Page 1 of 1

material definition not changing

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:36 pm
by Scott K.
Hi all- I hope this has been answered before.

I have a building that I am rendering where I am adding color to the Sketchup material "Metal corrugated shiny". For the past months, I have been able to change the colors (duplicates of the orignal material) to represent different colored siding. Yesterday, it didn't matter what I did, the same material (a blue color) came out in the Straight to Maxwell rendering. The sketchup model shows the change correctly but if I had a tan colored siding, it remains blue in the Rendering. The siding is within a group and the group has a generic material assigned to it. I tried deleting the materials folder that results from a pack and go through the Maxwell menu in Sketchup. I have solved the problem by exporting to studio and then rendering, but I dont know what broke in the straight SU to MW render button.

I am using SU8 and MW 2.5. Cant figure out how to post screen shots :?

Thank in advance

Scott

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 8:48 pm
by JDHill
I'm not able to reproduce this yet, so a few questions:
  1. When you go to Plugins > Maxwell > About, which version is reported?
  2. Are you able to reproduce the behavior using a simple one-face model?
  3. How are you changing the color, via the plugin's material editor, or SketchUp's?
  4. In the Maxwell material, is the Color texture's Source set to 'Link to Application'?
  5. In the export's /textures directory, what color is the corresponding texture map?
  6. Do you observe any difference in the behavior with/without Pack & Go enabled?

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 4:21 pm
by Scott K.
JD:

1.v2.5.15
2. I could not reproduce the behavior with a single face....
3. Sketchup
4. Link to application
5. There are 2. Metal_aluminum_corrugated.jpg (blue - not the desired color) and Metal_aluminum_corrugated1.jpg (tan - desired color). The Sketchup material definition is using metal_aluminum_corrugated but colorize is set and the color is the tan I expect. In the Maxwell material window the tan color shows up in the texture slot and material color slot.
6. Switching to disabled pack & go gave me the desired color....I think you found it!


Thanks for asking the right questions. This will save me one step not having to go to studio!

Scott

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 4:57 pm
by JDHill
That may not be the whole answer -- your new success may be circumstantial. If you see it again, try this: close Maxwell Fire first, then do the export; it may be that (in the interest of performance) the plugin is writing in-memory MXS data directly to disk, rather than forcing you to wait through a whole new export. In the current 2.6.0 plugin, there is a new option, MXS Cache Policy, which allows you to indicate your preference on how this is handled, since it may be different for different people in different scenarios.

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 5:35 pm
by Scott K.
JD:

I have not been using Fire. Just exporting the rendering using the black MR button.

Scott

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 5:48 pm
by JDHill
Okay, I'm not entirely sure as to the cause, then -- I could reason about it better if you were using the 2.6.0 plugin, since the export code has been completely rewritten between 2.5.15 and 2.6.0 (theoretically, this issue should not be possible anymore).

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:50 pm
by Scott K.
Do I need to update completely to 2.6 as I'm in the middle of a project.

Scott

Re: material definition not changing

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:58 pm
by JDHill
Yes, you have to update everything, so you would probably want to wait until you're done.