[ran]

I have been loaded MXM materials into my model but they do not render in fire or studio, They appear as when applied onto model. I have tried adjusting output levels but with no results.

[JDHill]

I see no such problem here, so please upload an example C4D model (zipped, along with any referenced MXM files and textures) that demonstrates this.

[ran]

Thanks JD.
Please check model & reference files. Hopefully it is something simple I have missed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1i9vizmubfti ... SU.c4d.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eczcfq3qmuxoido/0s5cfQllWc

[JDHill]

It appears to be working correctly here. However, there is a material assigned to only one object in the scene (Model >model_base1 > decking___lawn1 > Mesh7), and the UVs for that are mapping its textures at a very small size. Changing the texture tag's Length X/Y to 10000%, here is what you should see rendered:

• 

[ran]

Thankyou. Is it possible to change the colour of the material? I have been trying to change the colour of my decking with maxwell in Cinema4D but when I manage to change it the decking itself disappears. I do not seem to be able to work this out from any of the tutorials.

[JDHill]

Not like in SketchUp, if that's what you mean. Maxwell does have built-in saturation/contrast/brightness controls for textures, but the actual color is determined by the Reflectance 0° texture map itself, which is literally just a picture of some boards -- you would need to open that in Photoshop and alter color there.

[ran]

Thanks. I thought that maybe what would be required. My leaves of my Xfrog plants do not render in maxwell. I have tried changing some texture attributes with no success. Please take a look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z6evlw5yaxvv3 ... rn.c4d.zip
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zq71dbjjb1bhdi2/Dicksonia.zip

[JDHill]

Cinema can't find the textures. They will work fine if you place them in the same folder as the Treefern.c4d file, or next to it, in a folder named "tex".

[ran]

Works Fine. But then I merge Treefern.c4d file into another c4d file and the same issue arises. I have tried a number combination of file arrangement with no luck. Struggling with Cinema & Maxwell. Everything is in the main project file.

[JDHill]

About all I can tell you is that in addition to automatically searching the document folder, and a relative "tex" subfolder, if it exists, Cinema also searches any Texture Paths you have set up in Cinema Preferences. That is how things work on Cinema's side. For paths referenced inside the plugin, in addition to searching in the aforementioned places, a relative "textures" folder is also searched, since that is the convention used by Maxwell. Additional search paths are also dynamically added to an internal list, whenever files (textures, MXMs, etc) referenced in the scene, but not included in any explicitly-specified location, are found to exist.

[ran]

Thanks alot JD. Simple solution. I'm starting to come to grips with 4Dcinema and Maxwell. Another issue i'm having is I have a spotlight in my outdoor scene but the light does not appear in Maxwell Fire. I have checked create physical lights in the scenes attributes. Any suggestions?

Ran

[JDHill]

Since you are just getting started, I would recommend first playing with different features in simple test scenes, to get the feel of things. When you are talking about using native Cinema lights, those can be tricky to work with. There are no such things as these kinds of lights in Maxwell, so what you get are just approximations, built on-demand by the plugin, of physical geometry and emitter materials, based on translation of the parameters in the Cinema light. So in some cases, they can be very rough approximations, and I therefore don't recommend using them very much. In the long run, it is generally better for quality, to build geometry and emitter materials yourself.

[ran]

I have taken on your suggestion and have been using emitter materials with some success. Thanks.
I have an Xfrog plant collection that just will not render with Maxwell. I'd be grateful if you could take a look. Hopefully the file is not to large.

Ran

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xemc0lew3vs2a5c/Hi7SbJ4i2b

[JDHill]

The first problem is that the geometry is not consistent, so first run Cinema's ( I think you are on R10 or R10.5 ) Functions > Optimize tool to get rid of warnings printed by the plugin in the Cinema Console ( Window > Console ) regarding invalid triangle indices. The second problem, also reported by the plugin in the Console during export ( i.e. error @ multi-mat object 'LS05_01' (illegal emitter selection on non-emitter object) ), is that Maxwell does not support emitters as sub-object selection materials. To prevent this, you should select all of the materials and disable the Luminance channel, so that they are not translated into emitters by the plugin.

[ran]

Thankyou!
Xfrog plant rendering.