Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hi guys- I am encountering a problem that I had a couple of times before and now would really like to get to the bottom of it. Here is the situation

I created a gem
Blocked the gem at the origin
Copied the gem multiple times to different locations
Then scaled and rotated the copied versions

Now I am trying to render and the gems are coming out as clay renders.
I had this happen once before and JD suggested I open the file in Studio and then check to see if the correct materials were being applied.

In Studio only the original gem is showing none of the other gems.

Any thoughts..... I am wondering if I need to create a gem at the origin, then scale at the origin and then rotate and move. Seems strange that would be the case but it is the only thing I can think of at the moment.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts

Before the second step ('Blocked the gem at the origin'), you need to make sure that you:

a. did not assign a material
b. set the assignment to 'By Parent' (in Object Properties > Material > Assign by)

If you don't do that, then you can only control the material of the block instances through their layer material. As far as the original showing, but not the instances, it's the Studio display mode; when you select the gem, you should see bounding boxes for all of its instances - in the Instances panel, you can right-click and switch the display mode for the instances to shaded, textured, etc.

Let me know if that helps explain what you're seeing.

Thanks JD- Is there a quick way to assign the correct material now that I have the scene set up or should I just start over?

Can you assign the material to the layer the blocks are on? Or, do they all need different materials?

Hi JD- I would like to assign by layer but it is not showing up as an option. When I leave one layer on there are no gems in the scene. I think that I will just re do my set up... strange situation with the instances though... ultimately no big deal but curious just the same.

Assigning to layers is always done with drag/drop - just drop your material on the desired layer in Rhino's layers window. I get the idea from your saying 'strange situation' that I haven't explained very well how blocks/instances work; do you care to let me know what still seems strange to you so I can explain it?

Hi JD- Honestly, I don't know when I have felt more embarassed ..... I have never tried to drag and drop onto a layer, I always select objects and assign.

The strange situation with the instances referred to the fact that if I assigned a material to the block (gem) before I moved, scaled etc that the material would not travel with the children of the block. I did not know that the material assignment with instances would be different than my normal work-flow which was to select and assign. Even though everything looked fine -i.e when I clicked on a gem to see if it had the proper material applied it would show that it did. It was only upon rendering that it would be apparent that the material was not being assigned.

I dragged the material onto the layer and now everything is rendering fine.
Thanks JD!

Really, I wish it did not work that way, but this is just how Rhino's material-assignment rules work with regards to block definitions and block references; it's not something which is determined by the plugin. Regarding 'clicked on a gem to see if it had the proper material', I'll see if I can prevent this. It is only appropriate that it do so if the definition that the selected block refers to has 'By Parent' assignment; I can't remember exactly right now if I had difficulty determining this, or if it is just an oversight.

It isn't that big of a deal once you understand how it works, I ran into this problem once before but have not consistently run into the situation. Now that I understand how it works it is simple to avoid. Thanks for the insight!

I'm also facing a problem related to the block instance. I'm working on an archviz project...(again, ...seems i will become an interior designer if continue like that) and i'm using some model from the sketchup warehouse that i import directly to rhino (no translation as rhino can import sketchup file). All these model are imported as block and they already have some texturing applied to them. If i assign a new material to these objects, they still appear with their original texture in the maxwell rendering. I have try to drag the material on the object too, but no success. All those objects are part of the same layers, but they need different materials. So how can i do to make this work?

That's going to be a problem, since the blocks have been defined before you ever had the chance to set up how their materials were supposed to work. It may be possible to use the 'in place block editor' plugin from rhino labs ( http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/ ... ditor.html ) to go into the block definitions and change them to use 'by parent' material assignment. If you try that and still can't make it work, you could try sending me a portion of the file and I'll see if I can figure out any other way...probably the only way is to explode the blocks that need unique materials.

Thanks very much for the quick reply Jeremy....you are fast!
Exploding the block work well, but it's very laborious as i have a lot of furniture in my scene. I will try the plugin and tell you if i can make it work.