Tip for users of gmax: Add materials to the library
If you are using gmax (with NWMax) to create new models for NWN, you may be frustrated by having to use the Material Editor over and over again, even if using the same materials. I know I was. I even looked into creating new material libraries to import and use, but couldn't seem to find documentation for doing so without a version of 3ds Max.
Tonight, I finally stumbled across a forum post during a web search that will now be a huge time-saver, especially for my Project Reforged where I'm re-using about 30 textures, repeatedly, hundreds of times.
The Tip:
You can add materials to an existing materials library. The default one, which has some basic colors, seems to be 3dsmax.mat. Just make a new material in the Material Editor, open the Material Navigator (button is next to the editor one), click and hold on the sphere picture in the Editor and drag/drop it to the list in the navigator.
The list of materials seems to be kept in alphabetical order, so new materials may be named "Mtl#1", "Mtl#2", etc. To put all off my materials ahead of the ones included in the library by default, I made a bunch of dummy ones that ended up with the "Mtl#x" names (this is generated automatically). I then reset the scene, reopened the Material Editor and Material Navigator, then proceeded to make my new materials in the order I wanted. The naming started back over with "Mtl#1", but when dragging it to the Navigator that name was taken, so it asks if you want to replace the existing one or rename the new material. By renaming my newer textures starting with a 2 or three digit number, I was able to put the materials in the order I wanted.
Now, my materials list looks like:
00 Rust
01 Steel
02 Gold
03 Copper
04 Adamatine
...
11 Brown Wraps
12 Light Wraps
...
21 Stained Oak
22 Light Oak
...
36 Ruby
37 Sapphire
38 Topaz
...and onward
I can now just use the Material Navigator to drag/drop my textures onto my models or pick individual parts of the models and have the Navigator apply the material to the selected parts.
This can be a huge time saver, and possibly help ward off carpal tunnel by saving several mouse clicks per material selection.
Drawback: Can't seem to delete materials via gmax, only replace them with ones of the same name. I don't have software that lets me edit the .mat libraries (as far as I know).
The preceeding tip may be known by many experienced gmax users (and certainly many 3ds max users), but this was the first I'd heard of it, so I'm sharing it here.
