[choo-chee]

it will be nice to have an alternate "fire" buttons that don't load MXS references, grass, scatter etc (user can select), saving the need to hide unwanted objects loading in fire mode, slowing down the whole workflow, esp. if all needed is to adjust sun direction, etc.

[Forum Moderator]

Thank you Choo-chee!
Sounds good to me. It could work as a list in Fire window that has several categories checked by default that could be disabled if you don't want Fire to lose time rendering those.
Grass, Scatter, Volumetrics, displacement, instances,...

Noted down!
F.

[Nasok]

What we need in FIRE is an Isolate mode. like an isolate selection. If that is turned on - then you see only what selected object does. Ideally could be great if would be also applied to separate channels. Like isolate diffuse channel or roughness or a single light or object.
That will help a lot

[Mihai]

Many times in my workflow, I would like to have Blow-up working in FIRE for checking things...

[Nasok]

Blow-up ? is it like a region refining ?

[mjcherry]

What we need in FIRE is an Isolate mode. like an isolate selection. If that is turned on - then you see only what selected object does. Ideally could be great if would be also applied to separate channels. Like isolate diffuse channel or roughness or a single light or object.
That will help a lot

We have this in the Maya version. If I isolate an object in the viewport and start fire, that object is all I see.

[Nasok]

That is true .. but I was talking more about "more detailed" debug mode-like feature. For instance isolating roughness texture on one of the layers to see the way it is represented on a model. Or isolating diffuse channel or combined normal map to see whether bump is too much. Or isolating influence of only selected light source.
Right now if you isolate a light source it won't show you anything .. as this light source will never have a "destination".
Currently in FIRE is okay to add lights but removing them isn't really working - you need to re-start the scene. Which is fine - but could be solved via isolation mode.
Maybe it would be useful to have ability to see fire not in just "beauty" but also by selected channels (from render settings) for instance see how luminance depth looks like (I know there is a visual workaround with old render layers but still) and how reflectivity is visualised and etc.

A bit more detailed than it is right now.

[mjcherry]

Ah... Like you can view in Substance, yes, that would be cool. Personally I would like an integrated substance workflow. I've gotten better integrating the two (thanks to you) but it could still be tighter. That way I can view all my maps there. But yes, when making a material in either MXEd or Maya, being able to view the individual maps in isolation would be great.

[mjcherry]

At this point, I would be happy just to have a fire window that worked as quickly and dependably as Arnold's IPR and didn't crash my system (as fire did again last night).

[choo-chee]

At this point, I would be happy just to have a fire window that worked as quickly and dependably as Arnold's IPR and didn't crash my system (as fire did again last night).

tips for FIRE in MAYA: make another toolbar button that is like fire but first it saves the scene. helped me recover crashed maya+fire without data loss.

[Nasok]

I believe Maxwell and Substance won't be really tight ever - as they carry completely different approach to visualise things. The entire idea of metallicity is not really something that could exist in "Maxwell universe". Since Maxwell is unbiased rendering engine.
However - it would be really nice to think together what is the best use of those maps that can be exported from Substance - since the entire toolset is very convenient for texturing.

Maybe we could create a "Substance generic template" where you would have a few slots to plug your textures in. Or something.
to be honest I always save before hitting that FIRE button I know it's a bit of an old school habit - but well - saves me some time )

However, I recently did a fresh install on my home computer (which is pretty simple iMac) and can't say that anything goes slow or crashes too much. In fact I'm rendering another animation at the moment.