From the course: 3ds Max 2026 Essential Training

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Managing scene materials

Managing scene materials - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2026 Essential Training

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Managing scene materials

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- [Instructor] Let's talk about managing materials in the material editor graph versus the 3D scene. The key concept here is that there is no direct relationship between those two. Just because a material exists in the graph does not mean that it's assigned to any object and vice versa. Just because a material is on an object does not mean that it's loaded into the graph. It's important to understand this fully to avoid data loss when periodically clearing out the graph by deleting nodes. In my graph, I have two materials and they're both instant into the scene. I can demonstrate that by selecting one of them, the file cabinet material. In its parameters, we have the base color weight, that is the numeric field that controls the strength of the base color. If I reduce that base color weight down to zero, then we only get reflections because the reflection weight is still one. All right, that's just to demonstrate that this material is actually instantanced into the scene. I'll bring…

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