[Jim-H]

Hi All,

Brand new user to Maxwell Render here.

Got an email this morning from MR and in it there was a link to a v2 tutorial about materials. In watching it, they go through the local database of materials which looked pretty extensive and I assume were created by Maxwell. Since I have v3, there is only a small set of local materials that came with the download from Arroway. How can I get the full Maxwell collection of materials and have them reside on my local drive for quick access? Is there a download available somewhere?

I know there is the user created material library at resources.maxwellrender.com but this is a bit slow to navigate. When I import one of these materials they reside at the project level, Is there a way to get them to be stored in my local materials database so they don't have to be re-imported each time or moved manually?

What is the recommended workflow for managing materials in Maxwell Render?

Thanks.

[Mihai]

Hi Jim, and welcome

You will see in the download area page, 'other downloads'. Those are the textures used in the materials included with the install. The installer would be too big if we included those also.

You can choose where the downloaded materials should reside, project folder or a folder of your choosing from your plugin preferences, or the Studio preferences (File>Preferences>Materials>MXM Gallery).

Personally I use a Google drive folder for my materials and textures. This way all the materials are there for my main computer and my laptop. For network rendering you have the ability in the prefs for both Maxwell and Studio to specify paths which they will search for textures and materials, so I just point a path to the same main folder that's connected to Google drive.

I store my MXM files separate from my textures, since a texture may be used in several materials and it's not efficient to have multiple copies of that texture taking up HD space.

Looks like:

MAT DB (main Google drive folder)

• MXM
  • Metals
  • Wood
  • Stone
  • etc
  • etc
• Textures
  • Grime
  • Stone
  • Organic
    • Wood
    • Leafs
    • etc
  • Scratches
  • etc
  • etc

[Jim-H]

Thanks for the reply Mihai.

I see in my "Other Downloads" a 52.7Mb file of 32 Arroway materials, are these the only materials available as a collection that come with Maxwell Render? I would of thought it would of come with more.

This is the video I was referring to which shows what appears to be a large collection of materials. Are those mostly user created? Downloaded from the Maxwell library?
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/tuts/Materials at about 0:55 into the video.

Is the Maxwell Library still being contributed to? It appears it's been almost a year since a material has been added. Is there any difference between v2 and v3 materials?

Sorry for all the questions, trying to understand how to best utilize the renderer and its materials.

Jim

[Mihai]

That tutorial video is pretty old and we had many variations of materials back then, but which are now a bit irrelevant, especially since you can create those variations very easily using the material assistants in V3. You can easily create a red glossy plastic for example, then change only the color so its yellow and so on. Then change the roughness so it's more rough instead of glossy etc. You don't need 200 mxm files for that