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Bug List ( 1.8.3 ):

• Material Editor may become unresponsive
  status: cause unknown (may be fixed). I am unable to duplicate at will - please advise if you observe this issue

• color picker comes up very slowly
  status: fixed: set Plugin Options > Color Picker to 'Windows' or 'Application'

• cannot drag/drop Materials onto a viewport
  status: a Rhino bug. workaround: temporarily disable the Camera Heads-up Display

• using TAB key in dockbars results in a hang
  status: a Rhino bug. workaround: don't use TAB, or set dockbars to floating (Options > Use Dockable Scene Manager = No, etc.)

Hi JD!

Here's a quick bug (?) or wish list. Haven't had time to report earlier - too much work here right now...

The camera parameters seems to randomly (?) reset themselves if I make a new camera in Rhino... or sometimes when changing some other parameters in the Maxwell Scene Manager. It would be nice if they would 'stick' - also between sessions - until I change them myself.
Right now I find myself always checking that they are the way they should, when I for instance change the output settings between renders...

In "Date & Time" DST is always "No" when I start a new session or opening an old file. I think the default should be "Yes" - and it should stick between sessions - especially in an old file saved with DST "Yes." I never use DST "No" anyway, so I wouldn't need that button at all...
"Time of Day" also resets to 24.00 even if the file is saved with 12.00... By the way... What time of day is for instance 12.910? This is a way of presenting the time that I don't understand. I thought that after 12.59 comes 13.00 (... and using a.m. and p.m. doesn't feel natural to me)...

Location doesn't stick between sessions. When I open a new file the field under the globe is empty - even if it was saved with "Europe/Helsinki."

If the above is intended behavior and not bugs - feel free to move this to the wish-section...

Anyhow I think that we have a fantastic plug-in for Rhino. These changes would make it perfect (in my humble opinion, of course).
Thanks!

Philip

What time of day is for instance 12.910?

Ah come on, .. that's just 40 minutes past noon o'clock.

Hi Philip,

Cameras: yes it may appear that they reset themselves, but they don't... when you make a new camera in Rhino, the plugin also creates a new Maxwell Camera to go with it - so you are looking at a new camera, with a fresh set of default settings. The settings you were previously looking at are still tied to the previous Rhino camera, and you should see them come back if you switch back to that camera. If your camera is changing between renders, I would have to guess that you're rendering different cameras...there should be nothing to cause any given camera to change on its own. If this is not not the case, I'll need to ask you if you can provide a repeatable failure scenario, as it is working fine here.

DST: you're totally right, I (mistakenly) am not saving the state of this switch in the document.

Time of Day: 12.910? Well, that's 12:54 p.m. Rest assured, you aren't forced in any way to use any particular input...they should always be synchronized with one another, so feel free to disregard the decimal-based 'Time of Day' parameter. In your case, I guess you'd want to use the hour/minute inputs, or just type the desired time into the 'Simple Time' field. Date/Time is definetely saved in the document, so again, I'll need some repeatable failure sequence, since it works fine here.

Location: again, similar to above...this is definetely saved/restored per-document...when you open a document, you should see the globe spinning around to the saved time of day, and the city location should be set to where it was when saved. The thing that's not saved is the city's name...only lat/lon are saved. That's because the city list is just meant to be a list of presets for setting lat/lon...which you can customize on your machine by editing your cities.txt file.

Let me know if this clears anything up, and if you can send me a .3dm which doesn't seem to be saving date/time/location etc.

Cheers,

JD

Hi JD!

If your camera is changing between renders, I would have to guess that you're rendering different cameras...there should be nothing to cause any given camera to change on its own. If this is not not the case, I'll need to ask you if you can provide a repeatable failure scenario, as it is working fine here.

Nope, same camera. Of course I'm not able to repeat it right now... I'll let you know next time it happens...

Time of Day: 12.910? Well, that's 12:54 p.m. Rest assured, you aren't forced in any way to use any particular input...they should always be synchronized with one another, so feel free to disregard the decimal-based 'Time of Day' parameter. In your case, I guess you'd want to use the hour/minute inputs, or just type the desired time into the 'Simple Time' field. Date/Time is definetely saved in the document, so again, I'll need some repeatable failure sequence, since it works fine here.

They don't seem to always be synchronized... I tried with a new, clean file. Made a box in Rhino, enabled DST, set 'Time of Day' to 12,00. 'Hour' is now 0, 'Minute' is 0 and 'a.m. or p.m.' is p.m... but 'Time' says 12:00 p.m. Shouldn't that be 00:00 p.m. or 12:00 a.m.? When I open the file again (new session - Rhino closed and re-opened) 'Time' is 12:00 p.m., 'Hour' is 12, 'Minute' is 0, 'a.m. or p.m.' is p.m. and 'Time of Day' is 24,000. This is correct, but it's not what I wanted... So, if I set 'Time of Day' to 12,000, something goes wrong.
Of course I could use 'Hour' 11 and 'Minute' 58 (11:59 and 12:00 is not possible to input) and 'am.' or 'pm.' - that's close enough. However, it would be nice to use 12:59, 13:00 or whatever, like I'm used to (no 'am' or 'pm')...
Possible?

Location: again, similar to above...this is definetely saved/restored per-document...when you open a document, you should see the globe spinning around to the saved time of day, and the city location should be set to where it was when saved. The thing that's not saved is the city's name...only lat/lon are saved. That's because the city list is just meant to be a list of presets for setting lat/lon...which you can customize on your machine by editing your cities.txt file.

Yes, you are right. This works like it should. I meant that it would be nice if the correct city also would pop up automagically.

Thanks!

Philip

Hi Philip,

Now I see some funny-business surrounding the 12:00 hour.

Made a box in Rhino, enabled DST, set 'Time of Day' to 12,00. 'Hour' is now 0, 'Minute' is 0 and 'a.m. or p.m.' is p.m... but 'Time' says 12:00 p.m. Shouldn't that be 00:00 p.m. or 12:00 a.m.?

No, it's correct, the Time of Day range is 0.00-24.00 (technically, it should be 23.99), i.e. there's no a.m./p.m. for 0.00. Noon is 12:00 p.m., while midnight is 12:00 a.m.. Besides for Time of Day, all of these inputs are just helpers, as Maxwell uses the absolute 0.00-24.00 decimal value internally. Of course, it doesn't help that there are more ways than you can imagine to represent time, in particular, around the midnight/noon times...see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock - Confusion at noon and midnight, for a 'fun' discussion of this.

(new session - Rhino closed and re-opened) 'Time' is 12:00 p.m., 'Hour' is 12, 'Minute' is 0, 'a.m. or p.m.' is p.m. and 'Time of Day' is 24,000. This is correct, but it's not what I wanted...

This is the screwed-up case. 12:00 p.m. is noon, 1/2 of the 24.00 cycle - but I'm not reading it correctly - Time of Day should say 12.00 in this scenario. As far as I can tell, there is only a problem with the 12:00 hour, be it a.m. or p.m.. Any other hour seems to be working fine, let me know if you find otherwise. It's exactly the midnight/a.m. vs. noon/p.m. issue that's screwed up - I'll go back into that code and fix it up.

...it would be nice if the correct city also would pop up automagically.

Consider it wished.

Cheers,

JD

Hi again

First of all... Thanks for your quick, helpful and friendly answers - the Rhino/Maxwell plug-in support is as least as good as the Rhino support itself!

No, it's correct, the Time of Day range is 0.00-24.00 (technically, it should be 23.99), i.e. there's no a.m./p.m. for 0.00. Noon is 12:00 p.m., while midnight is 12:00 a.m.. Besides for Time of Day, all of these inputs are just helpers, as Maxwell uses the absolute 0.00-24.00 decimal value internally. Of course, it doesn't help that there are more ways than you can imagine to represent time, in particular, around the midnight/noon times...see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock - Confusion at noon and midnight, for a 'fun' discussion of this.

See - I told you I can't use am/pm I've messed it all up... Thanks for the explanation. Now I'm embarrassed We're not used to am/pm here in Europe...
By the way... Does this mean that you can/will change the 'funny' 'Time of Day' settings from (for instance) 12,910 to normal 12.54?

This is the screwed-up case. 12:00 p.m. is noon, 1/2 of the 24.00 cycle - but I'm not reading it correctly - Time of Day should say 12.00 in this scenario. As far as I can tell, there is only a problem with the 12:00 hour, be it a.m. or p.m.. Any other hour seems to be working fine, let me know if you find otherwise.

Yes, any other than 12:00 seems to be ok.

It's exactly the midnight/a.m. vs. noon/p.m. issue that's screwed up - I'll go back into that code and fix it up.

Consider it wished.

Thank you... and thank you! Have a nice day!

Philip

Hi,

I have a bunch of block instances, and one definition in Rhino. The Block definition itself consists of a few polysurface with different maxwell materials assigned to them.

When I use the "delete unused materials", all my materials assigned to the parts of the block definition gets deleted too.

- Björn

I'm currently doing a bunch of work in the blocks area...it's always a bit sticky, but I'll take a look at and see what's happening.

yep, I thought you were, since the instances discussion I guess.

Hi JD,

I read through the thread and I can see something different happening with the Location Settings between the sessions:

When I reopen a file all the values seem to be fine;
like lat&lng time etc. but the globe is pretty much 180° turned around from what the location actually is; like here (taken right after file open):


By polynurb at 2008-01-14

so vienna should be the location (~16/48), but I´m somwhere floating over the Pacific ocean... but the globe is right! when I render it`s pitch dark!

It also stayes out of sync when I manually spin the globe later; so I choose a different city, and then put the coordinates back in that I need...
(if it`s not in the list)

cheers,

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

It seems to be working fine here, maybe you could send me a file and I can step through opening it up to see what's actually saved in it.

Thanks,

JD

Daniel,

The way I got it was that the location is marked with a red dot on the globe, but the way the globe is facing depends merely on the time of day, and day of year etc. If your location is visible, then it is day there,

am I right?

He sent me his file, and there's something going wrong there - the city should be facing the sun (i.e. our pov) at 1:40 in the afternoon.

Sometimes, I've seen that the Hour of day and AM/PM hour doesn't match. I've relied on the former one.

- björn