[Stinkie7000]

BTW I think the SU users who have switched from MR to Indigo have done more so due to the option of a very simply material editor option.

That would be a big part of the reason, yes. At least in my case - I obviously cannot speak for everyone. I think that MW would become far more attractive to SU users if its SU plugin would offer material making options not unlike SkIndigo's.

Hell, if that would happen, I'd upgrade! 4 real, dawgs!

[fv]

I think JD must be rather well informed by now the texturing workflow in SU to Maxwell needs a much better UI.

I think autoMXM is a bad concept the more I think of it. You need Studio to check its effectivness. Since autoMXM is very unreliable Studio becomes a debugger of export files before the actual render. Skindigo just skips this whole proces and made sure the texturing is done reliable within SU. The power of the Skindigo plugin is also the fact it has one simple way to texture geometry to the render. Maxwell has several ways, by the material panel, autoMXM and the dafault settings for SU materials. All of this does not make sense to the casual user and for routine users the renders are less predictable than they could have been, hence the use of Studio to manually set things straight.

I am now working on a remodeling project and have made a series of Maxwell renderings of my proposals. I am back using plugin 2.4 and v2. Using 2.2 was a bit of a problem as well since it did not properly preset physical sky and other things in Studio. Exporting is on the slow side but this new project does not stall completely as my older files do. I have no clue why sometimes a file can totally stall on export and other files will more or less show a steady export proces, however much slower than without autoMXM. I am using the AGS provided with v2 and with rather good and fast results. I think rendering is now faster and I get also better looking results before edeting my renders in Aperture (Mac).

[fv]

I would like to add another wish to the plugin.

It would be great if layers and their names came into Studio as named groups. I always wondered why none of the names, layers or object names or anything really imports into Studio. Somethimes I would like to delete layers in Studio to reimport the corresponding layer out of SU.

[JDHill]

This is all good input. So you know, I won't tend to make many statements or predictions at this point, but I am paying attention to all of your comments.

[brodie_geers]

couple things

I'm not sure if this relates to the plugin ideas so I hope it's not too far off topic, what fv recently said reminded me of the issue. For SU users Studio becomes quite important. Often I'll get my model prepared and then export to studio. In studio I'll organize my cameras, tweak my materials, etc. But then something will change (add a window, move a mullion, etc.) and there's no great way for me to be able to do that. I end up deleting all or part of the geometry in studio, going back to sketchup, making changes, re-exporting the model, and then reimporting the new mxs file into the ORIGINAL studio where my cameras and environment are setup. Materials can get messed up in that process too. What I'd like to see is a decent export from mxs to 3ds or some similar format that I could, in turn, import back into SU, modify, and then go back to mxs. Currently it only seems possible to export to OBJ and when I've tried that before I don't think it exports the scene as one OBJ file but rather exports each object as an OBJ. I'm not sure what the point of that is, maybe I'm doing something wrong?

The other thing, which DOES related to SU export would be a quicker solution. Part of the reason it's nearly impossible to render directly from SU is that each time you render the entire scene exports and saves an mxs (with large scenes this can take 5-10 minutes). This makes in nearly impossible to do test renders and since things like shift lens, HDRI, etc. can't be seen in SU they're useless without test renders, not to mention material tweaks that are always necessary. I know with 3ds Max you have the option to either export an .mxs OR render without exporting a file. Is it possible to incorporate the latter with SU or is that an impossibility because of SU's design?

-Brodie

[fv]

I think exporting a mxs file or rendering directly to Maxwell is the same proces. But the export could go much faster I think. AutoMXM with the new plugin for instance causes the proces to be delayed tenfold.

If you can have some of the hiarchy of Sketchup imported in Studio then it would be possible to quickly delete a part of the model and reimport that part after remodeing in SU. Since you can only guess what you delete in Studio you can not easily edit Studio models. If the layer names or object names or any of the SU names would import into Studio it would be very easy to delete and remodel parts in Studio.

But all of this is needed since the texturing from SU to Maxwell textures is so tedious. If the new plugin would attend to a far better workflow to convert SU materials into MXM materials the need for Studio would be far less. Only for large models you would like to use Studio for bringing together the several SU parts. Also in case you have bought ready made Maxwell high polygon trees and cars you would need Studio to bring it all together. Which is actually a big advantage of Studio compared to other renderapp's for SU. If dedicated SU symbols would convert into Studio by readymade Maxwell instances things would be almost perfect. In Modo duplicated symbols can be rotated and scaled at random by preferences. Imagine this functionality in Studio for example for trees.

[Richard]

@ Francois

Mate you need to decide when it comes to AutoMXM whether you love it or hate it!

I'm not sure there are too many ways to handle materials in SU, I know we both work differing ways to that end, and I know I choose several ways through a project or differing material - I may have the material editor open from the quicklaunch toolbar create a material then link from SU. One thing though that I would hate to be limited to would be one workflow option unless of course it could converge with several flows.

I must say I fail to see many aspects of Indigo's all in SU workflow that impress me. Having to do all material edits in SU just takes you back again to the slow material browser!

@ Brodes

Mate there is one thing that Indigo does have that is a brilliant feature - export settings only! You can make material, camera or environment settings and that is updated to the last file and rendered again!

[stefan_kaplan]

Francois, I'm sorry but I also have to disagree.
The three different workflows from SketchUp to Maxwell each have their advantages!

To simply model a 3D project in SketchUp with textures, sun settings and so on - and then just "export to Maxwell", is an extremely straigt forward and intuitive way to get a rendering.
In this very simple workflow ("as easy as taking a photo") you can do without Studio and even without Material Editor.
Ofcourse MXM's are fundamental and the two different ways of linking them to SketchUp-materials are different but efficient (Material Panel and AutoMXM).
When rendering directly from SketchUp You get results with (almost) correct mapped textures, (almost) correct sun position and even great little things like transparent SketchUp-materials being translated into AGS.

Regarding Studio.
If the Maxwell Plugin was simple and flawless (AutoMXM fixed, texture position on/in groups fixed, sun position fixed, MXED consuming 50% of CPU when started from SketchUp fixed) you could do WITHOUT Studio!
Why use Studio? Why move geometry forth and back between programs? Why use yet another complex 3d software application with a new interface, new set of shortcuts, new (strange) ways of navigating when you can stick with SketchUp?
In my courses I teach architects that have never used a rendering app before to use Maxwell Render from SketchUp.
I introduce them to a whole new world of possibilities with Maxwell and Material Editor and they stay calm because the Maxwell-settings are made directly in Sketchup, which they know and trust.
I would never dream of introducing them to Studio. They would crash and burn in frustration.

Therefore the plugin is important and needs to be clean fixed. Then the world will smile

[numerobis]

yes, rendering straight out of sketchup is the best option for me too. it would be great if it would be possible to speed up exporting of big scenes and get rid of the 32bit wall at ~1,7gb. but think this is sketchup problem...
because of these two points it's necessary for me to use studio for bigger scenes - and when i have to add bigger trees and cars in studio.

It would be great if the exporter proxy function could use external mxs because skp can't handle high poly counts.

I use auto mxm. does using the direct linking in skp material editor would be faster on export?

And would it be possible to speed up the export by disabling texture export from sketchup? i don't need this using auto mxm.

[brodie_geers]

I think the ability to export proxy geometry which would convert into a mxs file elsewhere on your hard drive is essential to the possibility of not having to use studio, at least for arch-viz. Trees and cars are impossible within sketchup, well nearly impossible anyway.

-brodie

[fv]

I think automxm is bad since it has the same problems as the image path problems Maxwell materials have. AutoMXM assumes the effort of the user to painstakingly copy/pasting material names into the slow SU material panel. Using other peoples models you need to change all material names in each file you want to render. Its just weird to have a computer and do so much manual work that is senseless. I don't think many others using CAD are manually translating material names from one app to another.

Imagine a plugin that monitors mxm-material names in an editable list of coloms with SU and MXM maerials side by side and you do not need to change anything. Just connect one to another or even one to many others. You can think of saved presets for example. Actually since autoMXM no longer properly works with v2 under OSX I am doing this in Studio. I load the MXM materials into a Studio file (luckily you can load many in one go) and just assign them to the appropriate SU materials. I think there is no reason really why this can not be done in SU by the plugin. That way you can render straight out of SU to Maxwell. That would be a real autoMXM instead of the doityouself automxm it is now.

All I am saying really is that automxm should be transparant within SU. If you can monitor the conversion while modeling you do not need to go to Studio or make many rendertests just to find out you have typos in SU material names or duplicated materials in your mxm libraries. The plugin MXMreporter can check any of this but since MXMreporter does not provide for any editing functionality you still need to open each SU material and copy/paste names into the madening slowly SU material panel. And autoMXM does not provide for the option to assign a mxm to many SU materials. Its really weird of course you need MXMreporter just to let you know the MXM's and SUmaterial names are really the same....autoMXM made that important and that's where the problems began....

[stefan_kaplan]

Well spoken, Francois!
Now it's all up to NL...

[fv]

tx Stefan.
I am also full with other ideas for the plugin but its the texturing that is the bottle neck for a much faster and sensible workflow.

I think someone who's actually able to make a plugin to get an SU file to render photographically including texture mappings, sun and camera position etc. is a genius . In that sense I am also impressed by the guy who made the current plugin. Lets move on to the next level. I can't wait.
Francois

[Richard]

Not at all trying to be suggestive but for me studio is a joy to export my final for anything!

Tweaking, testing and edit of mats, environment, colour, camera etc! It's bomb! My suggestion, yeah had to come, open studio and set your workplace to get down to the bare essentials and:

1. lock su camera and make another straight away so you can get camera location back!!!
2. Use arrows up and down in list selections as you can scroll objects and materials really fast that way in studio,
3. The preview is fast and tweaking materials 100 times faster when all together.
4. Save out any material improvements to the original location, your MXM's rapidly get better!
5. Drag and drop and create new materials and interchange them amazingly quickly!
6. If you know the Mxed, MR camera panel, environment settings, render panel – you are 90% there already!
7. If you get in a shit fight just delete all objects, and export new from SU and drag into MRstudio existing and replace all incoming materials!
8. If you want to add trees etc in studio do it twice!!! Export a veg layout from su with low low poly placeholders, open in Studio and bring in new plants (MXS, OBJ, ETC) and position at placeholders (pain yep!), build garden, delete placeholders (objects) and save whole MXS file, then bring this into final scene, - just saves not dealing with other scene geo!

I'm always curious how 99% of users expect everything in one app when it comes to rendering when a much faster and efficient workflow is present and in this case for getting over the limitations of the plugin for materials and also allowing to do materials and poly loading where it can't be done in SU! After all we seem also to have no quarms with taking SU or MR images into PS!!!

Sure I'd love to see so many improvements in studio and inparticular the ability to grab the current SU camera or sun settings and the ability to adopt the nav method from any supported plugin! I’d also love to see the option of adopting an emixer file to the preview so you can from quick test render set the multilight levels and use these for any studio tweaking of emitter colours (in V2 colour multilights wont be so reliant) and all scene material edits done in preview under final lighting!

Having an option at hand that deals with so many other limitations is something to consider, every hour spent in total in studio for tweaks would be a day or more in SU!

Hey and I'm not pooh poohing any better functionality in plugin – much the opposite, I’m just urging all to consider integrating studio into workflow only because I know how much time it saves me!

[fv]

Studio and SU do not match very well in terms of UI and complexity. I can understand Maxwell will not be very succesful in SU waters if it needs Studio as it is now.

But I agree Studio is a great way to go further than SU can bring you in terms of modeling and texturing.

I wonder really when we can expect a new plugin. It seems such a lot of work. Especially for NL, a company that has not much credit for making a good UI.