[Cosmasad]

Good morning Jeremy,
Three questions from the Plugin manual:

p. 48 Render Channels
In the manual you say “Render is the main output image" meaning that the Render channel at the top of the list "is the main output image." Does that mean that we should definitely check this channel every time we do a regular rendering where we want to see diffuse & reflections? What happens if we don’t check this? Or does this apply only if we're going to be doing some advanced post-production work involving channels?

p. 48 Render Layers
Just want to confirm that we are only supposed to check these if we want Maxwell to suppress the items in this pain. If we don’t check them, then Maxwell will include these.

p. 49 Options
This is basically a “preferences” page right? If so, once we have changed a particular option do we need to restart Rhino for it to take effect?

Thank you

[Polyxo]

Just to let JD have his Sunday:

All Render-Channels are explained in length in the regular Maxwell Manual (page 35). You will always want to have "Render" checked.
It gives the merged output-image.

All other channels are advanced options. Here one can output isolated Channels the render-image is composed from.
Yes, one may want to check some of them when the plan is to postprocess the image in an image-editor in order to achieve a certain effect.

Render-Layers:
You'll typically want to have all these options checked (default setting). This gives the richest and most physically correct output.
In rare cases with dielectric or sss-materials and extreme lighting conditions it may help to uncheck some of the indirect options
in order to let the image clear up faster. This is btw. also covered in the Main-Manual.

page 50 Options is a Preferences-Page, right.

Please Cosmasad, do yourself and others a favour and read both Plugin and Main-Application-Manual!
Anyone here is really glad to answer questions - but this stuff really is all very well covered in the pdf's which ship with the Software.
Bear in mind that JD authors Maxwell-Plugins for four Software-Packages, you can recon that this alone is a fulltime-job.

He also does a most fabulous job in Customer-Support but one maybe should not pester him with most basic and well documented
stuff all of the time.

Holger

[Cosmasad]

With all due respect, I don't think you realize how some of the writing in the manuals is both confusing and unclear. If you want to help clarify things then thank you, but don't lecture us about reading the manuals. I have them both open on my desk and wouldn't be writing you if they made sense.

[Polyxo]

I find both manuals pretty comprehensive although English is not my first language.
Anyway there's also options to quickly try things out before making other people work for you.
If changing Preferences for instance needed Rhino to be restarted you could recon it was mentioned.
No, it is not necessary.

Again - I'm not at all saying you should not ask -but you already got extensive help on many things which
are really easy to figure out - here by JD and HalfLife and also in the Rhino-Newsgroup.

To me it feels a bit as if Jonathan Ch. from the Rhino-Newsgroup who got half of the
Rhino-Manual explained by McNeel-Employees had started rendering...

[Polyxo]

Again - I'm not at all saying you should not ask -but you already got extensive help on many things which
are really easy to figure out - here by JD and HalfLife and also in the Rhino-Newsgroup.

What I actually wanted to say:
One can not learn Rendering without terribly many tests, Trial and Error over and over. Every Material has to get tested
and tweaked and every Light-Setup and this will never stop, even at Expert-Level.
The issues I politely suggested to try chasing down on your own will belong to the easier nuts to crack, really.

[JDHill]

p. 48 Render Channels
In the manual you say “Render is the main output image" meaning that the Render channel at the top of the list "is the main output image." Does that mean that we should definitely check this channel every time we do a regular rendering where we want to see diffuse & reflections? What happens if we don’t check this? Or does this apply only if we're going to be doing some advanced post-production work involving channels?

Basically, yes; when it says main output image, it is referring to the standard RGB output of the renderer. If the output is meant for human eyes, and not Photoshop masking/etc. then yes, you would want the render channel enabled.

p. 48 Render Layers
Just want to confirm that we are only supposed to check these if we want Maxwell to suppress the items in this pain. If we don’t check them, then Maxwell will include these.

No, you have it backwards; if they are un-checked, then they will be excluded from the render calculation; 99 out of 100 times, you want to leave them checked, as they are by default.

p. 49 Options
This is basically a “preferences” page right? If so, once we have changed a particular option do we need to restart Rhino for it to take effect?

Yes, this page controls global behaviors of the plugin, which do not change from session to session. Changes made here take effect immediately, though they are (in most cases) only saved to disk at the end of your Rhino session.