[fv]

again today we spend several hours mssing out on a deadline because of texture path inefficiencies or corruptions.

Really a great pity that NL simply does not understand you can not have the end user hassle with texture paths. I can hardly defend the use of Maxwell anymore. An avarage project has a texture path problem solving planning of aound 50% of the total project. So half our costs are involved in getting the model to render.

[Mihai]

What if you just load the scene in Studio and do a Pack & Go? Then just transfer that folder to the machine you're rendering on.

[Fernando Tella]

That's not my experience; I have no problems at all with that. How do you have your textures organized?

[frosty_ramen]

I transfer renders from machine to machine using the pack and go feature, and it works great!

[numerobis]

What if you just load the scene in Studio and do a Pack & Go? Then just transfer that folder to the machine you're rendering on.

...for me atm. it's not possible to open a mxs in studio that has been written by the sketchup plugin - it always crashes to desktop at ~99% >>> studio not usable - no pack&go.

concerning the path problem:
Why do not use a path system like in max? very simple and usable!

[fv]

I am using Maxwell for architecture.
Architectural models have lots of objects from cars, to people and trees and the building itself.
Maxwell is useless for that work because of the texture path problems and unreliable export to render or studio.

[Mattia Sullini]

I do almost do archviz, and never missed a deadline because of maxwell.

On thr contrary...

And model in modo, so i have to work in Studio... you should take your time to get confident with the app you've chosen BEFORE you implement it in your pipeline.

[lebbeus]

I do archviz as well, on multiple machines, and multiple operating systems…I've not run into this issue.

Perhaps it's your studio standards?

[Bubbaloo]

I am using Maxwell for architecture.
Architectural models have lots of objects from cars, to people and trees and the building itself.
Maxwell is useless for that work because of the texture path problems and unreliable export to render or studio.

That's all I do at work all day. Max - Maxwell. No problems with textures. Ever. Never missed a deadline because of software. If I miss a deadline it's usually my fault for not working fast enough or the bosses fault for making the deadline a rediculously short amount of time (due to their lack of knowledge of what my job actually entails, but that's a whole different topic) . If you need to blame the software to save your job, I understand. But I think some of us here can help you with your problem.

It sounds like a workflow glitch on your part. Where are your materials kept? Are mxm's and textures kept in the same place? On a network drive or local HD?

[Mihai]

fv, you'll get help if you are a bit more specific. I asked you if you use Pack & Go, if not, why not? It would be an easy way to solve the texture paths problem.

Describe your workflow and we can find out what can be improved.

[JorisMX]

I use pack & go every day to port to the farm.

I have had errors even with using Pack & Go, resulting in corrupted textures that were fine before pack&go resulting in render errors on the farm.
Eventhough this should not be something a user would have to worry about it is pretty easy to solve by hand.

I have to give you one thing, this is very annoying to do and NL should really fix these errors with textures failing and/or pack&go not overwriting old texture files.

However I just pop up 2 windows with both locations, drop all the local textures onto the network drive and the farm renders just fine.
To me it sounds like you need to rethink your texturepath method and workflows.

Hope you find a solution.

[Gary]

Hello Brian & Mihai,

I agree, Pack & Go may be a solution for fv's problem, and undoubtedly there are many users with rock solid, dependable workflows.

At the same time, I think this calls attention to a number of posts popping up on the forum recently. There are also a group of users having problems with functionality and stability.

For instance, I have a very solid workflow from the Formz plug-in to MXCL, and yet the same .mxs file crashes Studio when trying to open it. Yes, with enough troubleshooting I may get it figured out, but it is frustrating.

I am not certain what the take away from the conversation is but I have observed the following trends:

1. Studio seems much less stable on the mac than on windows (unscientific observation)

2. network rendering seems to fail for a high percentage of mac users (based on forum observation)

3. many users on all platforms struggle with .mxm management

IMHO I hope developers continue to focus on stability and bug fixes as well as the great features they have brought to the program.

IMHO I wish I had the option to write a "super .mxs" from the plug-in or studio that included all .mxm's & textures buried inside it. The increased size would be fair a trade off for the ease of portability and the piece of mind.

Regards,

Gary

[grupo4]

I am using Maxwell for architecture.
Architectural models have lots of objects from cars, to people and trees and the building itself.
Maxwell is useless for that work because of the texture path problems and unreliable export to render or studio.

FV Did you read this

What if you just load the scene in Studio and do a Pack & Go? Then just transfer that folder to the machine you're rendering on.

I do the same as you (Arch Viz) usign, alot of car, trees, people, etc. Never had a problem with MAXWELL

[fv]

thanks for all the answers and comments on workflow improvements.

My main problem is that there seems to be a bug in the material editor. I sometimes duplicate a material incl. all texture maps in a folder. Then I change the name or safe the material under a different name. What happens then is that somewhere inside the material the old name remains the trigger during conversion from Sketchup. The old name though is no where visable anymore. Also not in the material editor window.
Aside from that I was struggling today trying to use the fix texture path within the material. The pull down menu left the material empty and clean with everything deleted.
So it might be my system but there is definatly a problem with the material editor.

It is very sad that Maxwell will not render the scene unless you go through all the materials. Even when there is somewhere a minor hickup that does not influance the final image. Because the render will not start its not visable what material causes the problem. Maxswell just reads "failed" without any mention of what the cause is. Sometimes the material is mentioned but most often not.

Anyone who truly believes Maxwell is fine with the current texture path structure is not helping Maxwell ahead. We usually have a day to model and texturing and rendering is done mostly in a a few hours. Imagine having to sort out a few hundred textures to find a missing map for for instance an imported car's headlight material. It migth be SU's clumsy material panel that isn't helping either to make texturing easy. On a mac you can only see the color but not the names unless you like slowly hovering your mouse over your textures to see the names.

In conclusion the texturing of models working with SU and Maxwell is the most timeconsuming part of the getting to the final image. I my case it usually takes about 50% of the time. And that 50% is used by troubleshooting only.

Pack and go might work but it makes the whole proces slower since we render often while modelling in SU. Before pack and go we have to repair the textures that did not convert. We then have to do that for every render/pack and go. We get the job done but its no fun.

[Bubbaloo]

It sounds to me like it's not Maxwell that is not production ready, but Sketchup... sorry, I am not a Sketchup fan. It may be a nice design tool for architects, but for serious arch vis, well...

Just my opinion...

Here's a tip:
Create all of your materials in the stand-alone Maxwell Material Editor, save them to a directory, then import into Sketchup when you want to use them. Don't create your materials in Sketchup. You're just asking for trouble (and getting it). I use this method using Max also.