How to delete material slots from static mesh?

Development Asset Creation
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1

I just ran into this issue also while using Megascans assets and found a way to workaround the bug:

  • Add LOD0 back in as the last LOD
  • the unused materials will be sorted to the bottom of the stack with the last one allowing you to click the ‘X’ button
  • After clicking the last ‘X’ and the material has been removed, the new last slot will now allow you to click the ‘X’ button.
  • Keep deleting until all of the unused materials are gone.
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2

Every imported static mesh LOD adds a new material slot. I want to use one material for all LODs, so I’ve assigned the same material for every LOD under the LOD Sections area. This way the ‘X’ buttons appeared, but they’re greyed out and I can’t click them:
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What should I do to delete the unused slots?

3

Thanks, it seems like a bug that it doesn’t work right away. I’ll try this workaround soon, cheers!

4

Hello,
It’s not a bug. The additional material slots are there because each Megascans mesh (each LOD) has a different material ID. If you open a mesh and it’s LODs in a modeling package i.e 3Ds MAX, select all meshes and apply one material to all of them and export it out, upon importing in UE4 you’ll have 1 material slot only.

5

Very useful! Thank you!

Just in case someone else besides me did not understand the answer right away:
Under the “Material Slot” is the passage “LOD Sections”
There you have to change all the dropdown menues to the same material.
Then the X’s will appear in “Material Slots”.

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6

Very useful! Thank you!

Just in case someone else besides me did not understand the answer right away:
Under the “Material Slot” is the passage “LOD Sections”
There you have to change all the dropdown menues to the same material.
Then the X’s will appear in “Material Slots”.

7

I had this same problem minus the megascans. In my case I wanted 4 lods 4096,2048,1024,512. I created the extra material inputs before I baked them out. I baked 2048 out from the screen where you set up lods, instead of the details in the main editor. instead of it putting it in the lod I assigned it to, it actually made a 5th lod. then I couldn’t delete any of the lods and it was greyed out. My fix was way more simple, I just reimported the model when I went into the screen UI to set up lods, x was now lit up and I could then delete them. hope this helps

8

been dealing with this issues since i like reimport my assets alot… sure the LOD thing works but it was getting of the duplicate/non existing material set…

so heres my walkthrough of how to fix it!!

9

Thank you so much! This worked for me.

10

thanks, it worked for me too!

11

Thread is getting old but finally figured out another not so obvious (at least not so obvious to me) issue I kept running into.

Material Slots can only be deleted from the ‘bottom up’

For example, let us say that my character has 5 materials, and I decide to get rid of material 3, I can empty the slot BUT i need to move materials 4 and 5 up one so that the empty material slot is at the bottom,

What I do most often is move the bottom most material (material 5 in this example) to material 3, and reassign the textures to the material slot as well as to my LOD slots. THEN I am able to click the white X’s to remove the material slot I no longer need!

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12

Does any one know if there a way to batch this,

removing empty slots on many assets, theoretically you are just clicking X to remove empty nodes no longer used.

like Trowco said, empty nodes can come up often with re-iterating and reimporting alot.

(dreamwish, mel script that finds your unreal names and updates your maya shader names respectively)

Thanks of your time

13

Thank you so much for specification

14

Hi
Is there any way to delete unused material slots in UE5.0.2?

15

Hi i used 3 hours on this…

You need to drag the menu FAAAAR out, then a little trash bin appears.

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16

oO !!!
lol…
really, really thanks!

17

u are legend

18

Epic does it again…

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19

Hi! Please describe what you mean under “drag the menu FAAAAR out”? I have the same problem, but can not understand :frowning:

20

Just move the panel split to the left (make it wider) - the delete button is to the right of the Slot Name field entry which is too wide and hides the button.

1 Like