[JDHill]

Hi all, back once again with a build wrapping up all of these recent changes, which finalizes the move away from Silverlight, and which introduces compatibility with SketchUp 2013, along with some very minor additions/fixes.

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Maxwell for SketchUp
Version 2.7.25 Release Notes

Changes

• Added support for SketchUp 2013.
• The Standalone is now distributed as an RBZ.
• Added Reset functions for all parameters.

Fixes

• Materials were not shown when being imported.
• Back materials could sometimes use front UVs.

Downloads (as usual, please do not share these links)

• (version released, please see the official download pages)

Notes

• There is now a single download for the Standalone plugin, which contains an RBZ file that SketchUp 8 M2 and up can install automatically, through Preferences > Extensions. If you are using SketchUp 6 or 7, it will be necessary to change the extension from .rbz to .zip (RBZ files are just zip files), unzip it, and manually install maxwell.rb and the maxwell folder in your SketchUp Plugins folder.
  
  Regarding the OSX plugin for SketchUp 2013, due to fundamental changes in how SketchUp 2013 works, this package now uses a DMG, instead of the familiar Installer. To install, just mount the DMG and drag the plugin files into their respective folders, as indicated in the window. This should work well, unless you have installed SketchUp into a non-standard location (in other words, somewhere other than /Applications), in which case, you will need to install the files manually. A readme.pdf file is included which describes how to do that.

[fv]

Hi JD,
we have a small issue with your great plugin. On OSX, 10.6.8, Sketchup 8.
The window with the scene manager behaves a little weird. At some point the window scrolled a little to the right and stayed there partly obscuring the most left part of the information within the window. It looks the same as you would when the window is too small and scroll a little to the right. But in this case you can't scoll back anymore. Even after restart opening a new file the scene manager hid its information for the most left part of it.
Maybe we should just resinstall.

Its only one system we have that shows this. The other system runs fine.

We just started using Rebusfarm. Last night we rendered in 20 min. a 30 Mb SU-file and got back a mxi of 260 Mb showing a benchmark of 30.000 !! incl. multilight and an alphachannel. We reached SL18 and spend about 20 euro. Incredible.
Strangely though the background channel blacked out, maybe because of the alphchannel. I have to look into that to see why that happened.

It would be great if the SU plugin would also show a Rebusfarm option instead of only the network option. Although it works fine as well as it is. We just export a mxs and upload it. But I see some other applications do have Rebusfarm functionality within the application. Imagine rendering a Maxwellrender-animation directly from Sketchup to the Rebusfarm. I know some clients that would pay for that.

Tx again for all your great work. The jobs we can do with your plugin helps a lot to get us through the crisis.
Francois

[chedda]

I noticed changing from deg. to mm. in the sketch up dialog window isn't working right now. I wonder if it's a conflict with this plugin. I am using this latest version on osx with sketchup 2013.

[JDHill]

Its only one system we have that shows this.

Please make sure Safari is up to date on this machine.

It would be great if the SU plugin would also show a Rebusfarm option instead of only the network option.

Perhaps, but there are many competing render farms -- the proper thing would be for a given farm to create a small SketchUp plugin with a button that exports an MXS (you can do that using ruby, provided the Render Suite plugin is installed), and then uploads it to that farm.

I noticed changing from deg. to mm. in the sketch up dialog window isn't working right now. I wonder if it's a conflict with this plugin.

I don't see how that's possible, but have you checked it without the plugin installed?

[fv]

tx, that must be it. My collegue does not work with safari so it might be because he has Camino installed and works with that browser ?

[JDHill]

I couldn't say for sure about that -- SketchUp uses Safari, and another browser being installed should have no effect. It might be more likely in that case, though, that Safari might not be updated.

[chedda]

Thanks for the reply JD it appears the focal depth & VCB is a known problem with sketchup 2013, and not related to the plugin.

I also have noticed exporting to fire often doesn't complete because a .hdr image is not a recognized format. Save, quit & re-launch fixes this, but on big files it's a pain and time consuming.

[JDHill]

Do you know from where this .hdr is being referenced (material, environment, etc) ?

[chedda]

I usually keep all my current files on the desktop while i'm working. I just drag the hdri from aperture onto the desktop.

[JDHill]

Sorry, what I meant was, where is the .hdr being used -- in a material, the environment, or some other place in the scene? I need to know how it is being used, in order to figure how it might be considered as an "unrecognized" format. It would likely be best if you could describe a set of steps by which I might reproduce the behavior myself.

[chedda]

It's being used as an environment in all the channels.

[JDHill]

Thanks for clarifying. I'm not able to reproduce this, or to come up with any potential cause, so you might want to check whether it seems related to a specific HDR. Also, since you say you are using it from your desktop, where you drag/dropped it, is it possible that the file is not actually located on the desktop, and that you are instead referencing an alias or link? Perhaps that could cause a problem, if the target file were to later become unavailable for some reason, meaning that the link then pointed to nothing. So I would make sure that the file is being physically copied, and then check to see if you can reproduce the same error, and also whether you are able to reproduce it using one of the HDRs in the Maxwell 2/hdri directory.

[chedda]

I moved my home folder (osx) to another drive some time ago perhaps this is the problem as my desktop is part of that folder and does not live on the same drive as my apps and OS ? I also noticed some textures disappear and are replaced by a default white shader. If i keep re-exporting to fire eventually the shaders are fixed. Is this still the latest version ?

[JDHill]

Yes, it is still the latest version (and will be officially released next week). Based on your description of the issue, and the new information that you moved your home folder, my guess would be that permissions on the machine may be out of order, and that this is the cause of the difficulty. I might further guess that this is not the only odd behavior you've seen since moving the home folder, and that you sometimes see similar issues with other software, for instance, certain files being inaccessible, or being invisible or greyed-out in chooser dialogs, and other issues of this nature. Whatever the case, all I can say for sure is that I have never observed such behavior here, that I know of no logical plugin-related reason why it should occur, and that these things tend to point to an unknown machine-specific problem.

[chedda]

The machine is very stable in every respect only sketchup and the plugin. i followed the official instructions from apple to complete the process i also regularly fix permissions. By the way where is the location of the fire textures cache i remember before it had become huge and needed emptying. Perhaps a purge temporary textures button could be used in the future ?