[JDHill]

Hi All,

As I have oftentimes been saying, I will be making updates available here as soon as I have them ready. So here is the first one -- and the release notes that go with it:

Maxwell for SketchUp
Version 2.1.1 Release Notes


Version 2.1.1 is the first update to the recently-released new Maxwell for SketchUp plugin. Several bugs have been fixed, and some functionality has been fine-tuned.


changes

• Added support for SketchUp 6, both on Windows and OSX (there are now separate installers for 6 and 7).
• Behavior of the plugin’s custom Select Tool has been enhanced, and has been given a new toggle button in the plugin’s menu and toolbar.
• The Auto-MXM feature now works with layer names; operation is the same as it is for material names.
• Pre-export synchronization of object attributes has been optimized, so that it now takes less time.
• A new plugin option allows for choosing between the use of SketchUp’s built-in file browsing and that provided by the plugin.
• When possible, the Scene Manager’s material page will be pre-populated at startup, rather than being greyed-out.
• By request, Scene Manager > Output > Stop Time is now labeled as min, rather than m.
• The plugin’s Emitter Character now includes the material’s color and texture in a base BSDF.
• Added more detailed logging functionality (logs are written to [documents]/Maxwell/SketchUp/logs).
• The Scene Manager menu item and toolbar button now function as toggles.
• The plugin manual has been updated.

fixes

• Materials were not propagated properly on entities which used the ‘separate-by none’ option.
• Entities which had been negatively-scaled and rotated in SketchUp could import into Maxwell Studio in odd positions.
• Geometry in groups could be exported, even if the group was hidden, or was on a hidden layer.
• Some UI-related problems could appear on systems which did not use US-English regional settings.
• Material previews could become mixed up when opening a saved document.
• It was impossible to clear Scene Manager > Output > File in some cases.
• Paths which contained apostrophes could cause files (MXM, etc.) not to be found.
• If a referenced MXM file was not found when opening a document, its name could be erased from the material.
• In some cases, camera data was not properly stored on SketchUp Scenes.

And here are the links (please do not share these, as I am hosting this stuff on my own server):


[ edit: superseded by version 2.1.12, available at the customer portal ]


There is always, of course, more work to do, and many more requests to fulfill, but I think this is at a decent point to get an update out, so if there are items you've requested that aren't addressed here, please don't assume that they've been forgotten.

As always, let me know if you encounter any problems -- and also in this case, if you don't, as I'd like to be able to release this to the general public without much delay.

Cheers!

JD

[Half Life]

Very cool -- since I just finished my deadline I'll have a chance to play

Best,
Jason.

[brodie_geers]

Thanks for the update JD! I've played with it for about 8.5 seconds but so far so good.

-Brodie

[Albertv05]

I've been using the plug-in for the last few hours and works great. Thanks!!!

[stefan_kaplan]

Thanks for the update, JD!
I'm out sailing at the moment so I have no chance of testing the 2.1.1...
I do have a request though. Would it be possible to add an option for tiling the a material's textures in the material preview only, in order to see a repeated pattern of a material be wrapped around the preview sphere? In this way the scale of the preview scene, the sphere, would no longer matter. This would be great for architectural materials.

I hope for sun and wind tomorrow

/Stefan

[JDHill]

While that would be possible, technically, I think it would be probably inappropriate to do so, since it (I assume you are referring to the default 'stage1' preview scene) was already designed to work well with some common architectural materials, namely the Arroway ones. The proper solution, I think, would be to add another SketchUp-specific preview scene, which has UVs that are better-suited to the tiling found in typical SketchUp textures.

[Richard]

Hey thanks for the upgrade JD! Cant wait to give it a crack! Still little chance to really get going this last two weeks!

RE the optional preview scenes - is that simple a case of opening the studio file and changing the sphere projector?

Could you give little tut! I've changed the lighting of tom's original as I always found it too dark, but haven't played with the sphere mapping and as Stephan suggests it is sometimes needed for smaller maps!

[JDHill]

Yes, all you would need to do would be to edit the desired MXS file, which will be found in the /preview directory in your Maxwell 2 installation. By default, the plugin picks the 'stage1' file, so if you'd like another one to be your default, just swap the filenames as desired. In this case, it may be a little more involved than just changing a spherical projector, because the test sphere in that scene uses a custom (actually, 8 of them -- we don't want to get 'not enough projectors' errors when refreshing previews) set of UVs. But the principle is the same regardless: as long as an MXS has a material named 'preview' in it, it may be placed into the /preview directory and used from the plugin at runtime.

[brodie_geers]

The Auto-MXM feature now works with layer names; operation is the same as it is for material names.

I'm not sure I understand this one JD, what does it do and how do you use it?

-Brodie

[Half Life]

Layers can be assigned names which can be converted to MXMs via Auto-MXM... useful if you primarily use layer colors to "materialize" via "color by layer" or if you just want everything on a layer to be a single material in Sketchup... in which case could potentially be used like a override switch for clay type renders, with a bit more flexibility than a traditional material override.

That would be cool, but then there would have to be some way to tell the plugin which material information takes precedence... maybe simply having color by layer active could be the switch that lets the plugin know you want to override your materials in favor of layer names.

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

Hi Brodie, as Jason says, Auto-MXM just looks at your layer names, and the same as is done for SketchUp material names, attempts to find an MXM file which matches in your search paths -- provided, that is, that you are currently using color-by-layer.

Jason -- I think what you would be looking for would be a switch named 'use layer materials as default' or similar. So where currently, if an entity ends up with no material, it uses the standard Maxwell default material mechanism, with this option enabled, the plugin would use whichever material would be generated under 'color by layer' rules for it. Wouldn't that pretty much cover it, while keeping things strictly opt-in, and as simple as possible?

[Half Life]

As far as actual material assignments you are absolutely correct -- but in addition to that I was thinking more like you could have every material with a proper material (Sketchup material) and in addition you could have a material (via auto mxm) assigned to each layer.

Lets say you have a model and you don't want to lose the materialization you've done but you want to generate maybe a 5 tone clay render for some visual separation purposes from the same file -- simply turn on color by layer in Sketchup and hit render and the layer material would override everything in the regular material list (much as it does in Sketchup).

Just an idea.

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

I may just be dense, I believe that it already works exactly that way.

[Half Life]

I didn't see it in the manual so I didn't think it worked that way... sorry.

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

No worries, I was looking just now and also noticed that I didn't cover that in the manual. But, in my defense, I really didn't cover any material-assignment issues in the manual, since (with the exception of Auto-MXM) the plugin just follows along with whatever SketchUp is doing.