Everything related to the integration for SketchUp.
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By Richard
#330768
JDHill wrote:So, I lean towards a simple replacement of the Sun toggle with a drop-down; similar to what you suggest, it would have on/off/linked choices.
I agree with Brodes, that would be a great option! Though it may still be easier to have it controlled by the scene and the settings applied to the scene manager relative to the scene? That way it is kept fairly simple! Works for me either way really!

Funnily enough Half Life's video tut on environment settings now launched on the Think site actually raises this issue!

BTW even though I've been right through the plugin and it's operations - just watching the tuts drives home JD how bloody good this new plugin is! Sure it has a few tweaks here and there needed but heck doesn't everything!
User avatar
By Richard
#330770
JDHill wrote:Thanks Richard, I have a clearer picture of what you want now. Still, this solution strikes me more as a hack -- I'd prefer to fix/implement things where they properly belong, and in this case, I do think that means that it should be addressed in maxwell.exe itself.

To that effect, I have put in a request that maxwell.exe would be able to automatically remember the state of your multilight sliders (when possible, but not failing when impossible) between rendering sessions without you needing to manually load emixer files.
Mate I agree it is a bit of a hack but a bloody useful one!

I also agree that there are some fundamental issues with M.exe in regards to emixer files. If one does rely on the ML feature to set lighting levels and I'd say that may be most users (heck that is what the ML feature is for), when working in Studio the inability to load a resident emixer file means that testing in the preview window is at times pointless. In fact I probably do most tests from studio as exports to MXCL rather than in preview for just this reason! If you dig through the main forum wish list you'll find this somewhere posted long ago requesting this feature.

To be honest this is part of my driver for such a hack, it possibly generates biggest dividends when actually working in studio as the scene has as close as possible correct lighting levels and enables "in studio" previews to have some worth.

I would still say though yep agreed as hack it does present some considerable options for improving workflow straight from the box in so many ways and as it has been a long running wish of M.exe to accommodate this nothing much has happened there todate so could still be some time off being an implemented feature even though almost a necessity.
By JDHill
#330774
Whoa. I totally glossed over the fact that Jason was doing videos for this on Think!

Just watch those, compare them to the ones I did for my other plugins (thank goodness I didn't have to do the voice work), and realize why it should be illegal for developers (well this one, anyway) to make the tutorials for the stuff they write.

Also, it is so (really can't say how much) useful for me to see somebody else use this thing in real time, and to hear how it works in their perception and words. I guarantee those videos will prove much more useful for me than they ever will for any user.
User avatar
By Half Life
#330778
Well, I'm glad you find them useful... I could easily spend many hours demonstrating all the ins and outs of the plugin (and I fully intend to).

I really had to water things down and simplify concepts to the point where sometimes they are only partially true in order to get the idea across quickly so that I could get something up for this quickly -- once I'm through with the Sketchup Pro 8 video series I'll give it the real workup properly as it deserves.

Best,
Jason.
User avatar
By Richard
#330918
JD

Sorry mate you can forget all my crap about adding the power slider to the emitters, I've just noticed for the first time that the ML sliders aren't in percentages anymore!

Who feels like a dickhead now then? :wink:
By brodie_geers
#331645
JDHill wrote:
brodie_geers wrote:What do you think about adding an option to export directly to a network render?

-Brodie
Try this. It has one ruby file inside, which should be placed directly in your /plugins folder, next to maxwell.rb. It has a toolbar with just one button, which writes an mxs and sends it to Maxwell Network Monitor, after asking you if you need to start the Network Manager and/or a render node.
Minor glitch with the Render to Network button. First time you push it, works fine. But if you try to start another network render by using the button while the initial render is still sending the maps to the nodes, it opens a separate Monitor window which finds no nodes with which to render (rather than putting the job in Pending mode on the already open Monitor). Once it's done loading the maps though, the Render to Network button works just fine from then on.

Also, it would be nice to have the option of not getting the pop ups asking if I want to start a node or manager. I have them running on Startup so I never have to turn them on. It should either recognize whether they're running or not or else have an option to disable the dialogs, I think.

Other than those small issues, the button is a huge time saver!

-Brodie
By JDHill
#331650
If you can guarantee that those components are already running, then you can avoid the confirmation dialogs by removing or commenting-out (i.e. prefixing with a '#' character) two lines in the script. That would be lines 45 & 46; you may be able to discern that what those lines do is to start mxnetwork in -manager and -node modes, depending on your answer to the dialog.
By fv
#331939
I would like to adjust the background hdri or image in vertical direction, not only up but down too. In case I am a little higher than on the groundplane I often see the black area underneath the background image. In Studio I can easily move the image down as well but in the plugin its not possible to do a negative move.
Francois
By JDHill
#331951
Sure, I can change that. For the time being, just know that using 340° will yield the same result as using -20° would, if the plugin allowed negative values.
By fv
#331994
ok, tx.

Since I render some scalemodels as well, modeled in real scale. I used to be scaling down the whole scene in Studio to get the desired DOF.

Would it be possible to add a scale scene in the scene manager. Would be very handy.

Francois
By brodie_geers
#332134
Sorry, I'm sure this has been talked about before but I'm just too darn lazy to look through the posts from awhile back and even then perhaps something has changed. You've implemented the proxies very well. I'm using them for grass now which is coming in really handy. But Richard had come up with an idea some time ago where there would be a sort of super proxy which would reference an outside .mxs file for it's source object rather than an object within the SU scene. Have you put any more thought into this and whether or not it's possible?

-Brodie
By JDHill
#332143
Well, I did look into that, but I did not see enough benefits to justify the amount of work it would entail, since the MXS format and the Maxwell SDK both have no native referencing concept. I would be curious to know, what would be the primary benefits you see gaining by such a feature?
By fv
#332144
imagine trees, cars and so on, high polygon, fully materialized in Studio but not in SU, objects that could not even be imported into SU, could then be used in combination with SU models at export. Instead of having to import and place, duplicate and rescale those instances in Studio on top of the SU model.

It would be a major breakthrough if it was possible to exchange complicated high polycount mxs-instances with their simple SU proxies at export.

Francois
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Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milk[…]