#350205
Hi!

We are a housebuilding company that work the "ArchiCad -> Cinema 4d -> Maxwell Render" way

In ArchiCad in a material setting, there you have a materialsetup for each render that you have installet (Internal, Lightworks, Maxwell Render). So if I render with internal, then the internal setup for my wall materials will render. If i will render my scene with Maxwell render, then ArchiCad sent the maxwellmaterials for my wall.

Is there a similiar easy way to configure an object in Cinema so I could switch between our Advanced render materials and Maxwell materials? We are doing our highquality stillimage in Maxwell Render but movies / VR-scenes in Advanced render and switch between AR and MR material taking alot of times in big scenes.

Regards
Tobias
#350237
I would have thought that you could put materials and tags on different layers, then enable/disable the layers as necessary. Apparently though, a layer's View & Render switches have no effect on materials and texture tags (seems odd to me). Maybe somebody else has a trick for this.
#350585
did you ever try to change the order of the tags? the texture tag the most to the right will be the one that is used.

So if you have an object with Cinema AR, Maxwell, Vray or other texture tags - the one on the right will be used.

for example:
- a cube with 2 texture tags. Cinema material = Red, Maxwell = Gold

cube, maxwell tag, cinema tag => renders in red
cube, cinema tag, maxwell tag => render in gold


that doesn't make it easier to switch with just a click, but it works pretty fine.
#351019
Hi there

have the maxwell tag on the very right of the material tags in c4d. set it to "backside only". c4d wont render the mat in it´s own engine (well - it will but only on the backside of the poly which most probably you wont see). Maxwell again ignores the "front" "back" setting of the c4d texture tag. So Maxwell will render the mxm material even though it´s set to only show on the back of a poly...

Cheers
Rogurt
#357069
No, there is still no mechanism that I'm aware of. It would be possible for the plugin to introduce a switch whereby non-Maxwell materials could be ignored for Maxwell export and rendering, but I don't think there is any method for achieving the opposite.
#357321
Hi,

I see. I guess a switch like that would actually take care of the problem without having to do the opposite, no? Then we could just place the c4d materials at the rightmost edge, and they would be used when rendering with c4d render engine. Then when rendering with Maxwell, the innermost maxwell material would be considered instead.

Regards

- Björn
#373817
Just stumbled upon this old Post and wanted to give a nearly perfect solution:
use RenderElements Plugin by Adam Swaab - it´s a superfantastic-must-have. Changing materials for all objects by definable presets is the least thing that can be done with this fine plug!
#383406
Hi

This still has no obvious solution, right?

I have one Maxwell material and one Cinema material. I tried placing a Maxwell material to the right and rendering with Cinema render. Seems Cinema render still does not render the underlying Cinema material but instead some interpretation of the Maxwell material

If I do the other way around, Maxwell material to the left, and Cinema mtrl to the right - and render with Maxwell render - Maxwell is trying to interpret the cinema material.

Perhaps a switch in Maxwell that when enabled would prevent it from trying to render an interpretation of a Cinema material but instead regarded that object as of having no material set. Perhaps that would be helpful?

Then we could just place Cinema materials on the rightmost edge, and have Maxwell material underneath.

Best regards

- Björn
#383409
It seems simple enough when just considering a single object, but the real cases are much more complicated, given that we're talking not just about simple per-object material assignment, but also polygon selections, and UVs, whether got through a texture tag, or a UV tag. Just for example, take a look at the assignments in this Cinema file, and see what happens as you drag the texture tags to different locations in the hierarchy. Before doing so though, take a look at the structure, and see if you can predict what should or should not happen:
  • Image
I really couldn't say how much time has gone into inferring all the different behaviors regarding how Cinema material inheritance operates, and I'm pretty hesitant to try to add in even more rules, as it would be very likely to break things, in ways which would be difficult to predict. This particular example, for instance, is something that would not have been handled properly until relatively recently, when in diagnosing why material assignments were not working correctly with the Carbon Scatter plugin, I learned that texture tags up the hierarchy are allowed to refer to selection tags further down.

Even putting all that aside, it's not likely that I'll do something more with this, since as a general principle, my position is that a plugin should accommodate the host platform, and avoid trying to augment it, as this can lead to issues down the road, should the host be modified to work in new, incompatible ways. Were Maxon to do something like make texture (and related) tags work with the layer system, then I'd have to go through and re-work the logic to accommodate the change, but until something like that happens, I think it best just to play by the existing rules.
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