Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 68

Utilities Menu The Utilities menu provides map rendering and selecting objects by material. ■ Render Map Equivalent to choosing Render Map on the sample slot right-click menu on page 5308. ■ Select Objects by Material on page 5340 ■ Clean MultiMaterial on page 6052 ■ Instance Duplicate Map on page 6058 ■ Reset Material Editor Slots Replaces all materials in the Material Editor with the default material type. This action is not undoable, but you can restore the previous state of the Material Editor with the Restore Material Editor Slots command (see below). ■ Condense Material Editor Slots Sets all unused materials in the Material Editor to the default type, retaining only materials in the scene and moving those materials to the first slots in the editor. This action is not undoable, but you can restore the previous state of the Material Editor with the Restore Material Editor Slots command (see below). ■ Restore Material Editor Slots When you use either of the two previous commands, 3ds Max saves the current state of the Material Editor in a buffer; using this command restores the state of the editor using the buffer contents. TIP The buffer that holds the material definitions survives the File menu > Reset command. Thus, if you use either the Reset Material Editor Slots or the Condense Material Editor Slots function, and then reset 3ds Max, you can then use Restore Material Editor Slots to bring all materials back into the Material Editor. This makes it easy to use the same materials in different projects. For best results, follow this procedure: 1 Save your scene. 2 Use the Reset Material Editor Slots or Condense Material Editor Slots function. 3 Reset 3ds Max. When prompted to save the scene, click No. Otherwise, you might lose material definitions in the Material Editor that were saved with the scene. 4 Open the Material Editor and choose Utilities menu > Restore Material Editor Slots. Material Editor Tools | 5323