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Replacing Materials with C4D imported Materials


zoomer

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Goes like this :

 

1. RMB click Existing Material

2. Choose Delete

3. LMB click

Replace Dialog Opens

4. LMB to open the Material List

5. (Scroll to) Choose Material to Replace with

6. LMB + Select or double LMB

7. LMB Yes

 

This way it takes hours.

In C4D this is an ALT+Drag of new over old Material.

 

Also I would expect the import of C4D Materials would ask if it should

overwrite existing Materials with same name.

 

Current Workaround,

load C4D Mats into another VW file, import Materials from there to get an overwrite option.

 

And I wish the RM had an OIP, to do changes directly from there.

Edited by zoomer
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For me not much - related to VW RW itself.

It allows people to download or buy some Material Libraries for C4D and use them

in VW RW. So more choice.

 

My advantage is that I can export my projects with ready to use C4D Materials.

As VW allows to edit these for VW purposes BUT will not change their C4D Settings,

I can Exchange my files with C4D with already correct C4D Materials.

 

When you Exchange with C4D, C4D will sure keep its new Material assignments for

former VW Materials which you already have overwritten.

But only for geometry that already existed.

Each time you exchange newer additional VW Geometry, these parts will come in into

C4D with their old VW Materials VW again. And you have to overwrite those parts again.

(And that process itself has some tedious drawbacks (with mapping) which I will let aside here)

Edited by zoomer
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ah, understood, I normally wouldn't go from C4D back to vectorworks for renders. 

 

My preferred method is to use a basic color in vectorworks for each material so I can isolate it quickly in C4D, ie  <select texture tags of object> and change all materials at once to C4D one - I can't recommend Corona for C4d enough - really simple to use and good results, currently a free beta...

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41 minutes ago, fabrica said:

I normally wouldn't go from C4D back to vectorworks for renders. 

 

Yes, normally,

if everything is finally in C4D, I wouldn't come to the idea to render in the VW RW UI too.

 

My strange workflow isn't a general recommendation for others.

And I think I would not even do so if Exchange would recognize that these Materials are already

changed in C4D and Exchange should tell C4D to use its Versions with same name instead.

 

And that backward compatibility works with C4D standard Materials only and to a certain

degree with C4D advanced Materials, in which way I still do not overview so far.

It does not work with my VRAY materials, as far as I remember, they won't even import in VW.

And I haven't tried so far what will happen if you use the new R19 PBR Materials, invented

to support AMD's GPU/CPU ProRender.

 

But although C4D's options to replace VW Materials works pretty straightforward, as far as

Material assignment only concerned, I don't like C4D's Texture Location and Scale stored

separately for each single object. That is cumbersome to replace Materials with different

Texture sizes, or to reassign the VW Material Doublets that will come in again.

(I use mostly simple tiling cube mapping)

So I can't just overwrite new VW Mat Doublets again by the C4D Material, I also have to

check if those need a new Texture Scale for those new parts.

 

And even worse, in C4D Cube Mapping, to get the same Texture size as I set in VW or

anywhere else, I have to set ½ Size in Cinema. Quite error prone.

 

If I can just use the good "real" C4D Materials as they come from VW,

i not only don't have to care about Material Assignments but also no need to care about Texture

Sizes and Location after each Exchange :)

 

That advantage ends of course if you ever need to re-adjust a C4D Material again.

Than you have to go back to tedious VW Material re-import by using transfer files and all that stuff ;)

Edited by zoomer
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 28.9.2017 at 8:36 PM, zoomer said:

My advantage is that I can export my projects with ready to use C4D Materials.

As VW allows to edit these for VW purposes BUT will not change their C4D Settings,

I can Exchange my files with C4D with already correct C4D Materials.

 

When you Exchange with C4D, C4D will sure keep its new Material assignments for

former VW Materials which you already have overwritten.

But only for geometry that already existed.

Each time you exchange newer additional VW Geometry, these parts will come in into

C4D with their old VW Materials VW again. And you have to overwrite those parts again.

(And that process itself has some tedious drawbacks (with mapping) which I will let aside here)

 

 

OK, I have it running.

Imported C4D Materials into my VW Preset File and can just export my File to C4D with C4D Materials.

Using Beckman in Reflections only, these work nearly well in VW too, without much need to overwrite.

 

 

But it is pretty useless and tedious in my workflow.

 

Exporting or even overwriting VW Materials by C4D is far to tedious.

So its only interesting if you need no more Material editing.

(Replacing is possible)

 

You can't edit those Materials from VW - for C4D - just overwrite for VW usage.

If you keep Material Exchange activated, or create new Objects, those Materials will

come in again as Duplicates, same as with a normal workflow.

 

And as I'm used to assign my Materials to C4D Layers in C4D to sort them,

each Exchange will throw them in without Layer assignment again.

(Wish : Import VW Material Folders as C4D Layers and assign these to included Materials)

 

So a 2-way Exchange for Materials would be very welcome.

 

 

Bottom Line : Don't do it. Don't bother with this.

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