[JDHill]

Hi Cadhorn,

If you are using Real Scale, you should:

a) use Channel 0 in the Maxwell texture
b) not use any explicit Rhino mappings

Let me know if that helps sort it out at all.

Cheers,

JD

[Cadhorn]

Thanks for the thoughts Hypsis and JDHill. Here's a clearer example of what I'm seeing:



On the left is the first render of the day, after opening a rhino file saved the previous day. On the right is how it should be. (Ignore the casket, I changed materials on that between renders). The floor and wall are boxes drawn in Rhino (using the Box command), the floor has this material:



Both materials using Channel 0, applied to rhino-drawn objects with Default Texture Mapping. (Rhino's Default mapping radio button checked in Texture Mapping section of Properties panel).

After I noticed it was rendering incorrectly, I stopped the render and opened the material in the plugin Material Editor by double-clicking the material in the list of materials in the Scene Manager. (where you see the screenshot above). Just clicking on any of the tiny previews (to the right of the checkbox, red-circled in screenshot below) seems to remind rhino/maxwell that the object has a size and that real scale is in effect and voila, the preview (in the Rhino rendered preview viewport) snaps to the correct material sizes, and the subsequent Maxwell rendering is correct.



What I seem to be finding, is that Real Scale textures *do* work the way you'd expect them to, except when Rhino or whatever "forgets" the size or orientation of the texture mapping.

It's puzzling, because it doesn't appear to be happening with every object in my scenes, just some objects. There are a bunch of little wood tiles on the lid of the casket, these never seem to lose their scale. The floor though, is almost always f'ed up when I reopen the file.

Everything was drawn in Rhino, nothing imported.

[Hypsis]

Are you really really sure, that you don't have some extra maping channels in Rhino? Have you opened the advanced panel from the texture mapping?

[JDHill]

Hi Cadhorn,

Thanks for the excellent detail. I see what's happening, but couldn't really say exactly what is the cause, since there are many factors which may affect what is shown in Rhino's viewport at any given time (especially on load). Still, we may be able to address things like this in a generic way by using the plugin option 'Restore Viewport on Load', or by using the 'Refresh Viewport Materials' button in the plugin's Functions toolbar. When you use these, the result would depend on which texture (and therefore which Channel) is active in each Material - these functions will cause the plugin to try to force the mapping associated with the applicable Channel to become current in the viewport.

What you are seeing when you are 'clicking on any of the tiny previews' shows one of the new features introduced in 1.7: selecting the mapping shown in the viewport by selecting a texture. Rhino has no way to do this (as you may be aware), instead requiring you to actually modify some parameter in the desired mapping (when there are more than one) before it will be shown in the viewport. The plugin allows you to accomplish this by simply switching textures in the Material Editor, and this is what you are doing here. As noted above, if the desired texture (and therefore Channel) is active in each Material, using 'Refresh Viewport Materials' will accomplish the same thing without going into each Material and toggling between two texture buttons.

Also for general troubleshooting, though this is not directly related to what you're seeing, it is possible that when 'Cache MXS Meshes' is enabled that you may end up with 'stale' texture UVs if Rhino makes any UV changes which the plugin does not detect. The plugin is listening for changes in this area, but there is always the possibility that there are classes of change which do not raise a notification, so the UVs on the cached meshes would no longer represent the current ones. Cached meshes may be invalidated at any time by moving any geometry, or else by toggling the option on/off.

Let me know if any of this information sheds any light on the behavior you're seeing.

Cheers,

JD