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materials not rendering
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:59 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 10:10 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:04 am
by ran
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:18 pm
by 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:
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:26 am
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:23 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:50 pm
by 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
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:09 pm
by 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".
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:45 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:05 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:00 am
by 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
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:01 am
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:29 pm
by 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
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:59 pm
by 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.
Re: materials not rendering
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 5:18 pm
by ran
Thankyou!
Xfrog plant rendering.