[robin of nottingham]

wanting to use maxwell studio mode. Got stl files of jewellery fairly high res. ring shank is looking slightly distorted on the surface when close up due to faces on stl. Is there a smooth feature on objects to render with better surface..... seem to remember seeing something several version ago but cant find it now,

thanks,

r

[robin of nottingham]

in objest parameters.... its currently on 60.000 but 60 what? and is it larger or smaller numer to smooth and by how much to make a difference?

thanks,

r

[JDHill]

Smoothing Angle sets the threshold for whether or not to apply smoothing between two faces - if the angle between them is less than the smoothing angle, then they will be smoothed, otherwise they will be rendered as-is. If you want to use this feature, make sure that the Smoothing option is not set to Flat (or else the parameter is ignored), and then make sure to click Recalc after changing the value. Smoothing in MXST is the same thing as using the the mesh Weld and Unweld commands in Rhino.

There is no universal angle that is suitable for in situations - you should just try different values to see how much is necessary for this particular object.

JD

[robin of nottingham]

changed it to 40.00 and it seemed worse so now trying 110 to see how that takes effect and at first glance its looking better as it renders now.

may I ask with the environments: what the difference between the default and the studio pro?

thanks,

r

[JDHill]

I guess by 'environments' you mean the preset options for MXST window layouts? If so, they are just saved layouts - you can save your own custom one if you like (MXST main menu > Window > Save Layout). If save it in the Maxwell\layouts folder, it should appear in the dropdown list next time you start Studio. You can also make your custom layout to be used as the default if you save it as defaultlayout.stlay, replacing the existing one in the layouts folder.

[robin of nottingham]

so its a pallette layout thing then.... Now I understand thanks. The renders going fine and now looking good thanks... maybe I ll post it to compare the smooth settings as interest for others.

On another note i see an animation box under render options. I ve got a customer that has requested small animations of the jewellery that I do for him so he can put it on his website. I use rhino and claytools and maxwell have I got the software it takes to produce a revolving ring 360 looped you think?

Any advice or tutorials that may help with this matter? It would be a great help for me. thanks,

r

[JDHill]

I'm not exactly sure which 'render options' you're referring to.

You can use the Rhino AnimationTools plugin to make a turntable animation, if you don't know how to do this, see the Rhino help, under Utilities > Animations > Turntable. After you define the animation using Rhino's SetTurnTableAnimation command, you can then use the RecordAnimation command to run it. RecordAnimation expects to save images to some folder so it shows you a folder-browser dialog, but the plugin uses the current Scene Path (in Scene Manager > Output Settings), so just pick any folder and hit OK. Since only the Camera will be moving from frame to frame, you should have Cache MXS Meshes on (Scene Manager > Plugin Options), to prevent re-exporting all the meshes for each frame.

Also, I did just find a small bug here - any time you run one of these animations, the Camera will have Motion Blur enabled. That may or may not be desired, but I already see what I need to do to fix it.

[robin of nottingham]

the animation 360 thing a totally get.

Is it then possible to export the rhino animation into maxwell studio as one file with a number of frames?

I ve done the rhino animation and full render within rhino which worked but slightly pastey looking outcomes... would like to produce the sequence in the maxwell studio as I find its better results on single renders for me.

I ve also got a sequence of single maxwell files (meshes) one file per frame.

Are you saying I can produce one maxwell file with the all the animated shots/frames ready to be rendered one after another?

I am aiming to get a movie similar to the one on this website
http://www.domino-wb.co.uk/handbook.jspx

but with out the changing stone thing as thats well beyond me for now.

do you think its possible to do using maxwell?

thanks,

[JDHill]

No, Studio doesn't have any animation features, and .mxs files can't have multiple frames per file. You could render a previously-created series of .mxs files like those produced during Rhino animation by using the mxcl.exe command-line parameters, that's how the plugin does it.

[robin of nottingham]

now trying a render within the rhino environment.

I ve got couple of imported stl files in rhino... is there a smooth tool option for rendering faceted objects within rhino? I could find it when using maxwell studio but not in rhino.... if so where would I find it?

thanks,

r

[JDHill]

It's not a function of the plugin - you use the Rhino commands Weld and Unweld to change the smoothing of meshes in Rhino.