[rdesign]

I make my MXM materials in the MXED outside of SKP; I don't have the MXED open when I am exporting so I can't answer that question.

But here's how I set emitters in SKP :

1. Select the face you want to be the emitter: best if a simple plane, make sure normals are pointing correctly. (Check with View > Rendering > Monochrome: default tan side out in the direction of the emitter)

2. With the face still selected go to Plugins > Maxwell Export > Set MXM Material

3. Navigate to the preset emitter MXMs located in /Applications/Maxwell/materials database/mxm files/ateam's special/jomaga/ (I'm on OSX so if you're in Windows it'll be somewhere else). These presets should have been installed as part of your Maxwell installation.

4. Choose one of the preset emitters.

5. Set the camera parameters so you'll be able to see the lights: start with around 400 iso, f-stop 4, shutter 1/60

6. Export with the settings you stated, they're the right ones. At least that's what works for me.

Remember that if you have X emitter planes with the same emitter MXM applied to them, the light intenstity for each emitter will be 1/X (eg. 10 lights at 100W will be 10W each in MXCL). If you turn on the multilight option you can correct the emitter value in MXCL (eg. type in 1000 for the 10 light example above).

tim

[stise]

Something has to be wrong, I'm not getting anything. just another scene with no lighting. My normals are fine, i was able to pick one of the lights and still nothing. I followed your directions to the tee and no luck. Do you have a small scene that I can test. i'd be curious if all things being equal and see if I still have a problem.
Thanks a lot for your continued help.

If you have a scene and some time please email me at:

stevo_apex@yahoo.com

thanks again
thats stevo(underscore)apex@yahoo.com

[rdesign]

Stevo:

I sent a simple test SKP v5 to that email address. Let me know if you need a version 4 copy.

I hope you can get it to work. BTW are you using Windows?

Regards,
tim

[Richard]

Stevo

Mate I'd suggest crank up the intensity of your emitters, way up. Remember as rdesign suggest the same emitter will be spilt power wise over all faces, but I'm not sure if the size of the face has effect.

In one scene I did I had to use 50,000 watts.

[stise]

rdesign, sorry about the late reply. I just returned from the long weekend. I tried your file on friday and still no luck. I'm not sure whats going on, Im considering a re-install. What is suprising is that I was able to open some of my older files direct through MXR, and they rendered however if I try to open the same files in Sketchup and then try to send them to MR via the Plug I get a black picture, maybe I have a corrupted plugin? at least thats what i thought until I relised both my machines seem to be suffering from the asme problem, I'm not sure how much more time I can invest in this before the boss catches wind of my troubleshooting.

[Richard]

Mate it is a good idea to uninstall the original plugin prior to installation of the V1.1 plugin.

[stise]

Rdesign, hey listen, sorry about the late reply, but I had to tell you. I tried dozens of times to get it working with no success, then I got the new plugin and still no luck, wtf? then I came back here and tried your steps, this time I acually navigated to the emitter library as you had indicated, what da ya know, presto! I'm in buisness now. I was using the The XM material editor before but the path must not have been correct, maybe it was set to OSX path instead, anyways go figure, it works now, thanks for your help!