[dsr]

Okay. The new .xms referencing is great, but there seems to be one basic issue that we do not understand.
We should be able to use the Rhino Output dialog to help locate the .mxs textures, no? Or, is the only way to locate the textures through the original .xms files themselves?

A clarification on this would be helpful.

Thanks.

Regards,
dsr

[polynurb]

We should be able to use the Rhino Output dialog to help locate the .mxs textures, no?

what exactly do you mean by that?

[JDHill]

The only factor I'm aware of specifically regarding textures and mxs references is this: if you enable Pack & Go, at export, the plugin will run through all referenced mxs files, look for referenced files (textures, ies, etc), and copy them into the /textures directory, the same as it does for the mxs actually being exported. If you literally want to know which files are referenced by a given referenced mxs, though, you would need to open it in Studio.

As polynurb indicated, though, I'm not really sure this answers what you're asking, and if not, then please clarify what that is, and more importantly, why the question arises -- what are you trying to do, and what is the problem you are trying to solve.

[dsr]

The problem is pretty basic. The MXS files that we reference need to find their textures.
Rhino files with (Maxwell) materials can find their textures through find their path as set in the SceneManger>>Options>>SearchPath...with PathChecking on and search N number of levels below the given search path.
Ideally, the referenced MXS files would find their materials under the same options dialog settings.
This does not, however, seem to work in the new Rhino plug-in. We are getting an error saying that the MXS cannot find the texture files.
A colleague of ours using the new SketchUp plug-in says this works for him (i.e. through the SceneManager Options dialog).
When we give the path to the textures in Maxwell Studio (under Preferences...), however, there is no problem (i.e. error message stopping the render).
We are on the verge of bringing a lot of new entourage files (.MXS) into our office 3d library (plants, trees, etc).
If the location of the texture files could be defined through the Rhino plugin rather than through opening up every MXS file and defining it there, this would be very helpful.
Indeed, we were led to believe this is how it was supposed to work?

Does this explain our problem?

Best,
dsr

[JDHill]

Thanks, that helps give a clearer picture -- are you using Pack & Go when creating the MXS reference files? This should help to avoid any path-related issues you'd be likely to run into.

[dsr]

The MXS files we were using were just downloaded models that we bought (in MXS format). They were not generated in Rhino and re-exported with 'Pack & Go'.
We are aiming to keep all of our textures in one specific MXS textures library and we would rather not have to use the 'Pack & Go' feature with each export.
Again, one solution here is to go into each MXS through Maxwell Studio and re-path the textures there. This would be a one-time operation, but ideally it would not be necessary.
Our main question here is whether or not the SketchUp plugin and the Rhino plugin ARE indeed working differently by intention? Or if the path search could be added to the Rhino Plugin? Or if the path search is actually already there and not working yet as it should?
For our studio, the MXS referencing is great b/c it opens us up to a whole lot of the 3rd party models that we would otherwise need to convert. We prefer to work with them by having all of the textures reside in a global texture folder rather than having the textures live with the referenced MXS models themselves.

Please advise.

Thanks,
dsr

[JDHill]

Well, the two plugins are completely different from each other internally, so the only question I can answer with absolute certitude (meaning, until I've looked through the code) is that no, it is not intentional for them to work differently in this respect. But I'll look through and see if I can find why the one is working differently than the other for you.

[JDHill]

I looked into this and changed some things for 2.7.27. Basically, the Options > Search Paths paths were not added to the MXS search paths at all when written from the Rhino plugin. If you want to know the reason, it is because those paths were intended for use by the plugin itself, to help in locating files when opening and working with 3DM files. It makes sense that they would be added to the MXS search paths (an MXS may contain such a list), though, so now they are -- please let me know if this helps your MXS references find their textures better.