External Files Manager not catching all files

[Frank1000]

Hi,
using the External Files Manager to search & replace changed paths, I see that it's not showing all of the occurences in the scene. In the right menu i selected scene, and in the filter i selected all. The search and replace works on the files that were spotted as broken link (red bgd) ... but there are more such broken link occurences in the scene that are not listed in the External Files Manager and that I have to find and edit manually so far. With many files, this can get out of hand after a while.
Unfortunately the .scn file, which is hexadecimal, can't be searched & replaced either ...
\Is there another trick or tip to get this solved ?



Regards,
Frank

[luceric]

It's because that file name is not declared as a file name XSI recognizes, it's just a string with a button to pop a browser. If it were, it would show up with the widget that allows you to switch between the user and the resolved path. there is nothing you can do other than write a script to search for all of these Maxwell parameters.

[Frank1000]

ups ... here's where it's getting problematic for a non coder. But thx for clarification. Funny thing is, that some of the maxwell paths are identified by Ex-File Manager. I understand that it does not search within maxwell material itself. Probably those findings were the path to the material itself. The whole trouble came up when re-locating the project, while i kept the materials in the maxwell lib ... trying to have 1 place where all maxwell materials are hosted ... and not long to seeing the back hand of that thought.

[luceric]

maybe you can export the material libraryas a .xsi external material library. I've never tried it myself but these files are ASCII

[Frank1000]

yes, it is possible to first import a maxwell material by dragging a MaxwellLayeredMaterial node in the Render Tree and double clicking it, there it has the import feature. After that the maxwell material is inside the file. And can also be saved as a .xsi material which is a container, but doesn't need to be saved separately unless you want to build a lib of it again.
But that is all to be done in the first place when starting work on more complex scenes.
I prefer the link to maxwell-material-lib, just will have to create the script to change the inner paths of path settings within the maxwell-material-node, so i can move around the projects or re-locate the lib etc.

If someone has a clue how the script needs to look like, pls share.

[luceric]

i meant that if your scene is using its material library (the XSI feature, not a Maxwell thing) as an external reference library, it is stored in .xsi format , which is an ascii format you can edit.

http://download.autodesk.com/global/doc ... d30e319042

[Frank1000]

that's interesting. I've exported it and was able to search and replace all paths. but when re-importing it, it wouldn't overwrite the materials but add another lib, when i moved all imports in lib2 to default lib it also didn't overwrite but add more materials ...
is there a way to kinda update the old lib with the new lib ?

[luceric]

sure... find the material library in the scene explorer.
It's in Sources/Clips, Sources, Materials

Edit the properties of the library to make it external and point to an ASCII .xsi
save your scene

note that the library referenced this way will now be read only, however. you can't have everything..

[Frank1000]

wow all paths are correct now right away ... perfect. That's a useful work around when not yet coding a script.

thx

[Frank1000]

i exported the scene content in containing it under a new model and re-loaded it into a fresh scen. All materials then were locked and i unlocked them by first locking all, then it gave me the sub-commands to unlock all levels .... and now all materials are corrected and internal in the scene again.
Probably not all steps are necessary as i took them ...

[Frank1000]

... unfortunately the above solution does not work, the maxwell materials get kinda disconnected and need to be deleted and reset before stuff works again.