IRay surfaces, Material ID?

nsdarzbp

Thanks to Sickleyield's excellent paper on IRay surfaces I can now take a stab at making  decent shaders for nylon stockings and some of those lovely diaphanous bridal (wedding, not horse riding tack) fabrics.

The one item that was missed was 'Material ID'.  It's near the top and I'm guessing it's to allow grouping or/and identification of related materials(?)

Thanks for the replies.

Tobor

Yes, it's for grouping, primarily as part of rendering with canvases.

Szark

But you can also use it to group mats that have the same properties and when using the Surface Selection Tool you can right click, select All Objects and choose to select all mats with the same Material ID.

nsdarzbp

Thanks for the answer folks.  I'll check out your tuts Szark.  I'm hoping they'll save me a lot of questions here.

Bob, The graphic artist formerly known as stupid.

Szark

When it comes to Iray I don't have any tuts, only 3Delight but it they may help in other areas.

Tobor

Szark said:

But you can also use it to group mats that have the same properties and when using the Surface Selection Tool you can right click, select All Objects and choose to select all mats with the same Material ID.

While this is true it's cumbersome to set the ID, since it's actually an RGB color, rather than a name. I've seen very few pre-made shaders that bothered to set different IDs. IMO, the Tags feature is preferred for selecting scene elements by type, as those are descriptive. Many of the better Iray shaders have the Tag name already set, so you don't have to do it yourself.

Szark

It's true that Mat ID's were set up for Canvases and Tags for the purposes of what I speak of but it is also true that we can use them as we see fit. For me colour bars are easier than words. I just use the predefined colours we have in the colour selection and swatch window. No typing just clicking...heaven for me. :)