Maxwell Render | Official public forum

hello,

i have just seen mikes fantastic videos and i have to say this looks really good and maxwell is just perfectly integrated into maya.
now, first of all let me say the new plugin is a great improvement !

but seeing those videos let me think way it is still a little bit more unhandy in cinema.
i have come to the conclusion that it is all about the material tag system we use for maxwell in cinema. the only benefit of this system is that maxwell can steal textures from cinema materials. but as mike states in his videos (where maxwell is also capable of using maya materials) you do not have any precise control over the materials in this way and better do not use it. so in maya you build your specific maxwell materials (like vray for 3dmax as well) and assign them to your models.
now back to cinema. if we had maxwell materials as normal materials we just could handle them like cinema materials. (assign - exchange - update) and we also might have these nice little previews of the materials integrated in the material preview window. which is quite important if you have numerous materials.
the tag system is a little bit like i cannot decide which way to go render wise (better do not touch the cinema scene if i might want to render via AR) which ends up only being halfway integrated.
fRender for cinema and the new fryrender plugin, vray for 3dmax now maxwell for maya (vray for cinema ?), they all use the standard material system and i think this is the way to go. this is a professional workflow.

the other maxwell tags, like camera or render are fine and should be kept and are a good integration

i do not know if this is too late and i really appreciate the new features of the plugin, but for future development this should be the way to go.

michael

i really second that !
well said, big K...

i also wish we could create maxwell materials within the mat editor of cinema. the plugin should include a system to automatically translate cinema mats into maxwell mats and vice versa.

nevertheless this new plugin is way better than the old one and offers a good workflow.

(although i miss the animation option...
)

i second that too!

actually i hoped very much we would get this feature as it was shown in the maya video and it was said all plugin would behave the same.

it is very possible to do such a thing in maxwell, we just done that for vrayforc4d. so i know it is possible, and not too hard. such a material can behave like a cinema material and also its bitmap textures can be shown in the viewport. beside that we would have a lot better management because those material would be in the material manager visible.

so plese NL.
cheers
Stefan

Even though i haven´t seen the new plug yet, i completely agree. Full integration is the only solution in order to work efficiently. That means, beeing able to work with all materials from within Cinemas material window.

I agree. This is what I was trying to figure out in the top sticky thread "a new dawn in cinemaxwell" Without having the maxwell materials behave like cinema ones as far as texture preview in the viewport ,mapping control, thumbnail view in obj heirarchy etc there is still some work to be done to make this a fully functional plugin. I am sure they are aware of this and working towards this goal. If not this needs to go to the top of the list as far as intergration in my opinion. Thanks for getting us one more step closer though. Some progress is better than none for sure.

I completely agree, thats what I would like, too, just one maxwell materials system with full functionality and myabe some kind of translating option to transform existing cinema materials into maxwell materials as far as possible.

I whole heartedly agree. The only real problem I'm having with the plug now is intergration of the material system. I still recieve

Error: UVW channels ( 0 ) on object "Cinema Material" not enough for material "default"


pretty consistantly and for what seems no reason. A scene will render, then won't with the above error, then will start working again. Very iffy. I really hope development doesn't stop on the plug.

I toss in my vote on this suggestion too, it's a good one. However if possible i want the current tag based system kept so we have more than one choice as to whichever method we wanna use.

/ Max

One more vote here.
I am only lately, with the new plugin, exploring the Cinema > Maxwell route. I like what I find. And still, further material integration would be highly appreciated!
S

Maximus3D wrote:I toss in my vote on this suggestion too, it's a good one. However if possible i want the current tag based system kept so we have more than one choice as to whichever method we wanna use.

/ Max

Max what we are suggesting is still a tagged based system just like standard C4d materials are tags. The difference is the tags would behave in a more integrated way like c4d material tags do. There would be no reason to keep the way it currently is if the maxwell material tags become more integrated. Why would a user want to use a method that is less integrated than more integrated when using a 3d app. It just confuses the issues to leave it as it is, and make it better then have all those choices of how to put materials on objects garbled together. Hope this makes sense. Less is more.