[dshaifer]

Hi! I'm new to Maxwell Render. I have the latest version of MR SA running on Sketchup 2013. My materials don't render any differently than the standard SU materials. I think I installed vcredlist correctly, but now I can't locate it. Also, my i7 Intel Quad core runs very hot when I turn FIRE on even though I use a low SL. (Even though I use SL 4, I still get a heat warning message). Would appreciate some help.

[JDHill]

If the plugin does not fail to load, you have installed vcredist correctly, so there is no need to worry about that. Regarding SL & CPU usage, the thing to understand is that SL stands for "Sampling Level" and represents the final overall refinement you desire for the rendering, not the CPU resources to dedicate to the task. Rather, that is controlled by the Threads setting; if you have an i7 quadcore, you have 4 CPU cores, with two threads each, for a total of 8 threads (you can check in Task Manager > Performance to actually check how many threads Windows is seeing). If you would like to reduce the stress on your machine while rendering, you may want to explicitly set the number of Threads to between 4-6 (or whatever number allows your machine to run cool enough). The last, most important point regarding Threads would be: a value of zero means that the engine will auto-detect the number of threads available, and use them all.

Regarding materials, how this works is that the plugin translates whatever it finds in the document; for a material that you have never customized, it will look at the SketchUp material parameters, and attempt to make a material that is representative. To override this behavior and customize a material, open the Scene Manger and go to the Materials tab; selecting a material from the drop-down at the top, you can change various aspects of how it is constructed, choosing to make it a plastic, liquid, etc, using the Character > Type drop-down.

So please check these things out and let me know how it goes.

[numerobis]

The heat problem is not maxwell specific. If your pc runs hot if it uses all cores under full load, then you should check your cooling. This would be the same with any other application that uses the full processing power of your cpu.
The SL value (sampling level) only shows you the progress of the render. Not sure why you mention this in relation to the heat.

edit: too slow