Finding a smart material in 3DC Paint room

[Jamie Norton]

 

Hey dudes! Can anyone please tell me, is there a way to see which smart material is on an object, please? I made a lot of smart materials, and need a faster way to work out which one was the successful one ? The eyedropper tool doesn't seem to highlight the active smart material for that part of the mesh? Thanks in advance.

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Jamie Norton

[Carlosan]

Once applied it is not possible to know which material was selected, 

 

//edit

 

[Jamie Norton]

1 hour ago, Carlosan said:

Once applied it is not possible to know which material was selected, 

Thanks bro! That confirms it then. I just willmake much better use of the smart material preview window, and be more systematic with my material application from now on pulling it apart, it looks like I made that ‘effect’ from two layers of varying opacity. 
Not the best way to do it, obviously making a custom SM with those specific textures and opacities is much for efficient. I have so much to learn about texturing in 3DC (or any 3D other than Keyshot) at least I am on the journey now

Edited August 17, 2021 by Jamie Norton

[digman]

There is one way. 

Attach a Smart material to a layer.  It will show a small icon in the layer of the Smart material. Now if you select another layer and then re-select the layer with the attached Smart Material it will be highlighted in the Shaders Panel. You can only attach one Shader per layer.

Hover your mouse over the icon in the layer and a larger preview will appear. There is no name given but the preview is fairly large.

Once a Smart Material has been attached to the layer you can edit it with the Smart Material editor and it will auto update on the mesh after you save your edited Smart Material. You can not reapply a Smart Material  in the viewport manually using this method but you can detach and re-attach the Smart material if you needed to reapply it.  

You can not manually paint on a layer with a attached material. 

Of course this would require more layers but is one way of keep tracking of your Smart Materials after they are applied and if they need editing.

The above is a good way of testing Smart Materials too and editing them.

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Right Click on a Shader in the panel. Choose attach to the current layer. Detach a Smart Material same method or right click on the layer itself for the option to detach.  

You can name layers in way that you know which part of the model they were applied too. 

Then you have a complete way of knowing what part of the model your are working on and the Smart material attached to it.

The Opacity, Depth opacity and Roughness opacity above the layers in the layers panel all still function.

Edited August 17, 2021 by digman
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[alexn007]

Very cool digman. I never knew how to use this feature.  Now I have to re-think how I've been managing my smart materials workflow. Nice!