[PeterP]

According to the docs Maya's Phong shader gets translated internally to be used in Maxwell. I can't seem to get specular to work. Is this broken? What am I missing?

"The following Maya materials are translated into Maxwell approximations:"

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mx ... +Materials

I am using the latest (3.2) of Maxwell and Plugins.

Pete

[Mihnea Balta]

That page in the documentation is no longer relevant. Starting with Maxwell 3.1, all built-in Maya materials are translated to a simple diffuse material (as described for Lambert material in the first bullet on that page). We did this because the Phong and Blinn approximations were not even close to the way those material looked in other render engines, and moreover, some common setups resulted in highly unrealistic Maxwell translations which made the render very slow. We're now translating everything to diffuse so you can get a rough idea of the texturing in the scene when you start to convert a scene to Maxwell, but you won't be able to use built-in materials for your final render. The material model used by Maxwell is very different compared to the default Maya shaders, so you'll have to use Maxwell materials to get meaningful results.

Sorry for the outdated documentation, we'll fix it ASAP.

[PeterP]

Thanks for the clarification.

It's unfortunate that this is no longer supported. And while getting meaningful results is the goal - sometimes during the layout phase, and before look development, those original shader characteristics help make a prettier picture for presentation. I guess updating the docs also works.