I have a number of different multi-sub materials that use the same (for example) cement texture (with same tiling, map params etc..). The goal (I think) is to end up with rF2 loading any given texture ONLY once, and 'instancing' it out to any other multi-sub materials it shows up in. I'm not quite clear on how this is handled in the rF2 engine, ... what (if anything) I must do in Max to ensure it, and have done the obligatory several hours of searching without luck. Do I need to use "copy (instance)" for each texture that I want to use in more than one multi-sub material (?), or will running Max's "Instance Duplicate Maps" utility on the scene prior to exporting objects take care of everything as far as rF2 is concerned (?). Thanks in advance, bink
One simple thing really: Keep the material name the same for all your e.g. identical cement textures in different multi-sub materials. As long as they're all named say cementA you're fine. If you have cementA in multi-sub 1, 2 and 3 and applied to different .gmts, rF2 will only load cementA once. It will use the material settings from the first instance of the material it encounters while loading the .gmts from the .scn sequentially. How you copy them around in 3ds max doesn't matter for rF2.
The gMotor engine loads the textures by filename--it's as simple as that. So, if you have 20 materials that use roof.dds (for instance), that texture will only be loaded once. In fact, it doesn't even look at the extension. So, if you have roof.dds and roof.tga, it's only going to look at one of them no matter if you have one material that uses the .dds and another that uses the .tga. The materials only reference the textures, they're not encoded into the .gmt or anything. So, in Max, you can do either. Personally, I like to instantiate commonly used textures from material to material--that way if I want to edit them all at once, I only have to edit any one of the nodes and re-export.
Sorry for off topic Bink, Frank Borland's neighbour? You are a Delphi developer maybe? Takes me back many years to the Borland days Sidekick, Turbo Pascal...even some of my systems written in PAL (Paradox Application Language) still running today.
LOL, well I think you have earned the stripes to be grumpy - I got started with programming in the 80's - the ZX Spectrum and Vic20 days. Yes the Borland compiler was one of the fastest around - just a pity they never had the marketing strategy of Microsoft. I do not program actively these days myself any more and is managing developers but I would any day go back to programming instead, just easier than managing everybody's problems Anyway sorry again for hijacking the thread.
The instance or copy material works for Max materials only in Max, been the bitmap the same RF2 dont "know" the difference. The instance/copy feature works when you have modify the material bitmap with the instance bitmap, all materials with that bitmap gonna be modify, if you copy the material bitmap, that copy be "unique" whathever the times you copy the material bitmap, i hope i was clear.
