Change preview scene 3ds max

[Tok_Tok]

I have a quick question. Is het possible to change the preview scene the materials use when editing a material? I would like to have different preview scenes for different materials. For fabrics for example I would to have some draped mesh or part of a couch to accurately edit the material without having to set up a scene.

Thanks :)

[Ondra]

currently not possible with 3dsmax, we could hack it, I played with the idea for a while, but in the end decided to do more important features. The main problem here is that any more complex scene takes longer to render, killing the interactivity of the preview

[Tok_Tok]

I was kind of afraid of that, too bad.

I'm an old maxwell render user and they have different preview scenes to choose from, which I kind of miss. Things like leaf and glass materials simple don't render accurate in the current preview scene and I think it can be a useful feature. The question of course is, how long does it take to develop such a "hack".

If a preview takes a bit longer to render then the Auto Refresh function should be disabled. Also if more advanced preview scenes are available, one could enlarge a preview window and let it render somewhat longer to see the result. If the preview window would update say a few times per second then it would be much more intuitive and useful. This is the same way Maxwell works and it has always worked very well for me. :)

I guess now the only way to accurately edit a material is use it in a full scene, such as an interior scene or the simbal scene (which would also be a good preview scene to have as an option). Maybe I'm not asking for creating custom preview scenes per see but have a few options would be very nice!

[cgifarm]

Hi,

I am not very sure if I understand it right.. but are you aware of 3ds max state sets ? You could setup different materials on a different state set.

You will end up having multiple materials which are assigned per state set, but they are all inside the same max scene.

Let me know if this is what you are looking for and I can get into more details.

[Tok_Tok]

Yes well that is a workaround for it. I've tried that in the past but that is kind of a hassle, especially when you work with very large scene's, it tends to get slow. But thanks it is a way to do it and can work but it's a workaround that isn't a productive as just being able to choose a different preview scene for your materials.

I understand that there a more important features on the agenda right now. But maybe this can be a thing for the future.  :)