Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hey guys,

Ive just started playing around with maxwell.

Ive built my model in rhino and didn't assign any materials. Then I exported the model to maxwell studio and started assigning the materials. When I did a exterior rendering I a) couldn't see what was inside and b) because the glass windows were rendered as non-transparent plane.

Where did I go wrong?

Also my next question. If I want lights in my scene. Do I need to place object/shapes in rhino where I would like the lights to be or can I do that in Maxwell?

Thanks in advance for the help!

You can use the built in "rectangular" lights from Rhino (Render Tools menu) and assign an emitter material to them - these will be converted to flat "softbox" type lights when exported. You can also use the Spotlight in Rhino, but again assign an emitter material to it and set it to "Spotlight" from the Projection parameter in the emitter material. You control the angle and falloff from the Maxwell emitter material, not from the Rhino spotlight settings.

Maxwell needs a real geometric surface to act as emitters, and while you can apply an emitter material to any object, for common lighting purposes you would either create a spotlight type of light or a flat rectangular one and apply the emitter material to those. The plugin can also translate a point light from Rhino, by creating a small sphere when exported to Maxwell.

As for the glass, did you use the Transparent material assistant to create the glass material? Is your scene exported at the correct scale?

Hey, thanks for replying.

I will have a look at the lights in a minute.

Yes I used transparent material assistant. I guess it was the right scale. Should I export it differently or is there a rule of thumb for exporting a rhino model?


Do you use the Rhino plugin to assign materials or do you do that in studio?

As much as possible I try to do everything in Rhino, turns out to be the most efficient in the end.

I think I've found my mistake.

I made the windows in rhino from a single surface but then I made them a solid with a thickness of 2cm and now I get it rendered.