I have a hair style i purchased that ships with imtlplus hair materials. When i attempt to load one of the materials, (I’m in Materials, material list, load material) CC5 only looks for .imtl and does not see the imtlplus file that is there. Any suggestions?
(I know the material is there because i see it in windows explorer.)
The material plus files are specific to the object they were made for. So you cannot just load them as a material on any item.
Load the hair the material plus was made for from the Content Manager.
Load the material plus from the Content Manager by double-clicking or dragging it onto the hair in the viewport.
The material plus does not appear in my content manager. it did when i first purchased and downloaded the hair, but it is now currently nowhere to be found in Content Manager. Since it no longer shows up in my content manager, i was attempting to get it on the specific hair it was designed for by going through Materials. Neither the hair nor the materials show up in my “Purchased Items”. It is on my computer but CC5 does not see it.
Hi…
Please refer to the link below which shows how you can load a Material Plus file step by step. Alternatively, you can simply drag the material plus file from Windows File Explorer onto the hair in the viewport as Rampa already suggested.
Try these methods and see if it applies the materials to the hair correctly (make sure the hair is selected first).
Please Note: If you are not seeing the material plus file when clicking Load Material Plus from the Modify Panel - check the name of the file has the correct extension. It should be *.iMtlPlus
Rampa and Pete_RL,
What you are both missing is that the materials do NOT appear in my Content Manager (at least as far as i can tell). When following your instructions to “save” them, CC5 says they are already there so it is pointless to save (load) what is already there. At this point the only way i can get the materials onto the hair is to locate them through windows explorer and drag them onto the hair. I repeat, they do NOT appear in the Content Manager window like they did when i first purchased and downloaded the hair and hair materials. (And Rampa said to drag them from the Content Manager (where they don’t appear) not windows explorer.)
Or…perhaps you could tell me where i might find them in Content Manager. Maybe I’m missing some fork in the ever-winding UI trail that leads to these materials.
Sounds like it is installed, just not showing up in the Content Manager. Try these steps:
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Reset the content metadata by right-clicking the refresh button and selecting “Reset MetaData”.
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Search in the both the pack and item tab. Choose the “All” category and type the name, or part of the name, into the search box.
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If still not found, reset your content database:
A. Download the Reset Database Tool:
https://file.reallusion.com/support/ResetDB_IC8CC4CC5CTA5.zip
B. Close Character Creator 5/iClone 8/Character Creator 4/Cartoon Animator 5 program.
C. Uncompress the “ResetDB_IC8CC4CC5CTA5” to local drive.
D. Double click the related .bat file to run it.
For example, for iClone 8, use “Reset IC8 Database and Registry.bat” and so forth.
E. Wait around 30 seconds for rebuilding the database.
After running the database reset, select “Sync Installed Content” from the Content Manager drop-down menu to quickly relink all your thumbnails to their content, if they have turned gray (it’s a regular left-click on the menu button).
Rampa, thanks for the info. I can only conclude that my CC5 Content Manager is really messed up. When i did the “reset MetaData” and then started a search, a hair model that i hadn’t seen in a long time popped up in the window below. I double clicked it out of curiosity and it popped into my work area with a mannequin attached. The hair appears nowhere in my Content Manager. So, i saved it as a CC5 model to deal with later. Then i eventually dropped into my “free resource” folder which has 4249 items. Most appear in my main Content Manager…but i did find the materials for the hair i had purchased (that does appear in Content Manager) but with no materials. So, now i would like to get the hair materials moved to their correct location. Your “Reset Data tool” really worries me. As bad as my current Content Manager is, i could see the “Reset Data Tool” completely hosing everything. Also, i would like to get the hair i accidentally discovered into the Content Manager in a way that it could be retrieved. At this point, i have no idea how to do either.
Any component of your character can be saved separately in the Content Manager. So if want to save the hair from a character:
- Select the hair in the scene. Double-click it so there selection marks around it. As a single click usually just selects the entire character.
- Select the Hair category in the Content Manager.
- Click Save at the bottom. It will be saved in the same category in the Custom tab.
Have a look at this Content Manager tutorial:
Always make sure you are in the right category. You may find that you saved a character when you meant to save just some element of the character. You do get a second option to set the category after clicking Save as well. So two ways to make sure you are saving what you expect. 
Got it. Thanks.