Is there a way to connect a color to a material.

When I have an image from a cad application. This image has basic colors for each material, like red for road and green for gras. So In max I want to give the green the gras material and red the road material and so on and so on till like 5 colors. A bit like vertex painting, but instead of painting importing a color map. I know also the blend way with a mask, but then it is only two materials.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
Vhector

Hi,

We use AutoCAD Architecture in our office and in this you can give the different object styles a material or several materials.

In Max you can create a material library with materials with the same names as in AutoCAD and when you link the files you can update the scene materials from the library.

Without knowing what version of CAD you use it’s hard to answer you properly but I hope this helps.

Sazzle

Well what I want to achive is not with objects but with an image. I’ve got a big topografic map, modeled it 3d as one object, but got all mat information only in 2d. So I thought making an color image of the 2d drawing and use it as the texture. One thing I normally do is bring the color map to PS and paint the grass and so. But my topo is so big it is difficult to contain quality. So I want to try it with masks, bu I know to do it with two materials (blend) and not with more.

You could do this by using Blend materials, each with its own Mask bitmap (white where you want the upper material to show, black for the other material). You can nest multiple Blend materials inside each other in a cascade, by adding another Blend material in the upper slot of each Blend material. Each deeper Mask map should have a smaller white area, so the top-most Mask is the largest most inclusive of all, to “show” all the rest of the children materials “below” it.