What do you use for material management?

V-Ray V-Ray Common Off-topic
1

Until now we use the regular 3ds max material library management system as in different mat files and grouping of mat files for display in the material browser etc.

What I’d rather like to have is something with a custom Preview image, maybe some Tags on which projects the material was used with a seperate preview image, maybe even some scripted functionality for adjusting texture sizes based on object scale (You know, when models come in 254% scaled due to inches, etc. all those kinds of things.) Is there a reliable solution out there for that stuff?

2

Have a look at the Design Connected Connector app.

I started making a shared mat library for the studio, where a team can join and access the materials.

You can add tags and notes etc. and just drag the material into max.

Vizpark do a material manager as well, but it seemed a bit overkill for us.

3

@squeakybadger

Can you explain how that works? I use the connector app for the model library and would like to also use it for the .mat files as I need to share them between 2 locations with different network paths. Being able to quickly relink textures as we do for the models would be great.

However from what I have found so far it doesn’t seem to “do” anything with .mat files, i.e. show bitmaps, missing links, etc which it does with models. Or do you use it in a different manner to what I describe?

4

I use Project Manager 2. I like it.

5

For myself I use the Vray Material Pro Presets. I don’t use the presets that come with it though. But I like the interface and the material testing scene.