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Loosing MXM editior


Andrew West

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I have been trying to recreate a problem that I am continually having with the latest releases of Maxwell and I think I have it figured out.  In the last two weeks I have been trying to tackle Maxwell and figure out its little quirks.  One little issue that I have is that I loose the ability to edit my Maxwell materials in Form.z.  If I load a maxwell material from their website, Arroway, or create one myself the material editor works fine and I can go back and forth changing different settings.  However, if I create a Renderzone material and give it a bitmap,  change it to a Maxwell material with "translate shaded" and switch it from "realistic match" to "matte" then I loose the ability to use the Material editor on that material or any other material in my project.  At that point the only way to edit Maxwell  materials in my project is to package to render farm and then open it up in Maxwell Studio. 

 

Next issue that I have yet to figure out:  I have read the nice tutorial here:http://blog.maxwellrender.com/tips/photography-techniques-for-speeding-up-interior-renders/. And I would like to be able to hide my emitter surface from the camera.  I have yet to figure out how to do that in Form.z directly.  I can see the nice little button in Maxwell Studio to do this but again I do not want to "package to render farm" and open studio to preview each scene and adjust lighting output. 

 

 

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Andrew,

 

1.

Regarding the first issue, we have reproduced this conflict with the 'Edit MXM' button when the Renderzone plugin is also loaded (and used) on Windows. We will figure out if this is something we can work around, or if the UI fix will have to come from AutoDesSys.

 

2.

In general, you should not use Package for Renderfarm, unless you are really Packaging for a renderfarm. That option will make copies of all your resources into one place, which is probably not what you want. Instead, just 'render' (e.g, export to MXS) the Maxwell project, with the Launch Action (Display Options>Maxwell Icon>Scene Tab) set to "Studio' or 'None'. See http://support.nextlimit.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=16810284

 

3.

To hide emitter geometry:

If using a formZ light, in the lights Parameters tab, enable 'Invisible Geometry'

If using an emitter MXM assinged to an object, select the object that has the emitter applied. In Pick Tool options Attributes tab, select "Maxwell Attributes..." Then enable Hide From > Camera.

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Thank you for your help here.  As for #3 the issue I guess I had was with leaving the Maxwell attributes tab enabled as I switch between objects.  If I leave it enabled I loose the ability to assign Maxwell attributes onto a different object. When I click on a new object I need to switch back  to a Basic or Renderzone material,  then switch it back to a Maxwell material,  Then a window pops open so that I can edit its Maxwell properties (like hide from camera).  A simple work around that wasn't immediately obvious to me.

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Concerning #2 above when I set my scene tab to "Studio" instead of "render"  it launches studio and then I get an error message for each material texture map that exists in Form.z.  It is important to note that all my form.z materials have been converted to Maxwell materials in the editor.  A prompt comes up to find each texture map.  When I navigate to each one some of them are able to be loaded but the majority of them get another error warning "texture unable to load".  As a result my Maxwell Studio image has few of the original form.z bitmap jpeg textures.  That is why I had to "package for renderfarm".  That way at least my textures would come through.  Is there a work around for this?

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