8

Material Editor Menu Bar 1273
Nav iga tion M enu
The Navigation menu provides tools that navigate
a material’s hierarchy.
•
Go to Parent (page 2–1290)
• Go For ward to Sibling (page 2–1291)
• Go Back ward to S ibling—Like Go For ward To
Sibling, but navig ates to the preceding sibling
map in the t ree, instead of the succeeding one.
Opti ons M enu
The Options menu provides some additional tools
and display choices.
•
Propagate Materials to Instances (page 2–1276)
• Ma nual Update Toggle—Equivalent to the
Manual Update toggle in the
Material Editor
Options dialog (page 2–1280)
.
•
Copy/Rota te Dr ag M ode Toggle—Equivalent to
choosing either Drag/Copy or Drag/Rotate on
the
sample slot right-click menu (page 2–1266) .
•
Background (p age 2–1277)
• Custom Ba ck ground Toggl e—If you have used
the
MaterialEditorOptionsdialog(page
2–1280)
to assign a custom background, this
toggles its display.
•
Backlight (page 2–1276)
• Cycle3X2,5X3,6X4SampleSlots—Cycles
through the equivalent choices on the
sample
slot right-click menu (p age 2–1266)
.
•
Opti ons —Opens the Material Editor Options
dialog (page 2–1280)
.
Utilities Menu
The Utilities menu provides map rendering and
selecting objects by material.
•
Render Map—Equivalent to choosing Render
Map on the
sample slot right-click menu (page
2–1266)
.
•
Select Objects by Material (page 2–1283)
• Clean MultiMater ia l (page 2–1552)
• Instance Duplicate Map (page 2–1555)
• R eset Material Editor Slots—Replaces all
materials in the Material Editor with the default
material type. This act ion is not undoable,
but y ou can restore the previous state of the
Material Editor with the Restore Material Editor
Slots command (see below).
•
Conde nse Mat erial Ed it o r Slots—Sets all
unused materials in the Material Editor to the
default type, retaining only materials in the
scene and moving those materials to the first
slotsintheeditor.Thisactionisnotundoable,
but y ou can restore the previous state of the
Material Editor with the Restore Material Editor
Slots command (see below).
•
Restore M aterial Editor Slots—When you
use either of the two previous commands,
3dsMaxsavesthecurrentstateoftheMaterial
Editor in a buffer; using this command restores
the state of the editor using the buffer contents.
Tip: Thebufferthatholdsthematerial
definitions survives the File menu > Reset
command. Thus, if you use either the Reset
Material Editor Slots or the Condense Material
Editor Slots funct ion, and then reset 3ds Max,
you can then use R estore Ma terial Editor Slots
to bring all materials back into the Material
Editor. This makes it easy to use the same
materials in different projects.
For b est results, follow this procedure:
1. Save your scene.
2. Use the Reset Material Editor Slots or
Condense Material Editor Slots function.
3. Reset 3ds Max. When prompted to save
the scene, click No. Otherwise, you might
lose material definitions in the Material
Editor that were saved with the scene.