Hi,
I’m reading around about how to set the compact material editor to have all slots default to vray material and I can’t seem to get it to work.
I’ve tried changing the setting several times in Customize UI and Defaults Switcher, I close max, re-open. and everything is arch+design. And all of the sample slots appear darker.
Advice?
Try this. Setup your scene the way you like it, then save your file with the name MaxStart in the Documents/3dsmax/scenes folder. (Pretty sure it’s that folder.)
Now max will start with literally that exact scene as it is. Works great. New employees never have to guess about layer convention or doing the little setup on each scene to get things organized anymore.
Hello 
YEs, as Deflaminis precised it, using a custom maxstart is indeed very useful for daily work.
For mat editor in particular, you may need to customize Medit.mat located in C:\Users\…\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2014 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\defaults\MAX. By tweaking this .mat, the Mat Editor will load this file any time 3dsmax is run or when its samples are reset.
I hope this will help you a bit !
Cheers.
This is odd - Max.vray should change anything (including material editor samples) to V-Ray.
Which V-Ray/3DSMax version is that?
Have you tried to re-install V-Ray.
Same here - Medit.mat is still full of std materials (3dsmax2014, VRay v3.00.07)
vanderloo, you can try this command:
for i = 1 to 24 do
(
setMEditMaterial i (VRayMtl ())
)
Then you can save these material to Medit.mat, overwriting the previous one, and voilà. Each time you’ll start 3dsmax or reset mateditor slots, you’ll get VRay mtls everywhere
Regards.
What happens if you run Reset Material Editor Slots?
Also what about the other settings like Shadow Type in Standard Max Lights?
Hello,
Checking this stuff in CurrentDefault.ini 
EDIT: oh crap, what a mess ! I’m used to tweak inis and stuff here, but I don’t understand everything under the wood here I’ve tried to switch to the MAX.Vray UI, but Gamma was messed up (1.8, don’t affect color picker and mat editor slots) and other things were f****d up. So I ended to switch back to the std UI and then load my own one. Now I want to copy only the CurrentDefaults.ini from MAX.VRay folder to our shared Defaults folder, and no way to get mateditor to behave correctly (reset mateditor slots sets slots back to std materials !), std lights shadows neither. I give up for today 
Make sure that Vray is default renderer and material editor is also locked to the production renderer. See attached. If this is set correct, click ‘save as defaults’.
Hello,
Yes, it’s the case. Our maxstart is set like that.
There might be something wrong with the config-files.
Have you tried to reset Max preferences or to reinstall it by first removing all leftover files from the previous installation?
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max-design/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Resetting-3ds-Max-3ds-Max-Design.html
Hello
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll try that as soon as our current deadline is over !
Regards.