Persistence of memory
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Here's an interesting phenomenon that I came across some years ago. It seems that SU sometimes needs a good kick up the butt to get it to update properties.
At FormFonts, we are forever creating different configurations of the same component...maybe a sofa or shelf in different finishes.
To save remapping every variant separately, it makes sense to map just one then specify a different image map for the other variants. If you want to use more than a single variant in the same model, you need to do more than simply specify a different texture. That alone is not sufficient to create a separate unique component.I have attached two very basic shelves...one in dark wood, one in light wood. I made the dark shelf first. I then swapped the dark wood for a lighter one in the Materials Edit tab. I also changed the name of the material so it wouldn't conflict with the original, before saving to a different file. I then even created different internal components within the two files...one light, one dark.
You can see all this if you download the two files to your desktop. Open each one separately and study the info in the materials and components browsers. Everything looks exactly as you would expect it to. They are clearly different components. Now try opening a new file and importing them both...then open another new file and import them in reverse order. In both cases SU will tell you you have two different components with two different materials
Luckily, there is a solution...the proverbial kick up the butt.
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@alan fraser said:
You can see all this if you download the two files to your desktop. Open each one separately and study the info in the materials and components browsers. Everything looks exactly as you would expect it to. They are clearly different components. Now try opening a new file and importing them both...then open another new file and import them in reverse order. In both cases SU will tell you you have two different components with two different materials
Isn't that expected? I don't think I fully understand what we're talking about here..?
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What I mean is that even though the two versions look different when viewed separately, if you import them both into a new file the Material and Components browsers will tell you you have imported two different models with two different materials (as expected...you can even see the difference in the thumbnails in the Component browser)...yet the second model to be imported will always come in looking identical to the first one.
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Remove the FF layer and they import as expected. Bug, maybe.
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Now that really is weird. It must be a bug. Thanks Jim, I never thought of importing to Layer0...but see no logical reason why that should make any difference.
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