[njay]

Hi wonder if someone can shed light on this for me.

I am having issues in the multi light tab of Maxwell Render when exporting from the SKP Plugin. I am on a mac (OS X 10.10.5) running SKP Pro 2017 and maxwell 4.1.1.1

I am setting the decimal precision in the SKP Plugin for my hdri emitter values for materials created from Sketchup such as a jpeg for a TV screen, which sometimes have values with more than 1 decimal place. (i.e. 0.025 hdri emitter value) When I then export to Maxwell Render the default precision values are only 1 decimal place so default to zero and as my values are 2 decimal places I need to then manually adjust the decimal precision for each light fader / channel.

Also if I set the EV for the scene to be say 5 the shutter value in Maxwell Render Multi light defaults to 1. (Sometimes it seems to choose any number it feels like.Well thats what it feels like to me anyway!)

Does the plugin therefore not communicate the decimal precision? Or do I need to adjust settings in maxwell render?

And am I missing something in the relationship between EV & shutter values?

I had this issue with Maxwell 2 & 3 also.

I do have studio aswell so could create materials in Mxed but the workflow is convoluted for this based on the projects I am currently working on so would prefer to work this out directly from the plugin.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help. I can't find any options or info in the documentation for Maxwell Render about default multi light slider precision.

[JDHill]

Regarding decimal precision, you are not missing anything, there is no way of communicating this between the two applications (between the plugin and Maxwell, I mean). In Maxwell (and Studio), you can change the precision for a given parameter by right-clicking on its textbox and choosing Decimal Precision from the context menu.

Regarding EV, this is a "virtual" value which does not actually exist in the MXS, so it also is not communicated. Studio calculates it from the fstop/shutter/ISO, but Maxwell has no EV parameter (it just calculates and displays it in the Camera > EXIF panel). I'm not really sure what you might be seeing with the inconsistent shutter value in Maxwell; here, it shows the same value as in SketchUp. I would suggest making sure the decimal precision for that slider is not too low to show the value.

[njay]

Thx JD, super swift response.

I understand & thank you.

I guess I need to get under the hood a bit more understanding the Fstop/shutter/iso parameters. EV is I guess simplifying it and actually I need more understanding to get the control.

Shame about the decimal precision, as I get fired a creative jpg from the graphic designers for the spaces (interior spaces like a hotel event space) I'm modelling which they need on tv's and it's a quick fix to just convert them to an HDR image in photoshop and then add to the material through the plugin. But the brightness at intensity 1 is way too much.

I suppose I should just set up a standard HDRI emitting mxm material and replace the image in mxed and save as a unique mxed every time and then make the material in the plugin reference it. I then don't have to worry about the decimal precision in multi light. (or work out how to reduce the brightness in the HDR conversion in photoshop)

The work we do is such quick turnaround and so I invariably use multi light as I can just quickly tweak the emitter values, but I suppose i need to work on my lighting approach / workflow more to get right emitter levels for each scene & then not worry about fiddling with multi light to save me the time post render! Latest job is 40+ rendered scenes updated at least twice a month for next 6 months so a lot of fiddling.

Thx again, really helpful. NJAY