on another side, export/reference of shaders) will fix the big problem of assignation in Maya (stability, management...).
An advanced Katana shaders assignation in Maya....