Want To Combine Shading Groups Into One

[sentry65]

often times I have a shader that plugs into multiple shading groups that have formed over time. I'd like to be able to select all those shading groups and combine them into one

It's annoying when you right click a shader to select all objects and it only selects the objects from ONE of the shading groups. Shouldn't it select ALL the objects for ALL the shading groups it's connected to?

Or at least I'd like to be able to right click on a shading group and select all objects in that shading group. I know some workaround like creating a new dummy material to plug into each shading group one at a time etc etc, but it's just tedious for something that IMO should be a quick and simple function

oh and when can we get SSS shaders that show an actual hardware color in the viewport?

[joojaa]

Well the problem is that you think the SHADER does something. The actual key is shading group here. Its the one that is the boss not the other way around. Al tough it's in general hidden from view.

But yes you can get this if you wish its not hard to do at all if you pm me later today to remind me of this post i will take a looksee at home.

QUOTE
It's annoying when you right click a shader to select all objects and it only selects the objects from ONE of the shading groups. Shouldn't it select ALL the objects for ALL the shading groups it's connected to?

In general there should be just one shader per shading's. Rest of the shaders in one network should be thought of as textures of tht one shader. And shader that never output any direct connectiob should probably be omitted form shading group connections totally (and the global shader list).

PS: Please note! if you delete the shading group of a shader it will stop being assignable to objects. And act like texture.

[sentry65]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 05/16/08, 01:13 AM) [snapback]285677[/snapback]
Well the problem is that you think the SHADER does something. The actual key is shading group here. Its the one that is the boss not the other way around. Al tough it's in general hidden from view.
But yes you can get this if you wish its not hard to do at all if you pm me later today to remind me of this post i will take a looksee at home.
In general there should be just one shader per shading's. Rest of the shaders in one network should be thought of as textures of tht one shader. And shader that never output any direct connectiob should probably be omitted form shading group connections totally (and the global shader list).
PS: Please note! if you delete the shading group of a shader it will stop being assignable to objects. And act like texture.

believe me, I know the shader group is what really matters, not the shader. I've been plugging in shaders into shader groups to assign my newest final shader to replace my temporary shaders. It's always worked just fine and in heavy scenes was MUCH quicker than right clicking to select the objects in that shader group then assigning it the new shader. That and working that way gives me the ability to use the same shader but different displacement maps for different shader groups instead of having duplicate shaders. bogging down my hypershade for each displacement map

I'd like the flexibility to grab multiple shader groups and combine them into one or be able to select the objects/selection from specific shader groups, not just the default one. I wouldn't think it'd take much time for autodesk to impliment

I should have worked in a cleaner way to prevent multiple shader groups from happening, but I'd like to have a way to quickly clean up the mess and simplify it all because right now a lot of my old files have 5-20 shader groups per shader.

I could probably clean it up in 20 minutes per scene getting everything down to just 1 shader group per shader plugging in a temporary material, waiting for maya to make the selection for each isolated shader group, then assigning it the final shader that's connected to the final single shader group etc, but there's no way I'm going to do that for every single old file I open up.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(sentry65 @ 05/16/08, 09:25 PM) [snapback]285708[/snapback]
simplify it all because right now a lot of my old files have 5-20 shader groups per shader.

Ok then your doing something weird(or referencing the shit out of maya well yes older mayas had tendency to do this). Anyawy its okay for me for you to have a feature done by autodesk. Ist just you could have had it in 5 next minutes.. but i guess its more important for you to have it in 3 years or so.

Anyway theres on the whole not much point in letting auto desk fix things that are easily fixable in mel. Its using resources wrong. Since most of use cannot do anything inside the code let us stress them to fix what matters and fix easily done annoyances ourselves. Now every requast on simple annoyace is away form a imprvement in the core.

Yes i know annoyances ate the thinsg that most hurt your feelings on day to day basis but its also the things that on the whole benefit us least. Theres certain overhead firms have thet we do not.

Besides i dont really think thsi is a super common problem.

QUOTE
but there's no way I'm going to do that for every single old file I open up.

sure but you can batch it easily. anyway 20 minutes is qute much since i did a scrpt thet does this automatically in 10

PS. for the record i have bothe of the requested features ready by now. (ok so for REAL release thed still nee dsoem major testing but)