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By Mihnea Balta
#227746
Some people find it easier to work with embedded materials, others prefer to reference MXM files on disk. Embedded materials have some advantages like the texturing stuff you mentioned and also that the scene is autonomous (no headaches when you move it to another computer and you discover that the paths don't match anymore).

The referenced model also has some strengths, like the ability to share materials. With this model, when a MXM file is updated, you don't need to touch any of the scenes that use it (you will need to re-render them, of course :) ).

Since the plug-in was rewritten from scratch, we have focused on the challenging features first as they impose more restrictions to the way the plug-in will develop in the future. The embedded material requires way more code and tricks than the referenced version and we wanted to make sure it's working first. We'll add referenced materials in a future update.
By WillMartin
#227758
Thanks for the good explanation, Mihnea. I actually never really thought about the idea of a separation between "embedded" and "referenced" in terms of surfacing/materialing before, even though I've obviously used both types if I've been on this board a while. 'Tis clearer to me now.
...and we wanted to make sure it's working first. We'll add referenced materials in a future update.
So the goal is to give the LW plug-in the best of both worlds; each object would have my pick of either a unique-to-itself material or an "instanced" (correct way of thinking about it, no?) material? That would be pretty neat! :)

And thanks again for being around to answer our questions. Much appreciated by not-the-most-experienced-in-3D ol' me. :)
User avatar
By Mihnea Balta
#227763
Yes, you will get to choose, like in the current Max plug-in. We'll also provide a way to convert from one material representation to the other.
User avatar
By bbuxton
#229914
Mihnea Balta wrote:The OSX build is in the oven and will be available in a matter of days.
Any news as to when it will be available?

Studio 1.5 will not import UVs from LWO so I'm having to resave everything as OBJ which is a huge pain for large scenes.

Thanks

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