Too many materials used, max 32 even though I have 32 (CROWBAR)

[THN Productions]

My previous discussion died, and the titular question was answered anyway.
Been trying to compile this model for a couple of days now and it's telling me I have too many materials, even though I have the maximum amount. I previously got this error when I had too many materials, so I deleted them and used similar ones. Making multiple objects use similar materials in stead of separate ones. I'm trying to compile to a MDL so the view/preview will be blank.
Textures: https://gyazo.com/aeb458e71897f6106fa91b5298671b7d
VMTs and VTFs: https://gyazo.com/69e5f30cf98ab66ae4f3ad46c661eb5c
https://gyazo.com/95eec309c69f98a5f6fd9457b6fc5587

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by TimmyHeadNose:

Cause there are only 16 textures overall.

As I have now said about four times in various threads, textures are NOT the same as materials.

Even if they're regularly mixed up in common speech, it's vitally important to separate them as concepts when working in computer graphics.

[THN Productions]

How do I delete them? Right clicking doesn't work, and clicking on the Unlink Data-block thing makes those parts untextured.

[Marco Skoll]

You need to reassign those faces on the model so they all use the same copy of the material, as you normally would for assigning a material (and I will iterate it again: not texture*) to a face.

* And if you don't know whether you're assigning a material or a texture, you need to look up some Blender tutorials.

You can then remove the duplicates.

[THN Productions]

Dang, that's gonna be hard since I joined most of the objects. I think I have a .blend files for when they weren't all together, so I'll do it there. Unless there's a way to do it with joined objects.

[Marco Skoll]

The material pane allows you to select all faces currently assigned to a material. Select all the faces assigned to your duplicate materials, then reassign them to just one material.

As such, it will actually be easier with them merged, as you will only need to assign once, rather than each separate mesh.

[THN Productions]

Can you tell me or link a tutorial on how to do that?

[Pte Jack]

If a material is listed in blender, it is a unique name. You can't have duplicates in blender, therefore, you have more than 32 materials. Now if 2 materials are using the same texture (and this is where ppl get confused Textures are not materials) then what you have to do is walk through the UV Map, find the mesh where the materials are using the same texture and assign all that mesh to just 1 (one) material. That will cut your material counts from what ever it is now down to the 16 that you're actually using.

Textures are the files that colour your mesh, Materials tell the game engine how to display them (Shader, Transparent, gloss, if it has a normal map, etc).

VTF = Texture and VMT = Material Your model can only have 32 VMTs

[THN Productions]

I'm not sure what you mean by "walk through the UV map and find the mesh where the materials are using the same texture". Could you elaborate?
I selected everything that shares the same texture here: https://gyazo.com/407c60f9778e8b865df39a04c2c8631d
Do I need to do it like that? If so, what do I need to do?

[Pte Jack]

Watch this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U57dBBxE0ew

[THN Productions]

I don't need to combine them though, I just need to make multiple meshes use the same material, unless that's taught somewhere in the tutorial.

[green]

Originally posted by TimmyHeadNose:

I don't need to combine them though, I just need to make multiple meshes use the same material, unless that's taught somewhere in the tutorial.

Yes, it is.

[THN Productions]

Time stamp?

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by TimmyHeadNose:

Time stamp?

... basically the entire thing? Although some of it is about how you decide whether materials can be merged, it also covers the actual process of consolidating the mesh faces to use the same material.

Much of the video length is because it works through the entire model; you can probably grasp the actual techniques from just the first few examples.

[Pte Jack]

Yeah, I was going to time lapse some of it, but because of the transparency in the face and cheeks, I decided to drag it out. You have to make the judgement call as whether or not faces can be merged or if they need to have their own material. BUT, the thing is, you want to get the material count under 32. Whether or not you do the whole model is up to you.

If you use the Atlas tool in the Cats Blender tool plug in, you can combine all textures in one click to a single texture. The tool will combine all textures into a single texture sheet and clear the materials panel to use just that one texture in one material, but the texture sheet is a 3K texture. You can then go back and create and assign the faces with Alpha to another material and still one use one texture.

[THN Productions]

I'm following your tutorial Jack, just a quick question.
Yours: https://gyazo.com/2cb0f9e9c9d9fe862d3be133ff1dd63f
Mine: https://gyazo.com/56d0c511b3a3d0e0e44e4aca3433279f
How do I make those textures show up like with you?