[greenlollipop]

Hello all -
i'd like to collect your opinions on the advantages, if any, of using maxwell studio freestanding versus the rhino plug-in. Disadvantages?

Thanks,
J.C.

[Cadhorn]

I really can't think of any reason to use studio. I remember when maxwell studio first appeared, my first reaction was "what the hell is this? i want a plug-in, not a separate 3d program!"
And, thanks to JD, we now have a plug-in that (i think) exposes all of studio's features to Rhino.

That, and keeping track of separate versions of files is a huge pain in the butt when you're working on a model in rhino, exporting to studio, texturing in studio, render in studio, then there's *always* changes to the original rhino model, which have to be re-exported to studio... oh god, i get dizzy just remembering those bad old days.

Thanks again JD for all of your work on the rhino plug-in!

[EADC]

Well, the fact that rhino-32bit simply can't handle files bigger than 3Gb (during the mxs creation process windows ran out of memory already quit a few times here) forced me to write separate mxs files and combine them again in Studio. Also being able to easily import parts build in solidworks or specifically mapped parts in max and bring them into a file made initially made in rhino is a big plus for studio.

[kami]

I have to agree with Cadhorn. I almost never used studio, because it was (and maybe still is) a terrible program
but the rhino plugin got so great over the last year, that I hopefully never have to use studio again. (except maybe for the reason EADC mentionned)

[Cadhorn]

@ EADC: heh, I forgot about that. I think I've only run into it once while rendering an animation. Some kind of memory leak in Rhino wasn't releasing part of the memory when writing each mxs frame.
But I don't think I've ever run out of memory while writing just a single mxs file. I could totally see how it could happen though, if the model were big enough, and the meshing values small enough. Would be nice if Rhino supported something like a LOD-based meshing (objects close to the camera getting super-fine meshing, while distant objects get the chunky mesh).