[giacob]

It is not for polemic purpouses ... I would like to understand if is just me , the file i am using , some mistake in installation, or i share this problem with many people

[Nils2005]

I also have trouble with the new update. Aside from many minor glitches the
most annoying thing is that now after working with old scenes (pre v1)
clicking render crashes 3ds Max ( v 8 ).

Thing is it seems a bit random to me because at times I can work with a
scene for a while and then with no clear reason it crashes.

The only way for me to use v1.1 now is to open old scenes, select the models
I need, export selected as 3ds file and then create a new scene, import that
3ds file, reapply uvw's and materials and then set the maxwell render options
again, add camera etc etc.

so, for now.. i ll think i'll just leave my old scenes alone.

cheers
Nils

[4 HeRo]

No problems what so ever, change the projector value from 0 to 1 hit render and away we go!

[Nils2005]

done that, been there, sometimes it works and then it doesnt anymore.

let me see if i can upload a simple scene, maybe someone can see if they get a crash as well?

cheers
Nils

[Nils2005]

ok, I nailed it down somewhat I think.

I went back into an old scene and applied one and the same material to all
objects. It didnt crash, it rendered fine. Then 1 by 1 I added materials and
ofcourse it turned out it crashes over the last one

I then did what I suspected to be the glitch: that last one material was one
I created through the wizard in the material editor and first I created a
basic diffuse with a bitmap and that works.

Then made a material again through the wizard - wood floor and tried it and boom, crash!

so for now I'll stay away from the wizard.

cheers
Nils

[Frances]

Nils, have you posted a bug report about this? Perhaps send the bad mxm to NL and they can see if there is a bug in the wizard.

[Nils2005]

Hi Frances, no, i havent posted a bug report, but here's the link to a zip file containing the mxm's and textures maps.
Maybe you or someone can try it in a scene of your own.

http://www.nilshendriks.com/maxwell/materials/wizrd.zip


cheers,
Nils

[4 HeRo]

Nils i have tried your material, it seems to come up with a missing bitmap error message, anyway a run a new wizard with your bitmaps and it seems to work fine.

Try running a new wizard adding your bitmap setting the projectors to 1, save and try to render in max agian

[Nils2005]

hmm, i see the bitmaps here. how can it miss a bitmap? I did wizard - wood floor, then it asks for texture map then for bumpmap so i browse to the files...

weird thing i noticed is that through the wizard, when you look at the texture files they look like they're scaled -
the basic diffuse material shows the right size of the bitmaps.

EDIT: oops, hmm, looks like non square bitmaps are always scaled in maxwell material editor...

Cheers
Nils

[Nils2005]

Well, I give up.

After trying all day to work around the material issues I m so fed up with the implementation of the materials in the 3ds max plugin that I cant be bothered anymore.

Crash after crash, with the v1.1. materials, both with or without textures crash 3ds max as soon as I press M to open the 3ds max material editor making it impossible to work with the scene ever again.

and no, importing the objects as 3ds files in maxwell studio is not an option either since maxwellstudio doesnt recognise cloned objects (instances) and on occasions rotates objects as well.

so i ll use a different renderer for now.

good luck to you all

[GM5]

I finally installed 1.1 and am regretting it because of the MAX plug-in. I opened a 1.0 scene that was used for a production image and tried to render it in 1.1. I ended up spending over an hour troubleshooting render error messages, changing standard Maxwell materials (and emitters) to MXM's, and hunting down and changing material channels just to get it to render at all. Of course the render still wasn't usable since the MXM emitter settings are different than the old standard emitter settings.

If the standard Maxwell materials were going to be phased out of the MAX plug-in it should have happened at the time of the 1.0 release, not at a .1 update. The same goes for the channel setting mess. I suppose that by the time I get used to for the new 1.1 workflow, version 1.2 will come out and won't use MXM's anymore since Next Limit will have come out with something that works even better - if you can figure out how to use it.

Maxwell is capable of producing stunning renders, but user friendly and production ready it isn't - yet. Hopefully it will be soon.

-Greg