Ok, I'm cleaning up some folks work, there's a model with lets say about 20 different textures on 80 or so different objects.

Now many objects share the same texture but not the same material name so there are duplicates all over the place.

I see select by Material, and that works to grab the objects with that material but is there anywhere in max to select by actual texture file?

Or do I have to manually go and select all those with the same texture and re-apply the one correct material?

Understand?

not really.

If it's one giant Multi-sub, figure out what IDs are used for all of the materials that should be the same, and just start selecting each of those MatIDs and setting them to be the same?

If they're all separate materials, you may be hosed.

yeah they are all seperate materials I was hoping to find a way of selecting all materials that are using c : \textures\bldconcrete003.dds in the bitmap parameters.

Because for each texture thats using bldconcrete003, there's one material for each object using for some reason. Like they created a new material for every object that used that texture rather then using the other material that used the same texture. But this was done for every object that used the same texture, each got a new material name so selecting by material name only selects that one unique object instead of needing to select all of them that share the same exact texture. So i have a huge list of of materials over 100+ and the scene only has about a total of 20 textures.. sigh..

yay...

You could do this in script. There may already be one out there - check scriptspot.com , or Neil Blevins' blur script packs, I recall his having material editing / management scripts in them.

Or write one yourself

Definitely check for the script as MoP suggests first, but if not there are a couple of ways to minimize the pain.

This is a bit of work but can help in tracking down which maps/materials are used on which objects. Click a blank material slot. Choose Get Material. Browse From Scene. Show Maps and Materials.

Now you should see a list of all of the materials and their maps in the scene. But to the right of the Material names in brackets, you will see which objects that they are assigned to. Once you find duplicates, just note which objects they are assigned to. Choose one of the materials and assign it to all of the objects. If necessary consolidate to multisubs, noting which IDs might need to be changed on the objects.

Seeing this info in a list like this can sometimes help in locating duplicate maps/materials. Honestly, it's still a pain locating them and cleaning them out. But it can be done if you've got a good eye and some patience to locate duplicate maps/materials in the list.

Another slightly more painful way is to look for duplicate maps in the Schematic View. Not as big a fan of this method, but it can work.