Sometimes when i am working on big scenes with alot of materials the material editor really becomes a mess. Example: i have a big stone wall that has a certain texture, i am trying to change that texture to a new one with more shadows on it. When i do that i see that there is a part of the wall that doesnt change. i use the pipet on the wall and get up what material is applied to it : exactly the same. so somehow max creates a dublicate of some materials.

I have tryed all the options under Utilities,Clean multimaterial,and so on. Even when i delete all the materials and save the scene and open again. max still asks for some textures that are missing wich means that some path = material is still links. WTF ? , Is it any easier way to get an overview of this shit ?

I will Rather not work with nodes becouse it it way to messy.

What is the easiest way to organize everything so that this kind of problems wont appear ?

thanks.

clear material editor slots.

select all your scene and type into maxscript listener $.material = undefined

When unwrapUVW modifier is added to stack it somehow keeps a note of what bitmaps it needs, so make sure you get rid of any stray unwrap nodes on the stack.

Check you don't have maps anywhere else, like in environment slot or anything in the renderer.

That should mean you have absolutely no textures in the scene.

IF you've added a material to a sub-object selection at some point, max may have tried to help you out and autmatically create a multi-sub material for you, this may explain the strange behaviour when changing individual materials around.

Good luck!

The material editor is a work bench, you eye dropper materials to work on them, or build new materials from scratch. Removing them from your work bench never deletes them from the scene if they're applied to a model.

The methods CW outlined are the best way to remove materials and clean your scene. A while ago I wrote a script that helps automate the things that CW outlined.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/matclean

Thanks alot vig !, Nice portfolio, tjhat boat whas really cute, exactly the kind of artstyle i like !, what game company do you work at right now ?

Heh, thanks, my portfolio needs a lot of updates I just haven't gotten around to remaking it mostly because I'm not looking for work.

I work at Her Interactive animating mountains of character dialog. It pays the bills, the people are awesome, it puts a roof over my family and keeps me happy. I keep waiting for the good times to come crumbling down, but so far after 4 years knock on wood, things are still going good.

Vig this is the second time today one of your scripts has improved my work. I'm gonna start keeping score :P

I just realized that I have a newer version of Scene Clean I haven't released.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/VigTools-SceneClean.mcr

*Indicates its newer-ish

*Collapse Stack(s): Collapses the selected objects, or if nothing is selected it will prompt to collapse all objects (even hidden).

*Pivot to World Zero (left click): Sets the pivot to the lowest point in a mesh, then center, then moves the object to the center of the world zero point.

*Pivot to World Zero (Right click): same as above but also resets transforms, applies rest xform then collapses the stack leaving an edit poly object behind.

Clean Mats: Assigns undefined as the material just like when the object was created.

*Clean Editor (left click): Resets the Material Editor

*Clean Editor (right click): Resets like above and applies Matt/Shadow material to the 1st material slot (does not apply the material to any objects)

Wire Color (left click): Sets selected objects to the same custom wire color or all objects if nothing is selected (materials do not change)

Wire Color (right click): Applies random wire colors to selected objects, or to all objects if nothing is selected. (materials do not change)

Color Swatch: Launches the color picker, all custom wire colors come from this picker (defaults to black).

Mat1 + Wire Color: Applies Mat Slot 1 to selected objects or for all objects if nothing is selected (Sets the wire color to the current custom color)

awsome man thanks alot.

I am glad to hear that !, Keep it up man.