[gadzooks]

Why do i keep getting this error message when trying to refresh my material preview

[Marton Day8]

Does it happen with all of your materials?

I think it i not a plug-in issue but something inside Maxwell. Please open the material editor manually, and try to refresh the preview... Do you get the same error?

Márton

[gadzooks]

Márton thanks for replying. I opened it outside of modo in maxwells material editor and it still gives me this error. It's occurrence from what i have seen so far is random. some times it happens and sometimes it doesn't. Any suggestions? Thank's Gadzooks

[gadzooks]

Márton it just happened again on another texture. Everything was fine until i switched preview scenes in the material editor. I went from default to stage1 preview and then the error message occurred. Also trying to switch back to the default preview would then give you the same error message. Hope this helps.

[Marton Day8]

Could you please send me a sample material to test it here?

What is the version number of your Maxwell?

Márton

[gadzooks]

I just sent you a pm.

[Marton Day8]

Hello Gadzooks,

Thanks for the sample material, it was a big help.

Ok, I was not right, this problem is plug-in related, although it is not a bug.

In your material you use channel numbers with high channel id values (8,9,10), and the sphere inside the material test scene has only 8 UV maps (channel 0 to 7). So when you start the material preview render, the render engine can't find the right UV set.

I have created a new test scene for you with UV channels 0-16 (download defaultpreview2.zip), you can use it for your material test (copy it into the Maxwell/preview directory, open material editor, right click on the preview window, select scene defaultpreview2) - I hope it solves now.

Or you can do it yourself : you can add more UV maps to the material preview scene if you open the preview scene in studio, at the "UV Sets" area click on "New", set the "Channel" for the new UV Set, and set "Type" to "Spherical" (position x,y,z should be zero, scale x,y,z should be 1.0, and rotation is 0,-90,0).

At other 3D packages UV sets with so high channel values are rare, but the modo exporter often creates these values. Unfortunately if we don't allow to export these high channel numbers, we loose some flexibility......
But you can manually control the assigned UV channel values inside modo, if you select the appropriate Texture Locator, and in the Maxwell Properties + pop-up menu (Texture Locator +) you change "Channel ID assignment" to "Manual", and you set the "channel ID" to a number according to your needs.

I hope this helps you to step forward, but don't afraid to ask if you need more info....

Márton

[gadzooks]

Marton thanks for doing that for me. Based of your explanation i see that it was me that was causing the problem. What i was doing was
manually giving them ID's instead of letting maxwell assign them or modo. Once again thanks for being "Jhonny on the spot" with this issue.
Gadzooks