[Paolo Scazzosi]

Hi everybody,

for years we used Maxwell as our main render engine.
Modelling in Rhino 3D and rendering in Maxwell Studio. Very simple!

Up till now we need to export from Rhino 6 (or 7) to Rhino 5 to use the Maxwell 2.7 Plugin to export the geometry to then import them to Maxwell 4.

Moving to Maxwell 5 we now need to choose between having the Studio (which we use for scene setup) but having no Rhino plugin for exportation OR having Rhino plugin but no Studio!

This is rather annoying!
Are we supposed to buy 2 licenses for each user in our studio?
We don't want to render with Rhino.
Rhino is purely for modelling and not used for render setup. Geometry needs to stay in place for future updates.
Also integrating Maxwell UI into Rhino is rather confusing..

How are we supposed to export Rhino geometry to Maxwell Studio?
They are several issues with different file formats.

It seems working with computers nowadays is get ever more complicated instead of getting simplified and streamlined..
E.g. we still need to keep Rhino 5 today as newer versions can't properly flow a mapped surface..
We still need to keep Maxwell 2.7 to simply export the geometry.

Setting up computer for new colegues is getting very complicated with older versions of software not anymore availabel.


Any ideas?

[Forum Moderator]

Hello Paolo,

If you prefer not to buy the plugin for Rhino, you have two options that can be used together:

• Importing the geometry
• Using the Asset Reference Extension Object to synchronize the geometry into Studio (as explained here: https://blog.maxwellrender.com/tips/how ... ll-studio/

In both cases, I'd suggest using one of these formats: .fbx, .dae or .obj as they all include material information.

E.g. we still need to keep Rhino 5 today as newer versions can't properly flow a mapped surface..

Do you refer to the plugin or Rhino itself? If it's the former, could you please share an example showing the issue?

Setting up computer for new colleagues is getting very complicated with older versions of software not anymore available.

Please, let me know if you don't have access to a particular version. Most probably, I will be able to share them with you.

Cheers!

[sean obrien]

It would be helpful if NL included exporters without the need to purchase the entire plug-in, or optionally, open Rhino, Sketchup, ... files directly in Studio without converting the files to .obj, .fbx first

Being the 5th generation of the program, Studio should be able to read the file formats of all the 3d applications where NL offers a plugin. A little refinement in the workflow would make a better user experience.

[Paolo Scazzosi]

Hi,

Maxwell 2.7 included a free Rhino plugin which exported the geometry rather well. We still use it with Rhino 5.
High enough quality files, while small enough to not weight too much in terms of MB.

I'm not sure if it did some "magic" or had simply very good meshing settings.
The end result was nearly always very good.

Only some object (round one, like watch cases or top rings, sometimes beveled inner rings of dials) needed to be meshed "by hand" as they looked too squarish.

Exporting in .obj we can't replicate these great settings.

Maybe you could tell us these settings?

Also Layer structure was replicated well form Rhino to Maxwell. .obj can't do that..
I will also try .fbx, .dae as you suggested.

We just can't buy an extra Rhino version to simply export geometry over to Studio.


Regarding the "flow problem": it was just an example how absurd modern CG work can be..
We need to keep 4 versions of Rhino, and 3 versions of Maxwell installed on our computes.

We still have Rhino 4 for licensing reasons as we use Rhino 5 for exporting and texture mapping & bending watch straps.
Surprisingly Rhino 6 & 7 don't work well for this situation..
We still have Maxwell 2.7 for exportation. Maxwell 4 that we used till yeserday + Maxwell 5 which we all are happy to have finally, but miss the Rhino export plugin as we all work with the Studio version.


Add some other licensing & updating problems for other software and the end result is that working in CG in 2021 is very cumbersome and not the "shiny future" that we all would imagine..

Instead of getting easier it's all getting more and more complicated just to make things run!