How can I save a material opacity as a preset?

Rafmer

   What I am aiming to do is lightning on all candles in a scene by turning the opacity of the flame surfaces to 1. But i don't want to be forced to manually select all candles before that, so I can't use a material preset. A scene subset creates a duplicate of the full candle and the shader preset doesn't seem to work. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Richard Haseltine

The Scene pane allows filtering by name, and my selection tools script would alow you to select one candle and then add all the others - but both of those would depend on how things are named. You could also write a custom script. I don't think there is a built-in tool that will target by name without selecting.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z6ceaiasl8ll5u6/RHSelectionTools.zip?dl=0

Rafmer

   Thanks for the answer. It is not that I need it for myself; I can right-click the surface and select all others with the same map to change all the values. It would be for others who are not familiar with the environment to use easily, with a one-click solution. Making a custom script seems way too out of my skills.

chris-2599934

Have just one real candle flame, and make all the others instances of it. Then you can apply regular material presets to that one flame and the others will follow suit, though ideally you'd wanty to use some kind of file that would let you change the visibility instead of opacity - or just click the eye icon in the scene tab.

Rafmer

   Creating instances would certainly make the surfaces much easier to select; but you would still apply a material preset, that requires you to select the candle before applying. Guess I will end up adding a tip somewhere to direct people in the right direction.

Sensual Art

Instancing would also replicate any morph effects, so may not be an ideal option if you are using morphs to define the shape of the flame.