9

Color Clipboard Utility 165
• An additional Alpha slider and spinner let you
explicitly set the alpha value for this color. This
value is also normalized, w here 0.0 represents
fully transparent, and 1.0 represents fully
opaque.
This version of the Color Selector also appears
when you use the DirectX 9 Shader material (page
2–1613) and the mental ray renderer’s Sampling
Quality rollout (page 3–98).
Color Clipboard Utility
Tools menu > Color Clipboard
Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > Utilities
dialog > Color Clipboard button
The Color Clipboard utility stores color swatches
for copying from one map or material to another.
For example, if in the Material Editor, you want
to copy a color from a swatch in one level of a
material to a swatch in another level (or from
another material), there would be no way to do
it w ith drag and drop. This is because you can’t
have two materials/maps visible at the same time.
Ho wever, you can drag the color from one material
to the color clipboard, switch to the other material,
and then drag the color from the clipboard to the
swatch in the n ew material.
You c an save and load color clipboard files. The
saved fi le, which is given a .ccb (color clip board)
extension, is an ASCII file that contains a palette
description. The first 12 lines of the file consist
of t hree RGB numbers, so you can easi ly edit or
create your own clipboard files. This file format is
also used by the VertexPaint modifier (page 1–936).
Procedure
To copy a color fr om a swatch to the color clipboard:
1.
On the Utilities panel, click Color Clipboard.
2. Open the Material Editor.
3. Select a color from any swatch in a material.
4. Drag the color to a swatch in the color
clipboard.
5. A dialog appears asking if you want to copy or
swap t he m aterial. Choose copy to replace the
swatch in the color clipboard with the swatch
from the material you selected. Choose swap
to swap colors on the Color Clipboard swatch
and material swatch.
Interfa ce
Co lor swatch es—Click a color swatch to edit its
value with the Color Selector.
Note: The Color Selector invoked by this utility
uses decimal numbers in the r ange 0.0 to 1.0,
instead of integers in the r ange 0 to 255 as with
other color-selection dialogs in 3ds Max.
New Floa ter —Displays a floating clipboard with 12
slots, plus buttons for opening and saving color
clipboardfiles.Youcanopenupasmanyofthese
floaters as you want and you can minimize them.
If you exit the Utilities panel or select the Close
button to exit the Color Clipboard utility, any
visible floaters remain open. When you close a
floater, any changed values are lost.