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452 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
that tell it how to render the sur face of an objec t
given certain lighting conditions. Those material
properties that are so central to architectural
visualization (that convey surface coloring,
surface texture, transparency, and so forth) are
only one of many sets of properties covered in
an Au todesk Architectural Desktop material
definition. To make your work more efficient, the
rendering material properties stored and assigned
in Architectural Desktop are designed to flow
transparently to 3ds Max through the
File Link
Manager (page 3–431)
.
See also
Propagate Materials to Instances (p age 2–1276)
Assigning Materials to Link ed
Architectural Desk top Objects
Material assignments exhibit special behavior on
linked Autodesk Architectural Desktop objects
and blocks, and the behavior is cont rolled by the
Propagate Materials To Instances toggle (page
2–1276)
.
In the default state, assig ning a material to any
component of any lin ked Architectura l D esktop
object or block is equivalent to assigning the same
material to every instance of that component of
that object or block throughout your scene.
As an example, let’s say you have multiple instances
of a block named Telephone in your Architectural
Desktop drawing, which consists of two nested
blocks named Handset and Base. If you assign a
material to one Handset anywhere in your scene,
alltheHandsetsinalltheTelephonesthroughout
the scene will receive that material.
If you want to keep materials from propagating
between instances in your scene, turn off the
Propagate Materials To Instances toggle (page
2–1276)
.
See also
Instanced Objects (page 3–463)
Blocks (page 3–464)
Ma ki ng Changes to Ar chi tectural
Desktop Mater ials
Architectural D esktop object components
frequently appear in 3ds Max carrying rendering
materialassignmentsthatweremadein
Architectural Desktop. You can use these
materials, adjust them, or replace them with new
rendering materials for use in 3ds Max. If you
modify or replace the materials in 3ds Max, or if
they change in the linked Architectural Desktop
drawing , you can choose either to retain the
current material in 3ds Max or else to revise the
mate rial assigned in 3ds Max with the current
material in Architectural Desktop when you use
the
File Lin k Manager (page 3–431) to reload the
linked drawing.
Note: When 3ds Max encounters additional
material references among xref files that use a
material name that is already in use, it compares
the properties of the two material definitions
in an attempt to determine whether they really
represent ident ical materials. If the two materials
appear to be the same material being used in
different drawings, 3ds Max will u se only one of
the material definitions for all objects assigned
either material. But if 3ds Max determines that t h is
is merely a naming conflict between two different
materials, it will slightly modify the name of one
of the materials and keep the materials and their
assignments distinct.
Legacy M ater i al s i n Ar chitectur a l
Desktop
Longtime users of AutoCAD may be familiar with
an older form of material creation and assignment
associated with the RMAT command in AutoCAD