understanding working units maxwell--maya

understanding working units maxwell--maya#258602

By choo-chee - Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:29 pm

- Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:29 pm #258602

hello, I fail to understand the true units of maxwell and maya. I've set maya to centimeters, but for some reasons unknown to me, all emitters, materials etc. are seem to be scaled down 10 times or 100 times (and I'm not using the global scale factor). How can I fix it and have the plug in work in centimeters - like maya? I get dark scenes with correct modeling scale or burned scenes with heavy DOF if I scale the model to be right for maxwell properties... ?

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#258608

By Mihnea Balta - Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:57 pm

- Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:57 pm #258608

The plug-in works with the same unit as Maya. Maxwell always works in meters. The plug-in will automatically convert the Maya unit (centimeters in your case) to meters when you export. You can check this by making a cube of size one, exporting the scene and loading it in Studio. Select the cube in Studio and you'll see that the "BBox" values displayed in the upper-left corner are "0.01". 0.01 meters = 1 centimeter.

What makes you think that the items are scaled down 10 or 100 times? How did you check?

#258609

By choo-chee - Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:02 pm

- Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:02 pm #258609

when using default light setup from the library, it looks real only if the model (a room that measures 500X500 cm e.g.) is 10 times smaller to 50X50, otherwise i have to turn all the lights to be 600W etc. instead of 60W ...

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#258615

By Mihnea Balta - Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:19 pm

- Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:19 pm #258615

Which light setup? Do you load a light setup in Studio and then merge a MXS exported from Maya into it?

#258681

By choo-chee - Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:17 am

- Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:17 am #258681

no I take it from the material library - a team specials

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#259125

By choo-chee - Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:44 pm

- Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:44 pm #259125

Hello again... I made some tests with simple 4X3X2.5 room, no way ! Putting 2 100W emitters (small spheres with cones from metal as reflectors) hardly gave light to the room (400 iso, 100 s-s), and I know it should be much more lit since it's a simple room like in my house .... what could be wrong ?! it's not possible that 2 100W lamps will not be enough for a small room ...?!

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#259130

By Mihnea Balta - Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:51 pm

- Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:51 pm #259130

I'd double check the exposure settings, a shutter speed of 1/100 is too low. What was the f-stop? Try shooting a similar scene with a real camera at 1/100 and no flash, it will be very dark.