I just tried to follow up an issue mentioned in another thread
compare:
Share materials
viewtopic.php?f=44&t=51431
when I stumbled upon some limitations that may not be that known when templating and using the function to "Replace active maps".
Using "Replace active maps" will replace all maps in all slots no matter if they are template or not.
Users may actually have assumed that "replace active maps" would only affect template nodes and leave all other image nodes unchanged.
This is not the case.
It seems in order to have the intended result of not updating all map slots when using the "replace active maps" function one has to add all maps that should remain unchanged to a template node with "STATIC dont replace with loaded content" activated.
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To illustrate this two test scenes that show the behaviour of "Replace active maps" with and without using template nodes with "Static - don't replace with loaded content"
Test scene 01
- plane with
mix material
Material 1 template diffuse map
Material 2 diffuse map
checks mix
- Now save this material in your user presets.
- Load a new scene
- Add plane
- load a different map in the DAZ Studio surfaces
- autoconvert the scene (maybe needed to load the maps into OcDS memory)
- now add your previously created user preset with the checks mix pattern
What I expected to happen was that the
- templated image would get replaced by the new "active map" of the DAZ Studio diffuse slot
- the other not templated image node would not be affected
What DID happen was that both diffuse slots got updated with the new map in the DAZ Studio surface slot.
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If you look closely at the template node options you will notice that there is a setting for
Static (don't replace by loaded content)
So one could assume if one would now use that in the mix material 2 option then the original map should stick and not be replaced.
Let's try.
Test scene 02
- plane with
mix material
Material 1 template diffuse map
Material 2 template diffuse map with Static (don't replace by loaded content) activated
checks mix
- save this template setup as a user preset
- create a new scene with a plane with a different diffuse map in the DAZ Studio materials applied
- autoconvert the scene (maybe needed to load the maps into OcDS memory)
- now add your user preset with the checks mix pattern that has STATIC active
- right click to use "Replace all active maps"
-> End result:
Now the image looks as expected.
- The templated node of material 1 was updated with the new diffuse map from the DAZ Studio surface zone
- The templated node of material 2 that was set to static remained and was not updated.
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Test scenes as .duf added in .zip
Templating test scene 01 & 02 include the material presets that you can save to your own user presets.
Replace maps missing test scene 01& 02 show the result of applying the presets to a new DAZ Studio scene with different diffuse maps applied to the plane.
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Now we can of course discuss if this workflow is intuitive and simple.
Would it be possible to add an additional right click options next to "Replace all active maps" that gives the option to:
"Replace active maps of template nodes" ?
Selecting his option would not replace all those maps that are not templated.
But one could assume that IF that would be possible there would not have been this whole workaround with adding those maps that should not be replaced in a STATIC template node.
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