[stefan_kaplan]

Ho ho ho
It's Christmas time and for me, it's time for a change.
I've cancelled all my Maxwell courses planned for December, January and February.
I simply can't teach people to use software, that doesn't work. Ofcourse most programs have flaws that are fixed, but more than two months have passed since v2 came out, and the tiny SketchUp-plugin still haven't been updated AT ALL.
The long list of issues is unique for the mxs2skp-plugin. No other renderers have trouble interpreting Sketchup's face-normals, shadows being one hour off, plugin eating 50% of cpu when creating/editing materials etc. etc. etc.
I might be back on this forum if things start to change, but for now I'll spend some time to learn some of the other renderers for SketchUp - and teach them instead.

/Stefan

[fv]

Stefan, I feel like you at times. I am looking at Vray with some excitment. I downloaded the manual for the PC version and the Vray plugin for SU looks amazing.

SU-People who like to be taught Maxwell are looking for the extreme experience. Risky indeed but with some expectation management you will do your pupils a big favor to introduce them in the world of unbiased rendering.
Just provide simple models, export to Studio and work from there. For now totally forget direct rendering out of SU, or autoMXM. I think the lessons could still be really good. Even SU has serious bugs, most other render app's are struggling, and its ok for students to get hassled by bugs as well. Just make it clear Maxwell is a rocky ride. Not just for the bugs, MXED is a bigger challenge to get right.
Hope you will get your students back as your knowledge is valueble to them I am sure.
Francois

[stefan_kaplan]

3 months and still no news on the plugin...
This is sad.

/Stefan

[Richard]

I'm really hearing ya!

[JDHill]

Sad or not, I think you'll be happy when it's done. People seem to be pretty happy with my other plugins, and so far, I like how this one is turning out much better than those. I don't know what else I could tell you...

[Richard]

Little doubt of that JD!

[fv]

In the mean time I have become much better with Studio and am rather productive with it. The workflow in Studio makes a lot more sense now than before. My models have become big though since Studio can handle a lot more data than Sketchup.

I hope the new plugin will be great but I will not go back to rendering out of SU anymore. And to export a model to Studio is at the moment good enough really with the current plugin. I would only love be able to exchange components for premade mxs models or instances. That way I could asign components in Sketchup to show up in Studio as Evermotion mxs trees....

I also bought Vray for Sketchup. Its a mess really, I can't sell the license or give it back and Vray for Sketchup is a lot more buggy than Maxwell ever was.

Francois

[stefan_kaplan]

Ofcourse we'll be happy when it's done, JD!
In my oppinion the previous plugins feature great UI's and functionality.
I still use Maxwell practically every day and love it.
Only tough part of waiting is the fact, that the current plugin 2.4 for MR v2.0 is more flawed than the 2.2 for MR v1.7...

I really look forward to start my courses again - for architects learning Maxwell through SketchUp.
Guess we'll just have to wait a little longer...

[Richard]

Ofcourse we'll be happy when it's done, JD!
In my oppinion the previous plugins feature great UI's and functionality.
I still use Maxwell practically every day and love it.
Only tough part of waiting is the fact, that the current plugin 2.4 for MR v2.0 is more flawed than the 2.2 for MR v1.7...

I really look forward to start my courses again - for architects learning Maxwell through SketchUp.
Guess we'll just have to wait a little longer...

I'm in a similar boat stefan, I've been invited to do one on one teaching for SU and thought of the opportunity there to introduce SU > MR workflow as at the 1.7 stage it was for me near flawless and of course the results unparralleled!

I'm a little more excited now given the announced reduction in pricing of the upgrade as I haven't yet upgraded!

I might even confer with you when that end of things get started!

[fv]

Hi Richard, Stefan,
you should really start teaching now since the use of Studio is a great lesson to be learned. Anyone who is going to use Maxwell and Sketchup will in time start using Studio. If you are limitied to rendering straight out of Sketchup you can only render rather small models. I render 500Mb models in Studio made of SU parts.

We need a new plugin of course. Its nice to render a small model now and then straight from SU. Just to start a project. I'll be happy when a well concieved plugin arrives and am sure JD is going to do a great job. But I am not really waiting for it anymore. I am more efficient now with Studio than I ever was before with the previous plugins and rendering straight from SU.

Francois

[Richard]

Mate I know the developers of the SU plugin for Thea are soon after release introducing a proxy feature similar to that which has been bandied around her previously. If JD can introduce the same ie: a low poly SU proxy is replaced with an MXS file on export then the reliance on studio would be somewhat reduced!

I certainly don't shy away from Studio excepting the sun location issue where it's thrown off once an export is opened (v1.7), though I would always love to avoid using studio simply for the always preferred option of export and forget, and get on with next task!

[brodie_geers]

"I like how this one is turning out much better than those [other plugins I've written]"

That's EXTREMELY encouraging to hear JD. The Rhino plugin you did is absolutely phenomenal. I've used 3ds max some, and I find the plugin there almost TOO integrated (not sure who wrote that plugin), but I've seen my friend who uses Rhino use the plugin there and I'm always impressed. Can't wait.

-Brodie

[fv]

Richard, export and forget is nice for small models and its true that its very convienient then.

But these days I use so many extra's (trees and cars from Modo and so on) and goodies like the attenuation preview that working straight out of SU is more of a export and wait......... and again export and wait and so on...experience. I also feel that exporting the complete model for each preview is a timewaster. From Studio under R1 this is a much faster way to go and finetune materials.

I think I am now a few times faster in with Studio then I ever was with SU>Maxwell. I also never experience export problems or renderfails anynmore since I export and preview portions. Easier to edit and debug than a complete SU model.

Francois

[Creation88]

the V2 plug-in desperately needs to come out soon. any update?