[pawels89]

Hi.
First at all - sorry for those noob questions (and also for weak english, but i hope u will understand me), but i have no experience at such programs. Already i tried Kerkythea, but cause of lack tutorials i gave up.

I wanted to ask about 'ready to go' materials which i have downloaded from Maxwell Render Resources. If i load such material into sketchup, is it ready to use? Or i have to make some changes at 'bump mapping and other options' and at sketchup texture editor have i change size etc?

For example - today i wanted to render kitchen visualisation, and to make it more interesting - add 2 oranges on table.
While rendering i get something like this:



It looks more like bulbs, then oranges ;p

What do i do wrong?
At window i set up emmiting surface (someone made post how to make indoor visualisations and said that its better to use emmiter than use outside light) - (15 000 W, when i tried to make it like 100-500W whole room wasn't bright enought).

Settings looks like this:







I have also problem with grassy, and stone '3d-looks-like surfaces'.
Getting things like this one:


All settings are same as above.

Can someone tell me what im doing wrong?
And if its all about the settings - tell me exactly how i should set it up?

[Half Life]

"Ready to go" is a relative concept with the materials you can download -- some are very much "ready to go" while others are hopelessly outdated holdovers from previous versions of Maxwell.

I suspect the orange material either contains an emitter or old form of SSS in it which is giving you the result you see... however I wouldd need to download and look at it to confirm.

For the grass and stone materials what you are seeing is what happens when you combine low-poly geometry with displacement based materials with a low precision setting -- see this thread for more information about how to resolve that issue:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 07&t=38223

Best,
Jason.

[Half Life]

I found the Orange MXM you are using and it is an outdated formula from a previous version of Maxwell -- it has several issues... so I just made a new one from the maps.

j_orange.zip

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

Regarding the orange material, I found this, and as Jason says, it is an old Maxwell 1.x material and is not converting well when opened in Maxwell 2.x. I was uploading a modified version, but I see Jason did that already.

Also, just to mention, the screenshots you uploaded might indicate that you may not fully understand materials in the plugin. A material is either in MXM mode, or it is not (meaning, it is in Embedded mode); when in MXM mode, the referenced MXM file will be rendered, while in Embedded mode, a material will be generated according to the parameters set in the plugin's Material editor. Had you exported the scene while the material was in Embedded mode (i.e. in any one of your first three screenshots), the oranges would have just had a brown color, since there was no texture assigned. It may be helpful to read section 6 in the plugin manual to learn more about this topic.

[pawels89]

Thank you for ur replies guys.
And especially for you Jason, for making brand new material

@JDHill
I tried both - embedded mode and that second one.
Usually i click 'Copy Texture to SketchUp Material' (its easier for me, to search for texture than search for colour at SketchUp materials menu) - is it wrong or it doesnt matter if its still at embedded mode?
I know that my questions can be annoing for more experienced users, but sometimes its hard for me, to understand technical english language (like at documentation).

And one more question to Jason, about grass/carpet tutorial:
If i understood well - i have to make, with Sandbox Tool, desired area and divide it on small (eg. 1x1cm) squares and then add grass texture on it yes?

And last question - do i need normal Maxwell Render (not SU plugin) to create such materials, right?

[Half Life]

Yes, the more subdivided the surface is the faster and better the displacement materials will render.

You can certainly create displacement materials using the plugin embedded style materials -- but you will have more options using MXED which is part of the full render suite.

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

Usually i click 'Copy Texture to SketchUp Material' (its easier for me, to search for texture than search for colour at SketchUp materials menu) - is it wrong or it doesnt matter if its still at embedded mode?

That is just a quick way of getting the current texture (an MXM file may reference any number of textures, but only one of them is the 'current' one, with this being determined by the author of the MXM) from the MXM file into your SketchUp material; it is exactly the same as browsing to the texture manually via the SketchUp material editor.

If i understood well - i have to make, with Sandbox Tool, desired area and divide it on small (eg. 1x1cm) squares and then add grass texture on it yes?

As Jason wrote, more division in the surface will result in more accurate and faster-rendering displacement. That is true both with MXM files, since you are not able to change the displacement parameters they contain, and with Embedded ones, since the parameters exposed by the Embedded material type are simplified. Here is an example of that, using an embedded material:

[pawels89]

Ok. Understood
Thank u.

I just tried that thing with dividing - now it looks great. But there is small problem... That grass is like 90cm high
Is it possible to make it shorter (like 7-10cm long) or the only thing is lowering down whole surface?

[JDHill]

It may be set, inside the MXM file, to figure displacement based on a percentage of the object's size, in which case, there is not much you can do besides altering the physical size of that object. The screenshots above were made using an Embedded plugin material, where you set the displacement height absolutely (in mm).

[pawels89]

Hello again, my friends.
After long long time, without any big problems, iv gotta kinda huge problem:

When i want to start rendering, by pressing Fire button, just after exporting model, i receive message - The scene has errors.
The problem is, that this project is quite big. Is it possible to get communicate, what object/texture (does textures make errors?) is it? I dont have much time, so checking one by one is very bad solution for me.

Screen:

[JDHill]

You can click on the error icon (the yellow sign, in the Fire window status bar) to see a list of the errors being reported by the render engine.

[pawels89]

You can click on the error icon (the yellow sign, in the Fire window status bar) to see a list of the errors being reported by the render engine.

Heres the communicate:

1. UVW channels (1) on object "Document Faces [0.0.0]" not enough for material <heres the name of texture - from sketchup>.
2. Data preprocess failed. Render cannot continue.

I thought that i solved problem (deleted texture and made new one, but problem is still the same). Im trying to use this material:

http://resources.maxwellrender.com/sear ... v2=0&tipo=

Is it out of date, like the first one (orange peel)?
Is it possible to recognize which material is out of date and which is actual in different way than getting errors while rendering?
Can you rework it for me?

//EDIT:
There is another problem - now when i deleted that texture, maxwell doesnt want to render anything. From about 1,5h it shows 'Rendering' status and nothing happens. Earlier (before add that 'concrete material'), when i tried to render something, everything worked fine...

[JDHill]

Thanks, this uncovers a bug in the plugin's export. The MXM specifies channel 1 for its textures, but UVs are only exported for channel 0, and this causes the error indicated in the message. Here is a modified version of the MXM, which uses channel 0 instead:

concrete.zip

[pawels89]

Good to know, that i did something good for community

Any idea, why Maxwell doesnt render anything? Its only that one project problem, and i cant resolve it. There is no errors. Just endless 'rendering'. I left it for 3hrs, and no react. Can it be too big? (its over 100mb file, with textures like 160mb)

[JDHill]

I can't tell you much about that without seeing the model. The first thing to check would be: is the CPU doing work, or not? Secondly, what happens if you re-start SketchUp and render again -- the same thing, or different? If the same, what is the exact sequence of events that occurs when you open the Maxwell Fire window?