[fv]

Hi,
just got Maxwell version 2.1 working on my 8cores, seems to do very well. I was in the middle of a project and immediatly installed the update. That is just about how much discipline I have...

Well, crashing, problems, things getting worse, patches, no ?
Actually, I can now see the dialogs with their settings in Studio hoerah.. ( used to be all black OSX ) And as a omment for the first few minutes, my models start to render a lot quicker, really a lot. And the UI looks a little tuned up as well. Anyhow, tx for the update, seems a good one so far.

And, were is the new SU plugin JD..... are you ready yet..
Francois

[JDHill]

Yes, I'm ready, but I don't handle the web side (i.e. uploading to the customer portal) of things.

[fv]

you are ...... ???!!
I am speechless .....

What do you think yourself about your plugin.... is it what you wanted it to be ?

[numerobis]

[JDHill]

Well, overall, I'm pretty happy with it so far. In the end though, it is you who will be the judge -- I hope you like it.

Anyway, here is a link to download the manual, so you can start to get familiar with things, since I am not aware of when the plugin will be made available.

[Fernando Tella]

Yes, I'm ready, but I don't handle the web side (i.e. uploading to the customer portal) of things.

you are ...... ???!!
I am speechless .....

You didn't expect that answer, ah?

[thinkbuild]

Yipeeee! Looking so much forward to the new plugin!!!! Fantastic.
Will be testing ASAP.

Thanks so much in advance for all your efforts JD!

[numerobis]

Well, overall, I'm pretty happy with it so far. In the end though, it is you who will be the judge -- I hope you like it.

Anyway, here is a link to download the manual, so you can start to get familiar with things, since I am not aware of when the plugin will be made available.

WOW! Thanks for showing this. Everything looks fantastic! ...can't wait to try it myself.

[Burkhard]

Thanks a lot JD for your fantastic work. First time to see such a great manual for Sketchup...and what a Plugin developement!!!

[thinkbuild]

Dear JD

Perhaps this is a bit of jump on things, but, after having read the *excellent* plugin manual, I have a few little comments/critiques.
Note that I haven't yet actually installed the plugin yet and so have no idea how it will "feel" but here are some few comments. Also I am not yet up to speed on 2x ... but here goes anyway:

First, I think that in the Context Menu / Selection Info (6.5), we should also get some more information about the selection in terms of Materials. Especially if the selection is an emitter, it would be great to have one of your Silverlight/flex sliders right there, to access some basic parameters concerning the strength/color/etc of the emitter, pre-mulitlight. Or a few other things?

You could also have an option, "Associate with MXWL Instance:", where you then get a list of the various component/instances in the file. If the selection is a group this could be a way to get it "instantized" in the translation. Or even a way to associate an .IES file and/or then adjust the Z axis directly???? Why not?

Finally, a conceptual critique: if in fact you are working on having the plugin concerning the lighting: I think it would be nice if you would expand a bit your manual and maybe even the controls of the "artificial" lighting part of the system. You explain in great detail and in an open manner the various options of sky dome, physical sky, etc. in your manual and plugin control, but artificial lights are just left by the wayside.
I think it would be nice to have a little section about that, too, just to help people get up and running without dipping further into the main manual on studio, etc...

[fv]

I don't think the plugin is yet made available by NL.
Tthis is just a great way to make sure eeeeverybody reads the manual first. But the manual does seem to point at a great plugin coming to us.
tx JD.

[fv]

In the manual is mentioned to install SIlverlight 3.0. I assume when I already have Silverlight 4.0.50524.0 its also ok ( OSX )
Francois

[JDHill]

Thanks for the feedback, thinkbuild -- whether something is released or not, I always consider software to be a work in progress, so definitely keep on asking questions, and we'll refine the plugin together as we go. On the issues:

1) you can do this, but you would use a different tool: see Entity/Material Selection Tool @ 4.2.1 in the manual. When this tool is active, you get an eye-dropper which samples the current material from any selected entity (and allows you to add/remove entities from the selection). This causes the material to be shown in the material editor, so if it is an emitter, you could adjust it there immediately. The Selection Info box is a more general tool, intended to allow you to quickly get an overview of which entities would be affected by any changes made in the context menu, since that is such a dynamic thing.

2) due to the depth of support for instancing during export, it's not really possible, at least at this time, to selectively determine which components/groups will be exported as sources and which as instances. As far as IES goes, this is indeed exactly how I have foreseen handling them, though they are not yet implemented; basically, rather than making an IES emitter material, you would use a dummy entity, setting its parameters & IES path via context-menu, and the orientation of the IES would be inferred from the entity's transformation in SketchUp.

3) You will find that the plugin's manual is more concerned with how the plugin operates, and how it relates to SketchUp, and less with how Maxwell Render itself works. It does go into some things, as with physical sky, but the default assumption should be to consult the regular Maxwell manual (there's a button for opening it right in the plugin's toolbar) for topics which are not specifically plugin-related.

Francois: if you already have SL 4.x, then the plugin should just run. If you have less than 3.x, the plugin will ask you to install it the first time you open the Scene Manager window. On both Windows and OSX, the SL installer is included, so it works pretty much automatically, and requires no internet connection. I happen to have tested it yesterday on a fresh macbook here, and the process worked just as expected.

[thinkbuild]

Dear JD

Sounds good on 4.2.1 - That is in fact the behavior I was hoping for, and I understand how it should make sense from the tool itself.

On IES - sounds like a great functionality for "later" and in the meantime I think the "old" method should work fine. But its nice that you are thinking in this direction too, I think it will make the implementation and use of IES's more accurate and easy.

I undersand as well your point on the manual vs. maxwell manual. Maybe its enough as well to say what you say elsewhere - "refer to the maxwell manual, section x.x.x, which describes how "artificial", non-enviromental lighting works in maxwell...." I guess the main thing, your little manual works so well as a nice intro/overview, that I was thinking it would be nice to cover this point too. But its not really necessary...

Anyway, looking forward to working with it all!
best wishes from Berlin,

Jason

[fv]

Any idea when the new plugin is going to be released. Now its ready I can't wait...