Please forgive me if there is a really obvious solution to this issue but I’ve only been working with 3DS Max for a few months.

I’ve modeled a bicycle and for some reason (that I can’t work out) the material that is applied to the forks, pedals, bars and wheels seem to be in some way locked together. That is, whenever I change the material that is applied to one object all of these objects seem to change even they are not selected. They are separate objects.

What have I done? How can I fix this problem?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Dan

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If all those objects have the same material applied, then what you are seeing is correct: when you edit the material, you’ll see the changes on all those objects. If you want to edit that material and have the changes only show up on one object e.g. the forks, then the forks will have to have a separate material applied to them.
- click the Make Material Copy button (or Material menu/Make Material Copy)
- give the copy material a unique name e.g. Forks Material
- edit the material and apply to the forks object

Make sure you go thru the Materials and Mapping tutorials.

wade s

Max 8 (no mo) & 9 (solo) SP2
Win XP SP2, 3.7 Ghz, 3Gig Ram
Quadro FX 3400

Instead of 1 material you need to set up a sub-object material (I’m guessing) - I’ll assume you are getting errors when attaching objects together and they have different materials

Click on a Shader Ball - Hit the black x in Material editor to clear if needed then instead of standard set to subobject

there are numbers next to each ball and then where you set smoothing on the right modeling panel there is ways to assign those numbers to each piece or face. See attached pics:

Make sure you assign the entire bike with this texture then go in and assign what ID you want the faces to have by selecting faces and assigningthat ID number to them.

You can also then select by ID number later on which makes it nicer

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Heres the other pics

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I would just like to add, even though you have only used Max a few months, learning and getting used to Multi-Subobject materials will be extremely important in your development.  This will allow you to have a single material in you scene that is just the bicycle and all its individual materials are embedded inside this one Multi-Subobject material.  If you only have the bicycle in the scene, not a big deal.  However, when there are, for example, ten objects in your scene it is better to have ten materials, one for each object, instead of thirty to forty or even more materials that you have to remember what goes with what object.

Calvin Clayton, Jr.

Wade S 30 October 2007 11:40 AM

If all those objects have the same material applied, then what you are seeing is correct: when you edit the material, you’ll see the changes on all those objects. If you want to edit that material and have the changes only show up on one object e.g. the forks, then the forks will have to have a separate material applied to them.
- click the Make Material Copy button (or Material menu/Make Material Copy)
- give the copy material a unique name e.g. Forks Material
- edit the material and apply to the forks object

Make sure you go thru the Materials and Mapping tutorials.

That’s the thing I’ve tried applying different materials (in different slots) to the objects. The problem is when I apply a new material to one of the objects by selecting only one of the objects and a fresh slot and create a material a whole set (pedals, forks and both wheels) of the objects change. even though I only select one wheel and make changes in a fresh slot. Am I missing something?

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I can’t tell for sure, but it sounds like your bike is one object comprised of several elements (fork, pedals, wheels) w/ a Multi/Sub-Obj material applied to it. This would allow each element to have a unique material, and when you apply a new material to the bike, everything (fork, pedals, wheels) would change to that new material.

Try this: click on an empty slot in the Material Editor. Then click on the eye-dropper button (just to the left of the material name field) and click on your bike. This will grab the material of your bike and assign it to the slot. Is it a Multi/Sub-Obj material? If so, you can now edit the Sub-Materials independently of each other, and the changes will only show on the part which has that Sub-Mat.

Feel free to zip up your Max file and post it here for us to examine.

wade s

Max 8 (no mo) & 9 (solo) SP2
Win XP SP2, 3.7 Ghz, 3Gig Ram
Quadro FX 3400

When you assign newly created material to one of the objects in the scene, do you see in the view-port this menu (See attachment) asking you whether to replace or to rename the material? If yes, there are different materials, having the same name in your scene.
If two materials share the same name Max has no way to know that they are different.
So if you create a copy of the material change it but forget to rename it, if you assign it to some selected object in the scene and hit the “replace” option, all the object having materials with this name will get it. Therefore you have to give the new material a different name or hit the “Rename this material?” option in the menu.
I think that is the problem you are having. Anyway as Wade said you can post the zipped file here someone will find the solution.

ivan

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ivan iliev 06 November 2007 06:56 PM

When you assign newly created material to one of the objects in the scene, do you see in the view-port this menu (See attachment) asking you whether to replace or to rename the material? If yes, there are different materials, having the same name in your scene.
If two materials share the same name Max has no way to know that they are different.
So if you create a copy of the material change it but forget to rename it, if you assign it to some selected object in the scene and hit the “replace” option, all the object having materials with this name will get it. Therefore you have to give the new material a different name or hit the “Rename this material?” option in the menu.
I think that is the problem you are having. Anyway as Wade said you can post the zipped file here someone will find the solution.

ivan

You’re exactly right… that was the problem. Now it all makes sense. Thanks for your help Ivan

Workstation - 3DS Max Design 2012 SP1 - Windows 7 Pro 64 bit - Core i7 3.2GHz - GeForce GTX 280 - 6Gb RAM
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You are welcome Dan.

ivan