Select material under mouse cursor
Selecting a specific material on an object with multiple materials isnt easy sometimes. To find the right material, going through materials in edit mode is sometimes the only way.
Possible solution could be, to select the material under the mouse cursor, while clicking on an object in "Object mode". This way fast material selection would be possible.
Another handy workflow for shading would be, to drag and drop a material on an object to override the material/selection beneath the cursor.
My workaround for fast shading for now is, to seperate the object based on material selection, and join it after the shading is done.
10 Comments
Not a bad idea. I think I know how to do this in python, but don't have a lot of free time these days.
How do you think the interface would work? Would it be just a hotkey type of thing? Maybe you hover the mouse over the material and hit a key, and then the object is selected (if not already) and material is selected in the materials list? Or do you start the operator either in the interface or with a hotkey and click the object? Sort of like an eyedropper?
@dpdpforlife: Depends on how expensive the calculation with high dense meshes is. If its cheap in performance, i would select the beneath material every time i select a objcet.
but a Shortcut or a Eyedropper would be good enought to speed up the workflow significantly.
@danielpaulus90: Oh...so, no matter what the material under the cursor is active when you click an object. I could see this possibly being a nuisance if you're having to switch back and forth between objects a lot to adjust materials. It would limit where you would have to click on the objects or require the extra step of selecting the material after you click on the object.
Maybe not though. It's one of those things that I'd have to use to see if it would cause issues.
@dpdpforlife: Yeah you are right, i think it should be studied, to select another material.
@dpdpforlife: An eyedropper is awesome idea
Ok, i did a small Script, called "Material Picker" You can get it here: bit.ly/2Wilqug Works for 2.8, just put it in your Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\startup Then you will find it with search.
If you have selected your material with left click, you can exit the script with escape.
If something doesn't work, please let me know, it's one of my first scripts with python :)
There are some other small scripts in this folder, to change colors for example.
(you can also just go to edit mode and select a polygon, the applied shader should get selected in 2.8)
Hey men, the link is down :(
I don't know if it is exactly what you need, but you might check the NP Station's shader_brush.
blenderartists.org/t/np-station/686462
Where this feature is desperately needed is when working with dupliverts or collection instances or instances within geometry nodes. It's a real pain to track down the original source object so you can go into edit mode to select the face with the material you want to edit. When it's a linked object you can't go into edit mode without making it local. I just want to make that one material local and leave the object itself linked.
And why not a simple left click -select material- in the interactive Cycles render? It is a well know workflow in other programs and render engines. It is the fastest way to select a material.