What is the command for connecting shaders to vraymeshmtl by name instead of number?

[brobins]

Hi there,

I am trying to determine the command for connecting shaders to a vraymeshmtl node automatically, by name.

I know how to do it via shader value but not name.

For example, I would like to connect the following shader to the same shader name in the vray proxy, rather than use the shader value. Even more specifically, I would like to do this 'en mass' for all the shader names in the proxy.

connectAttr -f e_plasticBlackSmooth_SHD.outColor Ascent_vraymeshmtl.shaders[0];

Any help appreciated

Thanks

[Dan Andersen]

I've done something like this in the past:

import pymel.core as pm

for vrayMeshMat in pm.ls(type='VRayMeshMaterial'):
    vrayMeshMatShdList = [x for x in enumerate(vrayMeshMat.shaderNames.get())]
    for i, shdName in vrayMeshMatShdList:
        if not vrayMeshMat.shaders[i].isConnected():
            pm.PyNode(shdName).outColor >> vrayMeshMat.shaders[i]

It's quick and dirty and doesn't take into account if the shader indices are jumbled, but should work for most cases.

[Dan Andersen]

This is probably better:

import pymel.core as pm

for vrayMeshMat in pm.ls(type='VRayMeshMaterial'):
    vrayMeshMatShdList = zip(vrayMeshMat.shaders.getArrayIndices(), vrayMeshMat.shaderNames.get())
    for i, shdName in vrayMeshMatShdList:
        if not vrayMeshMat.shaders[i].isConnected():
            shd = pm.ls(shdName)
            if shd:
                shd[0].outColor >> vrayMeshMat.shaders[i]
            else:
                pm.warning('Failed to find shader: '+shdName+'. Skipping')

I didn't have a chance to test it, but it should take care of any index issues and also not fail if it can't find a shader with a matching name in the scene..

[brobins]

Thanks Dan!

Will give it a try now.