Change Surface materials on imported mesh (obj)

[rosalie.mantion]

Ok, so being fearly new to 3D coat, there are a lot of basic things that elude me. Like how to apply or swap a simple material?

 

So I've been working pretty back in forth on my UV's for an item i am painting right now. What I want to do is simply import the new version of my UVs and continue painting with the layers and material I already have in my scene. However, I can't seam to figure out any straight forward way of going this. The only way I have been able to do is so fare is by starting a new scene with my new obj, import all my photoshop layers (which is not acting weird now that I've started using layer group folders *see this question thread for details on that*) 

 

So ya! Basically what this question boils down to is: how do I update a mesh(obj) that I modified in a 3rd party program (Maya) back into 3D coat and have it use my existing material and paint layers! 

 

Thanks a bunch! 

[Gary Dave]

You might be able to keep your material/paint layers by exporting them out first... buuut "what you've painted where" becomes a bit obsolete if you're bringing in an updated mesh with different UV's. Side note, you can always hop over to the UV room in 3d coat (I think anything in the paint room will also show in the UV room) to make UV adjustments, you just have to make sure you hit "Apply UV's" or something like that when you're done, it will warn you that the procedure is irreversible, but afterwards if you go back into the paint room you'll still have all your layers, and your UV's will be updated. As I said earlier though, the things you've painted will likely be all out of place if you've made some severe UV tweaks.

[rosalie.mantion]

I don't expect 3D Coat to remap my layers to my new geometry, I actually want my layers to stay put. I really need the new mesh to be imported form my 3rd party software, since I am also adding new geometry. 

 

I really just want to apply an existing Surface material to a new object. Is there nothing to be done as straightforward as that? 

 

If I import an new object using File/import object. It will ask me for the name of the surface material. It wont be smart enough to see that it already exist, instead it will create an incremental version of it. I can see the two surface materials in the appropriate tab, but if i delete one of them, there is no way to regenerate a new one, or assign an existing one. It goes against the conventions of any other 3D program I've ever used. 

[Gary Dave]

I see, yeah. I always just associate the Surface Material as the object, in that if I remove the surface material, the object goes bye bye. But this is independent of layers, or at-least I had thought it was (don't have 3c open at the moment). I've never really noticed any major "material" per say in the paint room, just layers assigned. For example, I can have multiple "surface materials" all drawing from the same layers, so in theory you should just be able to import your new mesh, remove the old "surface material" and your previous layers would remain intact. Perhaps this is not the case though? I cannot test.

[rosalie.mantion]

Yeah, so far it dosnt seem to work that way. But who knows, I have only been using 3D coat for a short time, I'm probably disregarding something super basic. 

 

Of what I can tell, Layers are shared across multiple materials. That being said, if I have several materials and export my .psd, It will ask me for witch material i want to export it. Once I re-import it , it will replace all my layers and display nothing *aka transparency* for the material that was not exported. It makes no sens to me that layers are shared across materials. I can see that I can export all my materials at once, it will create a .psd for each material but it gives me crazy results with padding. It almost looks like tis corrupting my layers. It doesnt happen if i export one at a time.

[Gary Dave]

Hmm, I wonder if you're also dealing with material ID's. Whenever 3dc asks me which textures I'm exporting, it's usually because I've got them on a different UV set, and 3dc treats material ID's as having different UV sets (I believe). Could you perhaps upload an example project of something that's going screwy for you?

[rosalie.mantion]

I think you are on to something with material ID's how would you go about modifying them?

[rosalie.mantion]

Just wanted to bump up this issue. To clarify the use of being able to import new objects but use existing Surface Materials would be this: if I had a character with clothing and as I worked on it, decided to add a necklace or earrings that could be placed in an existing material ( no use to add an extra texture when there is still place in the main tex) I would like to import my new object and assign it the existing clothing surface material that is already in 3D coat and has layers. 

 

Right now the only work around I have found is to start a new scene and import the paint layer XML... this used to work, but now that my layers are getting more and more complex, it is buggy as hell (not exporting certain layers, generating seams all over my normal, and the list goes on....)

 

Is there, or will there be in the future, any way of assigning an existing surface material to an imported object in 3D coat? 

 

Thank you so much!

[Tony Nemo]

This operation should be done in the Retopo room  where you can import your new OBJs and add them to the existing UV map with a new "Unwrap".

[rosalie.mantion]

Thank you so much Tony! I'm still figuring it all out, but thanks to you I've noticed the File> Import > Replace geometry function! Its a bit wonky, but it does exactly what I wanted it to do! Seriously, how is this not anywhere on google, I looked everywhere! 

 

Thank you so much!