Switching material types

[J.C]

Hi,

In my workflow I often try different materials which is easy when you can switch to all possible types. Somehow in C4D Octane node editor Mix, Composite, Layered, Hair materials can not be easily swapped.
How can I simply replace eg. Glossy material with Mix material that is used across lets say 100 objects?
What I currently do is I create new a Mix Material and drag it over Glossy material in materials list. This way I delete old material which is no What I want. I want this glossy material to be a part of Mix material. So I have to duplicate it and drag it over mix material node editor then. Then I have to create another material that appears in the material list and drag it over to mix material.

If I switch to Blender every object material has an output node. I can connect every octane material to material output without deleting or overwriting existing object material. I can have multiple octane materials in material node editor inside one object material. Simple and easy.
In C4D multiple materials are create in materials list when I do this. It's gets quite messy this way.

Is there a simpler way in C4D? Is it possible to have material output like in Blender node editor?


// edit:
I tried to connect Sub material to Mix material but it is not possible. It is possible to connect to Composite material and to Layered material only.

[aoktar]

Sub material is a material but in a texture form to use just with composite material. It's the reason to keep everything in a material for having compact workflow.
Stop to using "mix material" and prefer to use "composite material" with "sub materials".

[J.C]

What's Mix material for then?

When using Composite material it is impossible to attach existing materials from materials list. Only Sub material works.
Also in Composite Material mask 1 has no effect when any texture is plugged in.

[aoktar]

mix material is old type and composite is new one.
With mix material you'll have a lot of troubles when you store to content browser or copy/paste in to livedb or another scenes.

[J.C]

mix material is old type and composite is new one.
With mix material you'll have a lot of troubles when you store to content browser or copy/paste in to livedb or another scenes.

Is there a quick way to convert Layered/Composite material to Composite, Glossy, Specular etc. and the other way round?

[Goldorak]

mix material is old type and composite is new one.
With mix material you'll have a lot of troubles when you store to content browser or copy/paste in to livedb or another scenes.

Is there a quick way to convert Layered/Composite material to Composite, Glossy, Specular etc. and the other way round?

It’s on the todo list to have a base material to layered material / layer group converter - in standalone and that would be portable to C4D. In theory you could put any material layer into a layered material and add that to a composite material - but they are very different - layers are like Additive/modulating coating, where mix/composite just averages two or more fully separate materials with a mask or alpha shader. They render very differently