[pelias]

I have a piece of good news for you - a new version of SketchUp plugin is almost finished and it should be released next week.

The main features of the new version cover:

• - Material support was completely rewritten using the material observer mechanism of SU6. This will allow you to assign Maxwell material parameters to individual SU materials (as opposed to entities as was the case until now).
  - Support for basic Maxwell material parameters from SU directly - it is still possible to use Maxwell MXM materials but it is no longer the only options as you can create simple materials in the dialog directly. It is especially useful for emitters/dielectrics...
  - All Ruby based dialogs (camera, environment, HDRI) were completely rewritten using HTML so they are easier to use now - this makes a difference especially for HDRI which was hard to set.
  - A new parameter for materials was introduced which allows you to separate entities (faces/groups/components) sharing the same material into separate Maxwell objects
  - Maxwell camera field of view matches SU camera filed of view when using Film&Stage SU plugin with Photographic Still 35mm camera
  - Reverted normals in case of flipped groups/components were fixed.

I will be contacting some of you soon to clarify (and fix) some additional issues (OSX autoMXM problems, exploded objects on export, crashes,...)

One more thing - I would like to apologize for the lack of response on the forums recently. This was caused mostly by the work on the new plugin version (especially materials). I will be monitoring forums in detail now...

Pavol

[muttlieb]

Good news indeed! Can't wait to try it out. Thank you!

[fv]

Thanks Pavol, I appreciate it very much you post an update on the current situation with the plugin. As soon as the plugin is actually working again I will pick up rendering with Maxwell again.

Just wondering is the plugin updated for Mac as well in the same time line ?

It would be great to have some more control over groups and components in Studio. I would really like it when mirrored emitters in SU came in Studio as they should.

[juan]

Just wondering is the plugin updated for Mac as well in the same time line ?

Hi fv,
Yes, osx version will be released at the same time.

Kind regards,

Juan

[messire]

Nice to see we're not alone working on saturdays
Nils

[Michel Wuest]

cool, I'm lookin forward.

[marked001]

guess i should start working in 6 now

[macitect]

Really good news.... Thanks!

I am also looking for the MacOSX timeline... Will it be released at the same time?
edit; Yeah, just read thru the thread... thanks

[messire]

just a small add:
It would be wise if we could ask here and get answers from you here too when it comes out... user's feeback is always different from beta testing feedback...As you know, unlike other plug in users, we are mostly interested in having MR fully operationnal within SU: KIS ( keep it simple ) is the main reason why we use SU, and if we can keep it work with good results without using the studio: its a big big plus ( remember competition is following closely with Vray integration to SU (podium and Kerythrea are in a way smaller league when it comes to quality of rendering / light, but they are trying to get a hold of the average user...which i'm sure Maxwell could interest with a simple solution.)

Nils

[fv]

for simple models rendering straight out of SU is very cool.
but for larger models rendering out of Studio is much more elegant and faster, much and much faster modeling, camera positioning and texturing with several projectors and no need to export the whole model for every rendertest.

I think Studio is one of the main attractions of Maxwell, and with a little study is actually very simple. I am not sure how apps that only render straight out of SU handle mulitple projectors and complex geometry. Photorealistic rendering almost always has to do with large models. Without Studio the combination SU-Maxwell would be very limited as I expect the competition is. I have no experience other than with Modo though.

[dyarza]

Good news.

How about the GMT offset issue under OSX? Please see my post at:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=21099

In a nutshell, it seems that the Mac version is leaving GMT offset at 0 so renders do not match the shadows, or in my case, it is night time and it renders all black.

When I open the mxs in Studio I can see that the GMT offset is 0 whereas in the Windows version, exporting the file results in the correct shadow and opening the mxs in Studio shows a correct GMT offset of -8.

Can you please resolve this?

Thank you,

[messire]

its end of " next week" Can we have the new plug so we can test it during friday afternoon pre-week end blues ?

Nils

[pelias]

its end of " next week" Can we have the new plug so we can test it during friday afternoon pre-week end blues ?

The actual release was delayed by a few days until all of the issues are cleaned up. I can provide a pre-release version to anyone with the interest. Just contact me via PM.

Pavol

[pelias]

How about the GMT offset issue under OSX? Please see my post at:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=21099

In a nutshell, it seems that the Mac version is leaving GMT offset at 0 so renders do not match the shadows, or in my case, it is night time and it renders all black.

When I open the mxs in Studio I can see that the GMT offset is 0 whereas in the Windows version, exporting the file results in the correct shadow and opening the mxs in Studio shows a correct GMT offset of -8.

Can you please resolve this?

I am not able to reproduce this problem on my Mac so far. Is anyone here who can reproduce this? Would it be possible to send me sample (preferably small) skp and mxs files showing the problem?

Thank you.

Pavol

[macitect]

I am also having this problem. I can do anything simple, like a cube and when I set date, location, time, etc., and export it to render the shadows do not correspond. When I open the file in studio it is exactly that... it defaults to GMT offset:0.

PM me and I can send a simple file.