[pixelarq]

Old material system does not work anymore -diffuse, plastic, etc- so I have to create individual MXM files for hundred of objects.

I'm sorry but that's pure crap.

You guys of NL don't think a bit about workflow?
We have a lot of object libraries, we need maximum compatibilty with 3ds native material system or at least a simple material setup alternative to MXM files!

Goodbye 1.1, wellcome 1.0 backup!

[j_man]

that's a pity you're going to be missing out on all those fantastic material opportunities. The material editor is the best part. And the wizard brings all of those previous materials (diffuse plastic and metal) into maxwell in just a couple of clicks.
Not to mention you wont be able to use the amazing materials posted on this board and the new material database set-up by next Limit.
the 3DSMax ME just isn't capable of suppling enough data to create materials for a renderer like Maxwell, every third party renderer has it's own material system, and any full spectrum renderer like maxwell is going to need it's own material editor, let's face it, the max ME was programmed in 1996, and a lot has changed in ten years!
I think you sohuld reconsider!

Josh.

[clopez]

Sure materials are great, building library takes some time. However, who has 30 hrs to render images in their work pipeline. I hope they speed things up shortly.

[pixelarq]

that's a pity you're going to be missing out on all those fantastic material opportunities. The material editor is the best part. And the wizard brings all of those previous materials (diffuse plastic and metal) into maxwell in just a couple of clicks.
Not to mention you wont be able to use the amazing materials posted on this board and the new material database set-up by next Limit.
the 3DSMax ME just isn't capable of suppling enough data to create materials for a renderer like Maxwell, every third party renderer has it's own material system, and any full spectrum renderer like maxwell is going to need it's own material editor, let's face it, the max ME was programmed in 1996, and a lot has changed in ten years!
I think you sohuld reconsider!

Josh.

I agree with you, but it's not difficult to have a simple material layout inside 3ds as an alternative, and it should be also possible to automatically read and translate the data of standard 3d materials. Imagine you're populating an exterior scene with cars, low-poly people and 3d trees. Each object has from 1 to 20 materials assigned. I make the work with the beta and now have a lot of diffuse materials with texture map. With 1.1 I need to do it again, and of course there's the problem of where I put the MXMs to work properly with more than one computer - the management of the external MXMs by the plugin is terrible.

So, the 1.1 has to wait. And I was not able to download the fixed plugin (the one that assigns uvw channels 0 and 1 to 1) because the broken links.

Thank you anyway for your wise words
Diego-

[j_man]

yes it is a hassle that storing maps and there are directory problems but this will improve. And I'm fast geting a library of MXM's that I can use, plus to create new materials is very fast.
It's just getting my head around the rules that is the difficult part, but the more I make the mroe I understand.
Once you have your trees and cars converted you'll be flying along.

J>

[j_man]

Sure materials are great, building library takes some time. However, who has 30 hrs to render images in their work pipeline. I hope they speed things up shortly.

I'm using Maxwell in my workflow, and I render images overnight. Last night I rendered an image at 3000 x 2250 pixels on one machine, and the same at 2000 x 1500 with multi-light on another. The results are good.

I also use VRay and with complicated high res scenes (3000 wide) we will use DR with 6 machines for a total of 30GHZ processor and this can take up to 8 hours overnight.
I also remember the dark old days, and rendering a logo aniamtion on Max1 (with volumetric lighting) for PAL, 30 seconds (30*25=750frames@720x768) of animation taking over a week to render on a dual pentium pro.

food for thought.

J.

[Steve Casey]

Hi J_man, 8hrs seems a long time to render a 3000 pixel wide scene using
vray with 6 machine DR.

My scenes are always a minimum of 5500 pixels wide, and a mixed bag of
interior and exterior scenes, rendered over a 6 machine DR and i've
never come even close to 8 hrs, they tend take between 2-4 hours and
that includes IR map calcs and light cache calcs.

What settings do you use in vray?

My main reason for not using maxwell to render my scenes is because I
dread to think how long a 5500 pixel wide scene would take, a lot longer
than vray i think.

[j_man]

only the complicated ones!

i've only manages 4000 px wide on maxwell, and most don't go that high. the 64bit XP box here does the best job of handling large images (no surprise here!)

J.