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Currently the Maxwell material is using maps from a couple of channels in the original Cinema Material. Though this has it's nice points, too, personally I think this should rather be an option than the default.

Actually I think that all the colors maps should be assigned in the Maxwell Material tag for the following reasons:

Keep it all in one place. It's much easier to set up Maxwell materials this way instead of changing some specific maps in the Cinema shader.

The current construction doesn't allow to build libraries, because you often need two tags to build a Maxwell material.

Due to the limitations of using procedural shaders many Maxwell materials will need adjustments anyway. Currently this means changing a perfectly working Cinema material.

IMO the whole concept should orientate along the workflow of Maxon's Sketch & Toon materials, which are materials on their own, with all the stuff enclosed, but the option to get information from the main materials.

So, what do you think?

Cheers

Kabe

I think the questions are a little confusing.
Its probably just my poor english
But when you say "taking maps form cinema" i understand this as it is today,
with a the tag "taking" materials from cinema materials?

I think the important question is whether cinemaxwell material descriptions
sholud be tags or materials in the c4d material manager.
No?

Regards
Bonsak

bonsak wrote: I think the important question is whether cinemaxwell material descriptions
should be tags or materials in the c4d material manager.

Well, that's why I was referring to Sketch & Toon... Of course this should be a material in the perfect case, if this is technically possible. However, the primary point is that there should no requirement to link the Maxwell tag to a Cinema tag to save a map.

Both "Yes" answers mean that all the info is potentially in the "Maxwell Material Tag".
The difference is that the first answer means the *option* to take maps from the Cinema material would be a nice add on, while the second one means that this *option* would be a requirement.

Hope this helps

Kabe

This may not be as easy as it seems. I have two possible scenarios:

A:

From my understanding of Cinema4D materials, no matter what you do with tags and additional materials (Sketch and Toon materials for example) you have to go through the standard Cinema 4D material so that you can access the material tag. Is this correct?

If this is the case, we may be with the current system which consists of dual tag for Maxwell Materials and corresponding Cinema 4D material for maps, scaling, etc adjustments via the cinema material tag.

The SDK for Cinema 4D may not allow any other way to access the parameters without the current system linkage. Of course it is very logical to also assume that this could easily be circumvented through some creative manner of coding. I think that this last option would be less considerable.

B:

The other side of this could be very well that Next Limit is intending to develop a system similar to the cinema 4d sketch and toon module materials system which consists of sketch and toon tag and material and usage depends on how you prefer to use them.

If this is the case then it is perfectly possible and under development that what we currently have is the first phase of this system of Next Limit Maxwell Render tag and Next Limit Maxwell Render material. So in the future and in time for the 1.0 Release Candidate version of Maxwell Render we my see a system very close to the Cinema 4D Sketch and Toon Module system.

In either case, I think Next Limit is aware of comments on the issue, and is it perceivable in my mind that either Scenario A or B is currently the situation. It is very logical.

Tyrone Marshall wrote: From my understanding of Cinema4D materials, no matter what you do with tags and additional materials (Sketch and Toon materials for example) you have to go through the standard Cinema 4D material so that you can access the material tag. Is this correct?

No, it's rather the other way around - usually I would select a material by going through the material tag, or the sketch material tag (select element). These are seperate tags on the objects, and there would be no problem at all to have a Maxwell material tag additionally.

The SDK for Cinema 4D may not allow any other way to access the parameters without the current system linkage.

There is no system linkage, and there are a number of alternative material systems available by 3rd parties. Material tags are special in that they are integrated in the Matreial system. That's basically it.
Remotion has created two material Types (DiX Volume and Di Fractal), Shave, Ozone, bhodiNut, Pyrocluster, Sketch.
It's not rock easy, but obviously doable.

The other side of this could be very well that Next Limit is intending to develop a system similar to the cinema 4d sketch and toon module materials system which consists of sketch and toon tag and material and usage depends on how you prefer to use them.

There's no indication at all, that there are any plans in this direction, so this is wild speculation. And the skecth and toon tag does *not* depend on the standard material, it can just borrow some parameters there.

My major point is: The current system is widely useless, as it *requires* to manipulate standard Cinema materials that are working just right for standard renders.
It also strays all it's parameteres to a huge number of screens, while it would be easy to put this all on one dialog page - the one of the plugin. I really have read the SDK docs, and there's no reason to assume that there would be anything completely unexpected going on behind the curtain.
If this baby starts to fly, it will certainly need a few more options when it comes to materials, but I'm confident that there are no radical changes going on here in terms of architecture or basic concept - whoch is good.

Kabe

Thanks Kabe, those are very good comments. I think this is one of the plus sides for this kind of software development. As one can get an idea of what users are thinking rather than waiting until final release and then getting the feedback from users.

i just wanted this topic to get up again - maybe more c4d users could vote to give a stronger statement.

thanks.

BTW:
I have released my expression for collecting the Maxwell maps at one location: http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?p=46751

In fact if this stuff would be integrated in the Maxwell plugins it would even be less stuff because some of the Maps don't have a meaning for some tags anyway.

Kabe