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Hi there,

I'm using a scale of 1unit = 1 meter in 3ds max 2009. What should be my scene scale in Maxwell. Whatever i do i cannot get my emitters to produce the expected amount of light.

Its very frustrating.

Thanks
Chris

no one got any ideas? or do you need more information?

Thanks
Chris

You could open the generated mxs in Studio and see if the scene scale is the scale you intended it to be, using the grid in Studio as a guide. You can set it to absolute grid if you want from Prefs>Viewport. By expected amount of light, this depends on your camera settings also, but most important is your scene is at the scale you intended it to be. What are you rendering? An interior, a product?

I've got a very simple model of a building. at the moment i'm looking from the outside and just want to test putting a light in my scene.

I'm a bit of a photographer so i am confident with the settings of my camera etc.

The object the material is on will glow, but will either completely blind the whole scene in bright light or not affect it at all.

Scaling can be a pain, I dont use max but perhaps import a 1m cube into studio then create a cube in studio and see how the size compares, scale factor in studios preferences say 1 so I guess its 1:1.

rockhunter wrote:I'm using a scale of 1unit = 1 meter in 3ds max 2009. What should be my scene scale in Maxwell.

The plugin auto-handles this. So, if you already model your objects in their real dimensions, please do not change Maxwell Scale. It must be ideally 1 in this case and the plugin will write 1m as 1m independent of your unit settings in 3ds max.

ok thanks tom,

Perhaps i need to learn more about it.

Basically i've got a room with no windows and have put a box inside of around 500mm2 that has a 100w emitter on it.

using a camera f1.4
shutter 1
iso 400

i would expect the light to at least hit the walls nearby but it doesn't seem to reach.

I'm using Windows 7, Do you know if this might have something to do with it?

Thanks for the help
Chris

rockhunter wrote:Basically i've got a room with no windows and have put a box inside of around 500mm2 that has a 100w emitter on it.

This is a horrible scenario and one of the most famous DO-NOT-DOs in Maxwell because, even when you see the light the render will be very noisy due to infinitely trapped bounces. Doesn't it have a door at least?

rockhunter wrote:using a camera f1.4, shutter 1, iso 400

It's such a low fstop so you should make sure the camera target is not in an absurd distance and making things out of focus.

rockhunter wrote:i would expect the light to at least hit the walls nearby but it doesn't seem to reach.

Try exporting MXS from File menu of 3ds max and open it in Maxwell Studio to see if it's in correct dimensions. In Maxwell Studio select the room and read BBox dimensions on viewport. They are in meters.

rockhunter wrote:I'm using Windows 7, Do you know if this might have something to do with it?

No, way. It's just fine.

The room will have windows and doors when properly setup it was more a scenario i thought would be good for demonstrating the multilight to my colleagues. However after failing with one light i thought there was something wrong.

What setup would you use for an interior space (with windows) but at night time.

I only use f1.4 as thats the lens i have on my canon 500D

I guess i should go through more of the tutorials on the think.maxwell area.

Thanks
Chris

You could upload the mxs file if you can, would be much quicker to see what's wrong

With fstop at 1.4, you will likely get heavy blurring of near/far objects.

we tend to do everything in max in Meters. we also do a lot of linking from autocad to max then to maxwell and have no problems.