Hey guys,
i tried it in my own but i have no idea:
The Problem
In our firm we get stuff from outsourcing companys and it seems, that they are using a texture server. So the material link in our maxfiles (material editor) is pointing to for example to \server\dir\dir\dir\file.tga.
But when we open the file in our network, this path isn’t availiable and max is searching and searching and searching…i hate this waiting time!
What i want
I tried to avoid the searching process. I tried to use Maxscript with the LoadMaxFile function and set the quiet argument true. And tried to use the missingExtFilesAction argument to disallow the searching for the files.
But the only thing i got is that max isn’t showing me the error window. But i want do abort the searching process of any linked file in the material editor.
Any idea?
You could always relink the textures for all the bitmaps using this script:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/relink-bitmaps
Although there are certainly other ways of doing it.
The script might not be a great option if you are transfering probjects back and forth from the outsourcing company. Maybe it could be of some help. Also be sure to check max’s user paths
Customize->External Files->
and make sure this list isn’t too bloated, if it is bogged down with network drives it can mean long waits!
Cheers,
-Colin
Hi Colin,
thank you for your fast reply. You are right, i don’t want do relink them. Hm…and the question is, when the relink process starts: after searching or before? When it starts before, i could save the old paths, overwrite them and restore them later…i will check the script.
I checked the userpaths and i deleted all. My hope was, that max stop the whole searching process – no success.
And i traced the hard drive access by max with the tool FileMon. It seems, that max is searching all folders and subfolders around your maxfile. Really weird.
I can’t stand it when computers try to be smarter than I am, and try and help me out, but in the end they just cause more headache. My relinking suggestion would in essence get rid of your headaches, and the other company could in turn use it to relink them back to their texture server. However there must be a way to stop max from trying to be smarter than you in this scenario.
-Colin
Hi Simon,
With something like this it i would try to match the path on your network, even if it is temporary. If you rename a machine to their server name and recreate their drive structure, put the maps there and just add that path to max you will be able to open them without searching.
@ Colin
Yeah, you are right. I hate that too A optionsmenu for that would be really nice
@ Peter
Thx for your reply. But the aim is, to open our mayfiles very very quickly without loosing time, and creating the complete server hiercharchy would be need a lot of time. And the hardest thing is, we would have to rename our server