Maxwell Render | Official public forum

hey jeremy
I hope this hasn't come up yet, but I cannot install the plugin for rhino5x64. I just completely reinstalled win7 over an old win7rc and installed all programs from the scratch.
While installing the x64 plugin, it always said "no rhino x64 installation could be found on this machine". First I thought it was because I installed rhino 5 into the directory "Rhinoceros 5.0" and not "Rhinoceros 5.0 WIP (64-bit)" as default, but even reinstalling to that directory did not solve the problem.
have you got any idea?
thanks, christoph

No, I don't know much about this yet. I do know that I saw a report recently on the Rhino newsgroup of their nXt (that's Flamingo, I guess) intaller also failing with the same message on the latest Rhino 5 beta release. They don't know why it's happening yet, but apparently some things were changed with how the Rhino installer writes its registry info, and that's causing this issue. Hopefully, they decide to fix this on the Rhino side, rather than making every x64 plugin issue a new release.

hmm ok, so I'll wait for the next release or see if I still have an older WIP.

I contacted Rhino support and this the answer I got from them. Any ideas JD?

Also I did a save as of my rhino 5.0 file to 4.0. I opened the file but all my maxwell materials are gone? Any ideas to retrieve them while you find a fix?

thanks

Here is their answer..


--->
Paolo -

The Rhino 5 registry keys did change. This has forced the plug-ins to change also.

The newest Flamingo NXT has been updated to work with the new registry. You can download it from the website.

I am not sure if Maxwell has updated yet. They are aware of the problem, but will need to release a new installer.

- Scott Davidson
Rhino Technical Support
www.rhino3d.com

<-----

I know what I have to do to get it working again, but have not gotten to it yet due to other more important things getting in the way. Remember, as they tell you in bold letters when you download, Rhino 5.0 is beta software and should not be relied on for production work - situations like this are the reason why. It's only because McNeel is generally good about comatibility that I offer Rhino 5.0 plugins at all - I don't do that for any other of my plugins - the good stability of Rhino betas tends to make people take them for granted though, and they should not do that, since beta software is not just about runtime stability -- structural changes may need to be made at any time, as has been done in this case.

As for saving a 4.0 file from 5.0, the problem would likely be that you don't have the plugin loaded in your Rhino 5.0 session; if that's the case, then it won't be there to save its data.

It is theoretically possible to install the plugin by tweaking the registry, in order to replace a single entry that McNeel decided to remove. When the plugin installer looks at

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0x64

...it expects to find a string named:

• MostRecent

...whose value should be:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0x64

I have no idea why they decided to remove this...it used be that the registry would have multiple sets of information for different installed Rhino versions, and the MostRecent entry pointed to the current one. They have changed this, so there are no longer multiple sets of registry data, and as part of that change, they removed the MostRecent entry. Honestly, they could have left it alone and pointed it to the one single set of Rhino registry data, as I am showing above. But as I stressed above, this is beta software, and McNeel has every right to do whatever they want to with it.

If you are comfortable enough with the Registry to make the change above, feel free to do so - the installer will probably run fine afterwards; otherwise, you will have to wait a while longer until I can remake my installers, test them, and get them released.

Hi,
I was having this same issue and the reg key worked to fix it but now I'm seeing this error:
"No Maxwell Render 2.0 installation could be found on this machine. If you have installed Maxwell, please see the FAQ regarding the MAXWELL2_ROOT Environment variable."

I checked my system and it was set correctly by the Maxwell installer:
"MAXWELL2_ROOT=C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell 2"

Do you have any suggestions to fix this?
Thanks,

-Rob

No, if it fails, that simply means that Windows Installer is unable to find maxwell.exe. So, double- and triple- check your paths, and make sure that maxwell.exe is found in the folder pointed to by MAXWELL2_ROOT.

I'm not sure why it was being weird but a reboot made everything better.
Thanks for the help,

-Rob

JDHill wrote: When the plugin installer looks at

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0x64

...it expects to find a string named:

• MostRecent

...whose value should be:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McNeel\Rhinoceros\5.0x64

Yeah thanks, this info saved my ass today.
Wouldn't this deserve a sticky until it is solved ?

Thanks,

--
Olivier

Out of the blue, the plug-in is unable to find Maxwell Render...
Could it be another one of those lousy registry problems ?
It may also be the way Win 7 (French version) calls the X64 "program files" folder : it calls it "Programmes"
Yet, the X86 folder is called "Program Files (X86)".... go figure.

So what registry key should I edit ?

Thanks,

--
Olivier

PS : By the way, why does the 64 bits version of the plug-in installs by default in the "Program Files (x86)" folder ?

How and when is the plugin telling you it can't find Maxwell? At startup, or when you try to render, or? The plugin just looks at your MAXWELL2_ROOT environment variable, and if it finds the file maxwell.exe at that location, it starts it up when you render.

The reason why the x64 plugin uses Program Files (x86) by default is because there are some things which can be shared between the x86 and x64 plugins. Of course, you can choose any folder you want during the install.