[smvwhite]

Having spent many hours changing the names of textures (such as C.jpg, A.jpg, bump.jpg, etc) to a material specific name to avoid problems where an already installed material already uses such named textures - I was wondering if there was a smarter way to set up materials for Maxwell Studio.

I understand I can use separate folders with all the files for the material within it, but this would mean that I couldn't then see the preview of the material in the Material Browser.

Do I keep spending the hours renaming numerous textures and updating mxm files to reflect such changes (turning generic texture names into specific names that contain the material name to avoid duplication)...... or do I do something else?

Any advice much appreciated.

[Tim Ellis]

Keep the mxm files in a communial folder and let each mxm reference to their texture folder.

This is how I manage my mxm collection, for use with the browser.

Hope this helps,

Tim.

[smvwhite]

So the texture folder in Maxwell Render can have subfolders in which the textures exist??

I am assuming that unlike the mxm folder, the textures are not communal?

Is my understanding correct Tim?

[Tim Ellis]

I have this system:- (I'll use Tom's MothersSoap.mxm avaiable from the mxm gallery as my example.)

Material database/mxms/Users/MothersSoap

In the MothersSoap folder are the textures for that mxm.

I copy the MotherSoap.mxm file into Material database/mxms.

When I open the MothersSoap.mxm for the first time after downloading, I reference the textures to the Material database/mxms/Users/MothersSoap folder and resave the mxm.

If you use a network and render across it, place your mxms and textures into a drive that the nodes can access. This removes the need for a Texture pool/ bitmap folder when rendering on a farm.

If mxms and their textures are stored on the local C: drive of the machine you're working on, the Pack and Go function needs to be used, but then you need to rename similarly named textures as you have been doing.

So yes you're understanding is correct, you can have as many folders and sub folders as you wish in the Maxwell mxm folder.

Hope this explains,

Tim.

[smvwhite]

Hi Tim,

Guess I just thought the 'textures' folder needed all the textures, but of course... they needn't be in the same folder - after all, I was readdressing the textures for the altered mxm after renaming the textures.

Now it will be easier to just readdress them to the specific folder, without the need to actually rename them individually.

Need to spend more time in Maxwell Studio than all those hours setting up materials.

Thanks for the help again Tim.

Very much appreciated.

[Tim Ellis]

You are most welcome.


Tim.