[Plugin] Material Replacer (1.1.0) — 12 January 2010

[thomthom]

Is there any way we can use this plugin to replace a specific material [.skm]..that has been used in the model with vray materials [i.e. .vismats]...??

Use V-Ray's material editor. Right click a material and Import

[jarynzlesa]

thank you for this plugin, i found this very useful.

[Bob James]

This sort of ties in with the current thread:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=36987

[dereeei]

As I can see, this plugin replaces a material globally in entire model. It would be awesome to have option to replace material on a specific object only.
Will you take into consideration my suggestion?
Thank you.

[TIG]

As I can see, this plugin replaces a material globally in entire model. It would be awesome to have option to replace material on a specific object only.
Will you take into consideration my suggestion?
Thank you.

You probably need viewtopic.php?p=63629#p63629 [my olde Global_Material_Replacer.rb tool] - it is dialog driven to choose the material to go and material to use - including 'All' and 'Default-front/back'. It swaps materials in the entire model's active_entities collection, OR IF there's a selection on selected objects... It works inside 'containers'...

[dereeei]

You probably need viewtopic.php?p=63629#p63629 [my olde Global_Material_Replacer.rb tool] - it is dialog driven to choose the material to go and material to use - including 'All' and 'Default-front/back'. It swaps materials in the entire model's active_entities collection, OR IF there's a selection on selected objects... It works inside 'containers'...

As I could see, thomthom's plugin keeps UV mapping, when replacing materials, which is cool . Does yours keeps UV ?
When I use paint bucket tool to change the material on some object, the UV is reset.

[thomthom]

When I use paint bucket tool to change the material on some object, the UV is reset.

Use the Entity Info to replace materials - then the UV is preserved.

[dereeei]

Use the Entity Info to replace materials - then the UV is preserved.

Thanks! I never used it.

[TIG]

[TIG] Does yours keeps UV ?
When I use paint bucket tool to change the material on some object, the UV is reset.

Like with Entity Info... my tool swaps the material but keeps the UV-mapping - so any rotated or scales/skewed textures stay unchanged, but the material uses a different image-file...

[dereeei]

Like with Entity Info... my tool swaps the material but keeps the UV-mapping - so any rotated or scales/skewed textures stay unchanged, but the material uses a different image-file...

Will this affect Twilight metadata? If I change a "wood" material with a "metal" material, both with textures... will it render as "metal", or just the image is changed and uses metadata from initially "wood" ?

[TIG]

Like with Entity Info... my tool swaps the material but keeps the UV-mapping - so any rotated or scales/skewed textures stay unchanged, but the material uses a different image-file...

Will this affect Twilight metadata? If I change a "wood" material with a "metal" material, both with textures... will it render as "metal", or just the image is changed and uses metadata from initially "wood" ?

You could always try it yourself...
A Twilight material is associated with a SKP material.
If you have a gray RGB material in your SKP you can tell Twilight to substitute it with a silver metal - shiny/textured/etc.
If you have a buff RGB material in your SKP you can tell Twilight to substitute it with a golden metal - shiny/textured/etc.
If you swap around materials in your SKP it'll be reflected in corresponding changes in the next Twilight render.
How would changing a face's material in the SKP NOT affect the Twilight render? AND how might it affect the Twilight material - which is associated on a one-to-one relationship - gray=silver, buff=golden etc?? It only swaps around SKP materials by name it doesn't redefine them or rename them. I'm not sure what happens if you swap the names of materials over in your SKP - presumably if you said in the SKP material Browser gray=>gray1 and buff=>gray and gray1=>buff, then if Twilight uses a material-name look up table for how to render each of its materials based the SKP's current material-names then it would indeed swap what was silver with golden and vice versa... Perhaps useful on occasion, but not the point of this current discussion or thread.

So to recap, swapping a face's SKP material gives the face that other SKP material, the face's material's UV-mapping comes from the face itself; whatever 'correspondence' Twilight a material has with the SKP material is kept intact and it renders accordingly...

[samyell77]

Hi thomthom,
Love this plugin by the way. Is it possible to have the material name display whenever using the eyedropper tool and not just when running your ruby script. Having the name of the material display is SOOOO handy and I'd love it if the eyedropper always displayed the material name. Is this possible? I work on mac so currently trying to work out what material is what is pretty tricky due to the absence of a list view in the material browser. Also would it be possible to move the 'material replacer' to a context menu so you could access if using a right click rather than going to the drop down menus?
Fantastic tool tho - thanks!
Sam

[thomthom]

I can't modify the native SketchUp tools I'm afraid.

As for context menu, I could, but then someone would ask me to reverse it. But I'll see if I can send you a modified version.

[samyell77]

Would really appreciate that - thanks!

[samyell77]

Hey Thomthom - don't worry about sending the revised ruby. I hadn't realised that I can invoke plugins using key commands so have set up a keyboard short cut to your material replacer now. Thanks

[rachitect]

Does this work with SketchUp 8 Pro? I copied the unzipped files into the SketchUp Ruby folder but it is not showing up in the Plugins menu in Sketchup...

[TIG]

You don't see it there because it's not in the 'Plugins' menu!
It's in the 'Tools' menu - as 'Material Replacer'...

[MartinK]

Thanks for a great time saver.

[caronte01]

thanks Thomas, I use this plugin a lot!

galletas.jpg

[McGyver]

Thank you very much for this extremely useful tool! I Just tried it out and it works smoothly and without any trouble! Thank you!

[fullyfledgeded]

Hi, great simple little tool works perfectly, except the material being replaced, did not inherit the same scale of the texture. Any ideas?
thanks

[LesZautres]

This plug-in does exactly what I expected through a really nicely made UI!
Many thanks!