[mxwl_fjg]

There was a video tutorial on the nextlimit site prior to the new site update that showed some setup and installation steps for getting the plugin to work in Softimage. In it, setting the global scale to .02 was shown. Is this correct?

It seems so when working in Softimage becuase if this value left at 1, default emitter values aren't strong enough to light a scene (sidenote: the Global scale setting doesn't seem to have a significant effect on either sun/sky, or environment (HDR) lighting).

The problem I'm having is that if I export an mxs from Soft to Maxwell Studio with this .02 scale, the geometry comes in very small in the studio scene (which makes sense since the plug-in is scaling... )I tested this by:

Opening the 'real-scale material' file in Studio
Exporting the geometry of the boxes from that file as .obj
Import these obj's to Softimage
Export an mxs file of the boxes (with global scale set to .02)
Import the mxs to studio (with the original real-scale scene still loaded)



The result is that the boxes are .02 the size of the original, If I set Global scale to 1 in Softimage then export, the obj's come in to Studio at the same size as the original boxes in the real-scale mxs preview scene.

So the scale problem in this situation, aside from lighting with emitters, camera settings, and other 'real world' settings, is displacements, which I've had trouble with for some time...

In any case, can someone clarify/verify plug-in settings, and therefore scale in Soft (for example how many cm is a default SI grid unit, or the default character geometry that comes with Soft)?

[Mihai]

Since the SI unit is a generic unit, the Global Scale setting in Maxwells render options lets you specify what you want a generic SI unit to represent. If Global Scale is 1 it means 1 SI unit = 1meter.

So it's simple to make the right adjustments to make sure you export the scene in the scale you intended. For example set the global scale to 0.01 and each SI unit will represent 1cm (100th of a meter). 0.1 will be 1 SI unit = 1dm. 0.0254 means 1 SI unit = 1 inch (since 1 inch is 2.54cm).

It's normal for the lighting intensity from emitters to change dramatically if the scene scale changes, much less so for Physical Sky or IBL since they are much more powerful emitters.

You can see this page for a way to check the scene scale in Maxwell Studio to make sure your MXS has been exported at the right scale:
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/ma ... cene+scale

[mxwl_fjg]

Ok, thanks. I made the assumption that the .02 (didn't see the '54') was to get SI to scale
based on SI default character primitives... I'll dive into the manual a bit more.