[stise]

I just got the second license of MR as my perk for purchasing the beta, I was happily surprised to see the improved Sketchup plugin that came out 6/5/06 I dont know what they did but it sure seems a whole lot better. It's faster and the textures/materials export nicely. FYI, if you have tweaked the materials in Sketchup they will be rendered in the original form, however if you tweak them in Photoshop and rename them and then reload them into your model as a jpeg and then expload and then "add to library" they will export with Max. I'm psyched, the current model I'm working on included a re-worked brick texture that I made to look as a disressed with white paint that had been removed.

Now if I can get network render to function I will really get this into my workflow.

Thanks NL, you have made me very happy.....

[Jake256]

Wouldn't it have been nice if the plugin was developed to it's fullest potential instead of the focus going to Studio. Man that would have been the way to go.

[fv]

yep, I fully agree.
Strange with all these new Sketchuppers on the road Maxwell does not yet have a great plugin. I have not fully tested th the new plugin but on my mac the new plugin does not directly render straight from SU anymore.

I hope sooner or later a plugin is going to be developed by a userinterface designer who has a solid knowelegde of the SU workflow. Maxwell could be so cool in combination with SU. It seems so weird that adding basic textures and lights is such a complicated task.
Hope I will live to see SU/Maxwell come to full potential but I have a feeling something is wrong in the perception of the plugin makers or its just a technical thing that does not allow a more logic workflow. If its technical than I should forget about Maxwell and move on to something else.

[Sheik]

I think the new Auto mxm Conversion is a huge step in the right direction. It looked like there were technical obstacles in making the integration seamless (because the SU materials system is closed), but I think swapping materials on export is a really good solution. I think the next improvement should be better working “beta style” material conversion, or preferably they should be totally replaced by a new Materials Wizard (can be found in Studio already). With that done I would say we are not that far from a really well functioning workflow. I know the plugin is still in development, so I think a new “Wish List” thread would be in order.