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Hi,

I was thinking about the way the Auxpecker plugin (by Hyltom) utilizes a simple rendered maxwell sphere as an environment map for a simple material.

What if,... this would be the default representation of any geometry with a Maxwell material assigned? That is, If I create a maxwell material, generate a preview and assign it to any object - this material preview could be used in the background as a enviroment map in order to show a very lifelike representation of that material whenever I use Render-Shaded mode in Rhino?

Am I making sense?

- Björn

I'm not familiar with that plugin. A Maxwell material does use its associated Rhino material's environment map to provide a reflective environment, according to the options (Scene Manager > Options > Behavior >): Material Environment and Disable Material Environment. I doubt this is what you're referring to though.

I guess the need for this just disappears, sort of

Well, sort of -- actually, quite a bit of work has been done here due to V5 apparently not liking what the plugin was doing. Specifically, it will not attempt to 'restore viewport' when opening files -- you'll have to do it yourself if/when necessary. I also made some minor tweaks to the way Maxwell materials are converted into Rhino materials for the viewport; probably you will not notice too much (it has mostly to do with reflectivity), but I think it looks a bit better.

Ok, cool. I'll wait and see what happens in V5 later on, and now with the FIRE engine, this need is not as strong. Even though I use auxpecker as a shapefinding / form analysis tool,. because it's so great at environmentmapping out great materials on the surfaces. The technique is really simple,.

It's just about using images like this one, as an envirommentmapping texture applied to the "simple material" in Rhino. Built in functionality, but gives brilliant results.



Hyltom here on the forum came up with the idea and made this possible in a simple manner through the plugin Auxpecker.

My idea was just that, it would be cool if the applied maxwell materials, could use that little preview image or a tweaked such, in the same manner so that when one previews the scene in Render Shaded mode, it looks great. Even though I guess looking at how the texture mapping is applied is quite crucial aswell

btw, do you plan to implement the FIRE engine within the material preview window?

A problem with that is that a non-trivial number of video cards go nuts with environment maps. So to try to make it the primary method of visualization would be problematic. On Fire in the material preview, yes, eventually, but no firm ETA.

Sounds good, it would suit it well!