[TZORG]

Hi, I'm using plugin v2.0.0.0 I believe.

One thing I always face is that the .dae's I must load into C4D have "transparent" tags that cause C4D (R11.010) to add the basic property of Transparency to each material. This has no effect on the appearance from a simple Ctrl+R. But once exported to Studio, materials still possessing Transparency will obtain Nd 1.000 Roughness 0 instead of Nd 3.000 Roughness 99. So, they're pitch black.

If you import a .dae from Smith Micro Poser, you get "transparent" as well as "emission" tags on everything. C4D translates this into the Luminance property (black color), which again is fine with a simple Ctrl+R, but in Maxwell these materials have been translated as emitters. And there are big problems with the assignment of materials to triangles.

I just realized I can multi-select materials and untag transparency... so I can stop manually search/replacing in the .dae's... But it seems like something it might be possible to address... It seems like the plugin could regard the transparency/luminance color of "black" and say that this is not really transparent/emitter.

Thanks.

[JDHill]

The problem is: the plugin has no way to know whether you are specifying these values on purpose or not - I can't tell a material that was created by .dae import from one you created by hand. If you want to send me a small file (jeremy at nextlimit dot com) that shows these materials, maybe I can come up with some special rules that won't interfere with normal usage. I'm also not sure what you mean by 'big problems with the assignment of materials to triangles', so a file would be good there too.

[TZORG]

I don't know a lot about C4D, but I guess there's no reason to set the values this way on purpose. Even if they affected the Cinema render, the resulting translation into Maxwell materials is unintuitive.

Just to clarify: The main problem is that a Transparent material that isn't actually transparent, is obtaining Roughness 0. I understand the logic of adjusting the Nd and Roughness for a transparent material, but it would be nice if there were a single exception.

What I mean about the last sentence of your post is that the plugin, or Maxwell Studio, seems unwilling to assign emitter materials (which I would argue shouldn't be interpreted as emitters) to any triangle groups. Actually, it won't even define the triangle groups. Triangle selector gives an error, and material selector crashes.

I admit I don't understand the rules for what things are allowed to be emitters. Maybe the assignment is necessarily illegal.

I will send you a couple of simple .dae's if you like, but it can be produced manually in C4D also. Make a primitive with a colored material. Render in C4D or Maxwell: no problem. In C4D check Transparency, change Transparency color to 0 0 0. Cinema render looks the same, Maxwell renders it black. Uncheck Transparency and check Luminance, set that color to black. Cinema is the same, Maxwell renders it black.

I couldn't reproduce MXST oddities using a primitive so I will definitely send a .dae over.

Thanks.