Prevent merging of materials with same definition but different names

Hello,

we regularily import FBX files from Deltagen into Rhino. As part of our workflow we sometimes intentionally have materials in Deltagen with the same material definitions but different names. When we import them into Rhino, these Materials are merged.

For instance these two cubes have the Materials “Material1” and “Material2” assigned. The materials are identical except for their names:
Materials

When these are imported into Rhino, both cubes have the material “Material2”. See also the FBX file for reference: Materials.fbx (27.5 KB)

Is it possible to prevent Rhino from merging the two materials? Please note that we do not want one material per object like it used to be (Material Duplication) but that all materials are present as they are in the FBX file.

Hello - I’m confused, I guess - didn’t you specifically ask for the opposite behavior?

when I import an FBX into Rhino 7, it creates a unique material for each object instead of assigning the same material to all objects.
For instance, I have a FBX with five cubes. Each Cube is assigned the same material “Grey”.
When I import it, I have 5 “Grey” materials instead of one. This behaviour was different in Rhino 6, where I would correctly get one “Grey” material assigned to all five cubes.

-Pascal

Hi Pascal,

thank you for the quick response. What I am asking now is somewhere in between.
Lets go with my original example: I have 5 objects, all are assigned the material “Grey”. Originally Rhino 7 would create 5 materials called “Grey” and assign each one to one of the objects. I asked if this would be fixed so all 5 objects would get the same material “Grey”. You quickly fixed this a few month ago and I am absolutely grateful. Please do not change this back :slight_smile:

Now let us assume I have 5 objects again. 2 have the material “Grey1” assigned and 3 have the material “Grey2” assigned in the FBX file. For some reason “Grey1” and “Grey2” have identical material definitions (same color, reflection etc.) except for their names (this is due to the fact that Deltagen materials cannot be fully represented in FBX, so some material will turn out the same upon conversion). When I import them into Rhino, Rhino realizes that the materials are the same except for their names and assigns “Grey2” to all 5 objects, discarding the material called “Grey1”. What I would like to happen though is that 2 objects still have “Grey1” and 3 objects still have “Grey2”. I absolutely do not want duplicates.
This is what it looks like in Deltagen and how I would like it to be in Rhino:

To sum up:
Original Rhino 7 behaviour: 5 objects with same material → 5 materials
After the fix from several month ago: 5 objects with same material → 1 material
What I ask now: 5 objects with same material definition but two different material names → 2 materials