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View Full Version : 2013 How the heck do I duplicate a material and set it to a different rendering appearance?



patricks
2012-11-14, 03:42 PM
This is absolutely maddening. We're trying to do our first rendering in 2013. It seems now that materials have "assets" assigned to them, and such assets are defined independently of the material. In the past when I wanted to create something like an accent brick color, I simply duplicated the existing Masonry - Brick material, and changed the render image. Simple. Done.

Now, when I duplicate the Masonry - Brick material, it's still set to use the same Appearance asset as the original Brick material. If I change the appearance in one material, it affects both materials!!! So now not only do I have to duplicate and create my new Brick material, I have to search around and find the original Brick appearance asset and duplicate that. How is this productive??

So when I look at Masonry - Brick, it shows the assets as "Masonry - Brick" for Graphics, and "Masonry - Brick (1)" for Appearance. Well where the heck is that Masonry - Brick (1) appearance asset? When I click to open the Asset Browser, it shows a list of Document Assets. Masonry - Brick ain't there. Autodesk Physical Assets? Appearance Library? Nope and nope. The Masonry - Brick asset is contained within the Unreferenced Assets. So I click on that one and the only option is to replace the asset in the Material Editor with this one. What that does is change the Appearance Asset name to Masonry - Brick, and puts Masonry - Brick (1) into the Asset Browser. Basically just swapping them back and forth.

Soooo how am I supposed to create a new material with a different render image? I want everything else the same as the original Brick material, I just want to change the friggen image! Why do I have to go through and sit and wait for 4 different boxes to open and close? This is utterly ridiculous!

Revitaoist
2012-11-14, 04:14 PM
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?139962-Duplicate-material-still-makes-changes-in-original-Revit-Architecture-2013

patricks
2012-11-14, 04:23 PM
Thanks, I did a search for "material" but that thread didn't show up.

patricks
2012-11-15, 09:58 PM
I'm starting to get the hang of it. And I see now the benefit of having the Render Appearance as a separate asset. That way I can assign, for instance, the same color of paint to more than one material. Want to change the paint color? Change the asset and it changes all materials using that render appearance asset. Now THAT can be a time saver!