MultiSub Material from Max

[QuasarTD]

Hi all

I have a building i'm importing from Max that has a multisub material on it containing 7 materials. I have imported it as per the instruction on hourences tutorial (great tutorials btw) but I seem to only get 1 material 0 slot when I view the building mesh in the staic mesh viewer. Can anyone think what I might be doing wrong. Also is there a way of bringing in a mesh without it asigning 1 smoothing group to the whole mesh by default. I can fix it by setting up smoothing groups in max before exporting which i'm sure is the best way of doing it but it sometimes take a long time on a complex model when all I need is no smoothing.
Thanks for any help

Q

[Nawrot]

Are you sure, that you applied whole multi material in max not only one of submaterials, that is most common mistake i do while exporting. When i start working on mesh i just apply simple material, when mesh is ready i expand that material to multi one, and setup materials ids for faces, max shows everything correctly. But for unreal its still that first simple material i applied at beginning, so reapply multi mat again to be sure.

[QuasarTD]

Thanks for the advise. I will double check I applied the material properly when I get home and let you know. Thanks

[QuasarTD]

Nop i've tried it again and still same result. I'm sure i'm doing something wrong. I even started from scratch with a simple cube with a multisub material of just 2 materials. when i imported it and opened it in the static mesh window, I expanded the LODinfo and there is only a material 0 slot. There must be a step i'm missing somewhere.

here is what i do

1. in max create a cube
2. convert to editable poly
3. select half the faces and set them to ID 1
4. select the rest of the faces and set to ID 2
5. add simple box UVW map
6. in material editor change first standard material to multisub object material.
7. set number of sub materials to 2
8. change defuse colors to something different on each
9. apply full material to cube (faces show different colours as expected)
10. select cube and export selected object as .ASE with default settings
11. in UDK content browser click import and select exported file with default settings
12. double click static mesh to open viewer.
13 expend LODInfo etc.... find material slot 0 only.

can some kind person tell me what I missed. It's probably something simple and stupid. Is it to do with naming object and materials in max? if so what is best practice? thanks

just for info it's max 2010 64bit running windows 7 64bit if that is in any way relevent.

[Norman3D]

It's quite simple, you have to make sure that you have a bitmap in the diffuse slot in every sub Material in Max. It needs to be a bitmap and they do need to be different.
I also do not recommend using 7 Mat Ids... it will result in 7 draw calls, which is a LOT for one actor.

If you need "no smoothing" you still have to assign smoothing groups. But different ones to each surface. Just apply the smooth modifier and set it to 1. Be aware that a lot of smoothing groups will cause the verts to split in unreal, thus resulting in a higher vert count. Resource size can rise quite a lot in certain situations.

[QuasarTD]

Thanks so much that helps me out a lot! I thought it had to be something simple and now you say it it makes sense too. Also thanks for the help on the smoothing, I was wondering why I got a warning about too many verts when importing models. I will give all that a try. Thank you.

[jjobby]

It's quite simple, you have to make sure that you have a bitmap in the diffuse slot in every sub Material in Max. It needs to be a bitmap and they do need to be different.
I also do not recommend using 7 Mat Ids... it will result in 7 draw calls, which is a LOT for one actor.

If you need "no smoothing" you still have to assign smoothing groups. But different ones to each surface. Just apply the smooth modifier and set it to 1. Be aware that a lot of smoothing groups will cause the verts to split in unreal, thus resulting in a higher vert count. Resource size can rise quite a lot in certain situations.

Thank you very much. I also have this problem. This solution works!

[raxell]

Hi, I got the problem with the smooth. I need "No smooth", hard edges. I did what you say but something i did wrong. I still getting smooth edges.

When you say "But different ones to each surface" it mean to each face?? or each ID material?
If i assing 1 smooth group I dont gonna get hard edges. dont?

[Norman3D]

Exactly, if you have only one smoothing group for the whole object, you will have no hard edges.
Smoothing groups have to be assigned to faces, material IDs are a whole 'nother story ;)

[raxell]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Yes, I think now understand you and it works!!

I have to intercalate smooth group so that adjacent faces dont has the same SG. Like a table chess. Example: white square = SG 1 and black square = SG 2

I did it and works.

It's OK??

This is the only way to get hard edges objects?


Thanks a lot!