[Half Life]

I am working to be putting together complete MXM sets for all of the various Arroway textures libraries -- I expect the whole project to take me about 5-6 weeks total. The basic idea is you will be able to download my MXM's (free) and purchase whichever textures you want from Arroway (if you do not own them already) -- which will allow you to use the texture sets immediately in whichever Maxwell application you use.

In the past I have set up my Arroway MXM's in both "Realscale" and in 1x1 relative tiling modes -- my question is does anybody still need the RealScale MXM's? If so I will make a set of both styles, but if not I will just set them all up at 1 x 1 relative tiling and let you set up the scale however you like in your host application.

Best,
Jason.

[Ha_Loe]

I absolutely love your high res ArrowayPack1 materials. It was a great step forward from the few ones I created myself. Would be awesone to finally have the whole library MXMed.
I'd vote for the RealScale version. One thing, Rhino definitively sucks in is texture mapping.

Do you do them all by hand and if so is there some kind of logic you apply to all of them? If so, I'd like to test my Rhino/Grasshoppers plugins capabilities.

[Half Life]

That's what I need to know I use the Realscale myself within Maxwell Studio sometimes, but I wasn't sure if I was the only one.

I do have a system worked out, and it is logical, but it can only be automated to a point, since each material has it's own specular, bump, and tiling values... so obviously that has be entered manually. I suppose some sort of spreadsheet/csv file could be made to feed those variables in automatically but it's probably almost as much work as just entering the values by hand.

Beyond which there would need to be something that could read such a file and assemble the materials based off it.

Best,
Jason.

[Ha_Loe]

I posted an example script in the whish list section, where I demonstrate how to decompose the path and extract the numerical values.
The values can be used with my script to modify the maps weights...

This works as long as the values in the filenames have a numerical relation to the maxwell weights.

[Half Life]

That looks promising -- but how would you get the tiling values in there for the maps?

Best,
Jason.

[Ha_Loe]

Real scale dimensions aren't coded in the filenames anywhere so I'd need a list of dimensions.

[Half Life]

Can you input custom parameters/values from csv/tab-delimited/spreadsheet files?

Best,
Jason.

[kami]

Hi Jason
I do have the complete mxm's for some of the arroway packages. I think they might not be perfectly adjusted but they work good enough for my needs
If they would help you, I could send them to you.
(They are in real scale as I use it quite often, to answer your question)
Cheers
Christoph

[Half Life]

Which sets do you have? I've already done:

http://www.arroway-textures.com/en/products/concrete-1
http://www.arroway-textures.com/en/products/edition-1
http://www.arroway-textures.com/en/prod ... flooring-1

Once I'm sure we've got sets that will work on both Mac and PC as they should, I'll release these first, while working on the rest.

There are some automation scripts/processes in the works in preparation for this project (including this from Aji), so it may be best for me to to just stick with the strategy I've got instead of trying to mix and match workflows...But this does raise a very interesting question -- could there be a batch editing tool for existing MXM's??

I have to say the tools for Rhino shown by Ha_Loe looks very promising -- there's no way to make it all completely automatic since there is the occasional odd texture in these sets that breaks the pattern somehow, but if it does work I can easily share my logic for converting Arroway specs to Maxwell settings (it's not a secret anyway, just alot of typing to explain).

Best,
Jason.

[Ha_Loe]

Can you input custom parameters/values from csv/tab-delimited/spreadsheet files?

Best,
Jason.

sure, there's even some components that read/write .xlsx

[Half Life]

Wow... that's exactly what I need for these then -- I'll make a quick and dirty video demonstrating the logic behind the conversion tomorrow and have you see what you can cook up.

Something like this within Maxwell is something I've wished for many times.

Best,
Jason.

[Half Life]

OK here's the video I promised -- since I imagine this is going to be seen by only a few people I didn't bother doing any editing, so the audio may not be all that great.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+jason_mara ... 4687676842

Best,
Jason.

[Polyxo]

Thank you very much for that Video! Btw - you (for best reasons) complained that the Maxwell Material-Editor doesn't allow global Changes
concerning Tiling in several Channels or even across several Layers. This is not so in all Plugins. I was annoyed of this too when using the Rhino-Plugin.
JD however was kind enough to build in a mechanism already very early in the development which actually allows this sort of sychronizing.

One only needs to hold various Modifier-Keys while using the Spinners and the Tiling Change gets Global per Layer or by entire mxm.
Also holding Modifiers while dropping Maps to different Slots makes them inherit their Tiling/Offset as well as their custom Colour-Settings.
This feature alone lets me refrain using standalone Mxed or Studio where these incredible timesavers are unavailable.

[numerobis]

Thank You Jason! very interesting approach - i have to test it.
I'm always a bit scared of using additive mode so much, because i think i noticed more noise in some scenes with additive materials. But maybe it's only a problem with bright materials and close to 100% layer values. I don't know. It would be nice if someone from NL could clear this up a bit...

[Half Life]

Yeah JD is the man , I was jealous when I originally found out about those features in the Rhino plugin (I've read all the manuals), and I do hope he will bring some of that same power to the SketchUp plugin in the future... I've been tempted to try Rhino many times, and JD is a big part of the reason for that.

Additive mode is easy to abuse -- but the best thing is to never use more than one additive layer, which keeps the possibility for issues to a minimum. Other potential source of issues is texture maps that are too bright in your diffuse base layer, which just makes the additive layer that much more problematic... I can't tell you how often I see textures in reflectance 0 that have values higher than 225 (which is bad juju, even without additive layers on top).

Best,
Jason.