Clean-up materials navigator in GMAX

[Pozzessed]

Is there a way of 'flushing' out the unused textures in the materials navigator? I've made custom textures for each of my bats and the library takes forever to go through. Moving them to another folder to 'hide' doesn't work, results in same amount of spaces taken, just blank. I've been used to just renaming the plugins folder when using the lot editor.
If I use the option to delete them, what happens when I want to reload a previously finished model (complete with the textures I made for it) ?

Any help would be much appreciated 

[mattb325]

Hi Roz

Whenever I make custom textures for a bat (which is almost always) I put them in their own folder in c:/gmax/maps....

I also have many all purpose textures which are generally in their own folders - EG c:/gmax/maps/walls, ../glass, ../wood etc, etc. At least this way I can keep track of everything. The materials library in gmax is almost like your plugins folder in that it can become unruly quite quickly without subfolders.

I wouldn't delete these textures completely: if, for some reason you wish to revisit your bat, gmax will not remember the texture that was applied (as it simply looks for the location every time you load the file). I would recommend simply moving the textures into a different folder/sub folder. Gmax will still complain that textures are missing, but at least that way you can reload them if you ever need to revisit the scene.

[jmyers2043]

Looks like Matt and I do similar things. I made a comment in this thread about how I organize my gmax folder/textures.

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11317.msg335400#msg335400

I too have a folder where I keep some textures that I use often such as cement, wooden board/s, some metal textures, dingy white paint, etc. . .

<edit>

Is there a way of 'flushing' out

As far as flushing out ... if I understand correctly? It seems that the materials navigator is getting cluttered with textures that you once tried on your bat but have decided for one reason or another not to use? The best way to flush is to do a merge. Only the materials currently used on the model will be displayed afterwards.

Good Luck with your bat

- Jim

[j-dub]

When I used to do my own BATs, I never even used no material navigator tool to texture map, I mean, I don't think I did. I do remember just dragging and dropping texture images onto stuff, and using an option on that shape to resize the texture's scale, but I had the BAT refer to my pictures folder instead, since I did not really have anything personal in there anyway, it just seemed like it loaded a lot of stuff at a good rate of speed there. When I got BAT, there only were 3 or 6 textures that actually came with it. However, I did not keep all materials, depending on what I was doing in the same place.

[Pozzessed]

Thanks to all of you for your help. I have my folders organised (I can organise myself to a standstill .. hehe). I create my own textures for everything, most of which will probably never show up in the game but it satisfies the urge in me to have everything looking correct.

I've only had gmax about a week, so I'm going to have to look into this 'merge' thing Jim (if I may call you that).

I think I may open a thread so you can all pick over what I have up to now