By photomg1
#380531
Hi Marton,
I regularly put hdri on luminous polygons in modo(could be a grad for example) . When you go to export these to maxwell studio, in the modo plug in if I have "collect images to directory" ticked and "auto convert disabled" the mapped hdri images don't get transferred over to studio. Now if I have auto convert enabled with something like the tiff option the image comes in as for example (test.hdr.tiff) which if I try and preview that material I get a full on insta crash of modo and maxwell .

Now I can avoid all of the above by just creating a maxwell material in modo for this emitter , but that just adds extra steps.

Is anybody else experiencing issues, I've not been using maxwell much lately but I'm surprised no one has else seems to have run into this.

edit: 801 , plug in 3.020 , maxwell 3.0.1.0
By Marton Day8
#380571
Hi Matt,

In Maxwell we don't have separate texture maps for emitter color and intensity.

So the plugin doesn't check the luminous amount texture channel, only the luminous color. In this case your best option is to change the effect type to luminous color, end set the material "Luminous Intensity" value to not zero.

(In case you export the hdr or exr texture as diffuse color, the plugin tries to handle it as a diffuse texture. Maxwell can't read exr or hdr formats inside the normal texture channels (reflection, reflection 90, etc), so the plugin automatically converts it to a not HDR format. That is why modo exports it for your as filename.tif.

I hope it helps!

Márton
By photomg1
#380573
Thanks Marton, you've reminded me what I was doing differently from yesterday to today. Add a HDR file to a plane , set it to luminous colour with a non zero value on material . start fire in Modo ..... insta crash
By photomg1
#381499
Hi Marton ,
just wondering how far off we are from a fix ? this is proving to be a workflow killer . I can't even export a hdri background without running into issues . Ticking collect export images to export directory is doing nothing if I have auto convert images disabled . If I have it enabled I end up with filename.hdr.tiff and the same problems of instacrash in modo with fire.

:(
By Marton Day8
#381514
Hello,

Sorry - you are right, I have promised a fix a long time ago. I will give out the new version soon. The problem is that I have started to readjust the intensity values of the exported emitter items (lamps, materials, environments, etc.) and after a lot of changes I become really confused about what should be the correct solution.

So maybe I will revert these changes...... or keep them and you (beta users) can check it and tell me your opinion(?).

Márton
By photomg1
#381515
Hi Marton,
thanks for the reply , sorry to have brought this up again .It really has just been breaking my spirit a bit with maxwell today , the enviroment hdri not transferring sent me slightly over the edge earlier today when it crashed modo and I lost some work :D .

Look forward to seeing what you are trying to do with intensity values ! happy to give an opinion when I can see what you are trying to do .I'm always up for improvements.

With regards to direct lights is it correct behaviour when you try and change their intensity in maxwellstudio they become inactive . It doesn't seem to behave as you would expect like any other emitter.( caveat : I haven't used them for a while so this might be fixed already)

best

Matt
By Marton Day8
#381615
Hi,

The new version (beta3) is finally available from the Early Build side.

At the end I have removed (nearly) all the changes I have done with the intensity settings. I have tried to make the export of the different emission types (lamps, environments) more consistent, but after many-many tests I was still not able to find a really reliable conversion method, so it was better to keep the current values.

(I hope I haven't removed the change I have done to fix your crash...)

About directional lights:
I think only the modo plugin tries to convert this lamp type to Maxwell (not sure but probably the other plugins don't export directional light) because here we have to deal with extreme high emission values. Maxwell Studio can't handle this extreme value unfortunately.
What you can do is to set the Maxwell parameter of the directional light "Light Source Offset" to a much smaller value, and than you will have emitter with weaker emission value. But it also means that the light rays won't be so parallel. Unfortunately this is the only option.

Márton
By photomg1
#381646
:D :D :D

so far so good , think you have fixed the issues I was facing :D thank you !!!!

with regards to directional lights , I suppose my confusion has come from if I set up 2 directional lights in modo with different powers .Fire and studio preview correctly represent the differing power relationships. Even though their emitter powers are the same as far as the materials are concerned in studio . If I launch a render with multilight enabled it does actually show the different powers of the two directional lights . I can't alter them with the slider but I can alter them manually by clicking the numerical value and lowering them there.
I'm not after using two different directional lights per se .. it was just the option of lowering the power of a directional light in studio. Its not a biggy as I have two workaround options either sort it in modo before export or saving out an mxi with multilight to reload in studio. I just found/find the way it works strange.

best

Matt
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