Basic Material Prep for Rendering Question

[Anonymous]

I am using Maxwell as a rendering engine. (It is fantastic by the way). For most of the common materials I've gone in and created Maxwell Materials (MXM) through the Maxwell material editor.

The question comes up with some library objects, take for example Plant 03 11.

The object has 4 materials: Leaf Material, Bark Material, Pot Material and Earth material. Normally what I would do is come up with a native Maxwell material and assign this as a material type. But on some objects like this there are two materials which do not allow an actual material to be assigned. This one has two; Leaf Material and Bark Material. Each of these can be assigned to 4 different options, eg. Leafs 1, Leafs 2, Leafs 3 and Leafs 4 (which are not Materials).

Is there some way to get at the actual material assigned for these ones that don't allow a direct assignment?

[stefan]

The problem is that GDL scripted objects can internally define new materials, which are not available from within the ArchiCAD material library.

They are only visible when exporting a file into other formats.

[Anonymous]

Is there a fairly easy way to get at the script source code of standard GDL objects? I was looking around to see how to access it but don't see how to do it right off. I imagine it would be a pretty easy modification to change the setting of one of these parameters in the script. Any clues greatly appreciated.....

[David Maudlin]

macmiller:

You can open the object for editing by placing it, selecting it, then use the "Open Object..." command.

In the 3D Script of this object you will see near the top where the various leaf and bark materials have been defined, in the Parameter script are the commands for the leaf and bark material pop ups, and in the Master Script is the reassignment of the chosen material name to the material name in the 3D Script (mat1 and mat2).

One approach would be to create 2 new parameters for mat1 and mat2, and set their type to Material so they are assigned just like the Pot and Earth materials are in this object. You would also want to comment out the Leaf and Bark commands in the various scripts to disable them.

HTH

David