[JDHill]

I would not recommend using MXM files for IES lights in the plugin. Rather, I would select my material, so that its attributes are shown in Scene Manager > Materials. Make sure the material is in Embedded mode (use the MXM toggle button at the top-right corner of the window). Then, go to the Character tab, from the Type dropdown choose IES File, and use the Browse button to select the desired IES file. For better material preview, you may want to choose the "emitter_ies" preview scene from the Scene dropdown, just below the material preview image.

Another thing you may want to do, then, is to hide your emitter geometry from the camera. To do this, right-click the group to which you've assigned your IES material (you should use IES on groups, since faces have no inherent direction) and from the Maxwell menu, enable Hide from Camera, and Hide from Reflections and Refractions. Now, you will basically just have an invisible IES light shining according to the position and direction of the groups to which it is applied.

[whoek22]

Hi Jeremy!

Thank you again for youre great advice! Im getting better bits at the time! thanks to you..

I could never figure out how to use emitters.. and its a little bit hard to get it out of the tutorials..

My emitters are working great.. With so much IES to choose from..amazing.. and with EV you can nicely adjust light..

Do you know how to get a nice evening scene.. So my emitters fall into place?

thanks again!

[whoek22]

And one small Extra... Is it possible to change the Angle of a beam from downwords to upwords? I want to place my spots under a tree shining up

[JDHill]

You would get an evening scene either by setting the time of day to the evening (in SketchUp), or by lighting the scene with an HDRI depicting an evening scene. To change the direction in which an IES emitter points, you would rotate the group (it should contain a sphere) to which it is applied -- the direction of the light is derived from the rotation of the group. You can find a little dynamic component I wrote to demonstrate this, linked in this thread, written when IES support was added to the plugin.

[whoek22]

I have set up an evening scene with a .sky file. looks nice!


The only thing is, is that my renderings look a bit grainy.. not really sharp.. do you know how to fix this?

kind regards

[JDHill]

Lack of sharpness and/or graininess may be due to three different things: the camera may not be focused (see Set Focal Distance in the toolbar, and/or Scene Manager > Focus & Exposure), you may need to render at a higher resolution (see Scene Manager > Camera > Resolution and Maxwell Fire > Settings > Max. Resolution), or you may need to allow the engine to render to a higher sampling level (see Maxwell Fire > Settings > SL).