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Hi i just upgraded to skp 2014 & v3 how do i apply a material to a maxwell sea object. So far all i get is a default grey ? Thanks in advance.

Nothing special, it just uses whichever material is applied to the group.

Thanks for the swift reply i am running the latest version of osx and the material never changes whatever i apply.

Please let me know what happens when you perform these steps exactly:

• 1. Open SketchUp.
  2. Draw a plane.
  3. Push/pull the plane into a box.
  4. Group the box.
  5. Apply a material to the group.
  6. Enable Maxwell Sea for the group.
  7. Start Maxwell FIRE.

It worked straight away, i thought i was going crazy so i did it again it went back to grey. PS does it have top be a volume rather than a plane ? Because with either option i only see the surface rather than a volume ? The automatic preset seems to work but when i select liquid the problem persists.

I think it's user error Jeremy, i suspect its always grey because there is no environment to reflect excuse me lol

When you say did it again, do you mean you performed the steps again exactly? I will need to know, very precisely, what you are doing, as I am not yet able to observe such behavior here. Other details, such as the material you are choosing, and whether there are possibly other plugins running, may be relevant.

Regarding your p.s., Maxwell Sea uses a volume to define a wavy surface. If you apply it to a plane, a sea surface will be generated, but it will just look like a plane, since it uses the bounding box of the geometry to generate the surface. The material applied should be irrelevant.

Regarding your last post, please try assigning a stock textured SketchUp material, in order to confirm that there is not a problem.

I think i realised my mistake the colour must be applied to the group rather than painting it before grouping. It consistently works now thank you. I assume this applies to volumetric objects as well ?

Yes, as well as to Grass -- in a box, you could have six different materials applied, with the plugin having no way of knowing which you intended to be used, so it uses the material applied where the settings are applied, on the group.

Thankyou for your help Jeremy, you can delete this thread although it may be helpful to others. This is one of the reasons i like maxwell so much the great support.

One question regarding Sea.

I'm playing around seeing how it works with a pool.

I've created a box (1m deep), grouped, applied a default Maxwell "Liquid" material, applied Sea. It's "in the pool", everything looks really nice, BUT, I have the box top recessed 200mm to the lip of the pool, but the "water surface" seems to sit on the mid-point of the grouped box. Does that sound right?

I assume the solution is initially to make a very shallow box? Although there seem to be a relationship between the depth of the box and how the water appears?

Is the there a tutorial for Sea in SketchUp somewhere? In term of how it reacts to SketchUp geometry.

Yes i believe your right the surface is approximately half way in the volume. I did a few exports to fire while hiding unnecessary geometry to tweak it out

Thanks. Thought so...

Question, am I missing something i.e. are there some comprehensive guides for Maxwell SU SA?

Yes you can find some sea stuff on the maxwell site. I'm a relative beginner too. I know choppiness adds great realism but reduces benchmark Once you get the maxwell logic you'll understand it applies to many parts. Ps in studio you get a graphical representation of the surface it helps a lot.