The Scene Materials Browser provides for the efficient management of Materials which are referenced in the current Maxwell Scene.
The Scene Materials browser allows for more than one Material to be selected at a time. The items shown in the browser's context menu are dependent on the current selection-state of the browser.
Context MenuFrom the browser's context-menu, it is possible to:
- create, import, or copy Materials
- Remove selected, unused, or all Materials
- Select objects by Materials
- Assign Materials to objects
- import and export Material libraries (.mxl)
Materials may also be assigned to layers or objects by simply dragging them from the browser and dropping them where desired.
Import and ExportThe 'Export Selected' item prompts for a filename, and the saves all of the selected Materials to an .mxl file for later use. During this process, .mxm files are also created for these Materials, and all related texture, .r2, and .ior files are copied into a 'textures' folder, which is placed next to the .mxl file. Paths to the copied files are altered in the exported .mxl and .mxm files to be relative, and to point to the newly-copied files, located in the 'textures' folder.
The 'Import Library' item is used to import a previously-exported .mxl file. While basically self-explanatory, this function has one special feature: if there are any Materials already contained in the Scene which have the same name as one contained in the .mxl file, you will be prompted as to whether you would like to replace the existing Materials with the one in the .mxl. This ability may be used to swap multiple different Materials in a model by simply keeping two sets of identically-named Materials and importing them based on the desired effect. This rule also applies when Materials are dragged from the Database Manager into the Scene.