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it has been a while since there was a decent workflow poll.
I would include following issues:
- do you use Studio, plugin, or a combination?
- how are the MXM/ textures organized? (just 1 big folder, subfolders organized by material group (concrete, metal, glass...) textures in separate folder or together with the mxm? your own solution?
- where/how is the lighting set up? use own preset light configs, or from scratch with every new project?
- which preview type do you use most? (especially in Studio: preview viewport, render viewport, render region or render at lower res in CL?
- how are geometry modifications handled?

Wim

wimver wrote:it has been a while since there was a decent workflow poll.
I would include following issues:
- do you use Studio, plugin, or a combination?
- how are the MXM/ textures organized? (just 1 big folder, subfolders organized by material group (concrete, metal, glass...) textures in separate folder or together with the mxm? your own solution?
- where/how is the lighting set up? use own preset light configs, or from scratch with every new project?
- which preview type do you use most? (especially in Studio: preview viewport, render viewport, render region or render at lower res in CL?
- how are geometry modifications handled?

Wim

OK, I don't know how many will follow but this is my workflow....
I almost always use the plugin.... Sometimes for misc material testing I can use the studio...
My materials are organized by material group and the textures in the same folder with the MXM. I also have a general folder with misc textures so sometimes I use this folder.
Since I do mostly daylight exteriors I don't care about lighting setups.
I usually use preview viewport or make some low-res renderings for testing.
Geometry modifications? I change nothing in studio, I always go back to my modeling app...

thanks JTB for biting off the tip...

here is my own workflow:
I model in Formz, export once, and do all the texturing in studio, since I find it more flexible than within FormZ.
my materials are centralized on the main computer, organized by kind, in 6 folders (1 is also Misc)
textures are in subfolders
I have a few proven studio lighting setups, but of course they need tweaking every time, or lights need to be added. for that I import 1x1 planes in studio
I render lowres in CL, since that frees up studio to continue tweaking.
geometry changes: I keep the object name the same when possible, when importing, I keep all attributes of the original so I don't need to remap everything.

wim

- do you use Studio, plugin, or a combination?

I always use Studio

- how are the MXM/ textures organized? (just 1 big folder, subfolders organized by material group (concrete, metal, glass...) textures in separate folder or together with the mxm? your own solution?

I have all my MXM Materials in one folder located on my server to be accessible for all macs in the network. And I have them organized by groups like stones, metals, glas asf. And I keep all my textures on the same server.

- where/how is the lighting set up? use own preset light configs, or from scratch with every new project?

I use my own presets and refine them during the new project.

- which preview type do you use most? (especially in Studio: preview viewport, render viewport, render region or render at lower res in CL?

I use the CL preview with multilight and stop when I have the proper settings.

- how are geometry modifications handled?

I do all my geometry modifications in rhino and re-import the objects replacing the old file. Sometimes I do rotate or scale objects in Studio, but keep it to a minimum. Since I do many product visualisations and have a lot of changes in my object shape this is the easyest way to do it.
The only real problem I have in Studio is the texture mapping limitations.

Hope that helps. Cheers

Carsten

- do you use Studio, plugin, or a combination?

always the rhino plugin. it's so much better than studio ...

- how are the MXM/ textures organized? (just 1 big folder, subfolders

i usually organize by projects. each project has a texture folder where every material has one subfolder containing its .mxm and textures.
if i need a material from an old project, i just copy its folder into the new project.
maybe not the best way to go, but i could not find the time to organise my textures into one library

- where/how is the lighting set up? use own preset light configs, or from scratch with every new project?

almost always from scratch. starting with the environmental light, i try to use as less additional emitters as possible. works fine for exterior renders. for interiors with natural light, i sometimes replace the pyhsical sky with emitters if it renders too slow.

- which preview type do you use most? (especially in Studio: preview viewport, render viewport, render region or render at lower res in CL?

i mostly do a rendering at a lower res. only if i try to adjust materials i do a region render at final output resolution

- how are geometry modifications handled?

since i render directly out of rhino, no need to worry about modifications.

- do you use Studio, plugin, or a combination?

I use the Max plugin always. The only time I ever use Studio is for Simball material testing and Pack and Go's.

- how are the MXM/ textures organized? (just 1 big folder, subfolders organized by material group (concrete, metal, glass...) textures in separate folder or together with the mxm? your own solution?

I have all of my textures and mxm's in 1 folder on our server. These files are organized by their names, for example Stone-Marble0001, Wood-TreeBark, etc. And I always use referenced mxm's inside Max so that I can take advantage of the image adjustment controls in MXED.

- where/how is the lighting set up? use own preset light configs, or from scratch with every new project?

I start from scratch on architectural renderings, and I have a few preset studio setups for product vis type renders.

- which preview type do you use most? (especially in Studio: preview viewport, render viewport, render region or render at lower res in CL?

In Max, I do a lot of blowup renders and low res preview renders.

- how are geometry modifications handled?

All inside Max.

JTB wrote:Since I do mostly daylight exteriors I don't care about lighting setups.

Bit off topic but interesting you don't use emitters in exteriors! I like you mostly do exteriors though generally have 20-40 emitters in any exterior scene to light mostly the interior spaces.