[Ernesto]

I have a problem:
But when I set Multilights to adjust Colour and Intensity, the slider of the sun is not working...
Tried a new file, tried in Studio, and nothing...
It seems that the sun intensity gets stucked no matter the position of the slider.
If I change the intensity of the sun before rendering it shows the new intensity, but it will be fixed anyway.
Any idea?
Thanks

E

[Fernando Tella]

Don't know why but somehow it works for me. It's not perfect though as making a small test for your situation (color+ intensity) I found a small different bug:

When lowering down sun intensity under 1 I get this:



(Yep, I modeled this scene all by myself)

When sun intensity equals 0 I get this:



(The quality of the composition is completely destroyed by this filthy bug)

Preview shows fine.

Ernesto, are you sure you have latest both plugin and maxwell versions?

[dariolanza]

Confirmed the grainy shadows issue Fernando commented when Sun intensity is 0 or near.

About what Ernesto commented, aside from that grainy shadows issue, the Sun intensity slider seems to be working fine, not stucked, works fine up and down.

Thanks for pointing it, Fernando, we'll check it as soon as possible.

Greetings

Dario Lanza

[Ernesto]

Humm ...
Perhaps I am having another problem...
Just in case: I am using maxwell_2.7.20 win64.exe and maxwell_maya_win_2.7.8.exe on Maya 2012 32 bits on Win 7 64bits. Tonight I will look at this again...

Ernesto

[hatts]

Ernesto are you clicking "refresh" after you move the sun slider?

[Ernesto]

Well if it works ok for you, it is a problem with my machine...
All I know is that it has nothing to do with any external file.
What I did is to open maxwell studio, enabled multilight colour and rendered an empty scene, and the sun got stuck.
Yes hatts, I press refresh button but I cannot see any sun change in the main render window nor in the small preview window...
I found a mistake in my system specs: I have just realized that I have installed maxwell 32 bits in my 64 bits machine.
Later...
I uninstalled Maxwell and reinstalled again the 64 bits version, and the puggin again just in case, but nothing changed...

Ernesto

[Ernesto]

I did lots of tests, now.
Finnally some did worked ok, but some other did not.
It seems a random problem in the Maya files.
The wrong files will produce the problem in all rendering attempts.
And the right files works ok forever.
I have the files separated just in case you need them.

Days Later:
I did a CLEAN file, and it worked ok until I started to set the Hidden to camera objects together with transparent emiters, and suddenly I have got a random malfonction: One hidden emiter object was visible in the render, the next time I tried it rendered invisible (I did no changes at all in between) and then the sun got stucked.
I tried to remove al the hidden to... properties but it won´t fix the sun dimmer in multilights.
As for this las test it seems that it is a combination of reasons....
Vert tricky

E

[Ernesto]

BINGO!!!!
I have just found the problem:
It is my sparks material which causes the sun to get stuck.
I have found that if the material is in the scene, but is not assigned to any object, it will not do any harm, but as soon as it is assigned in an object that will be rendered, it cause the sun to get stuck in Multilights feature.

One more thing: The problem appears ONLY when Mulitight is set to Colour. In case Multilight is set to intensity only the sun comes back to normality.

A second thing: if the object with the sparks material is switched off, the sun comes back to normality.

A third hint: The material causing the conflict was made with two layers, one containing the emiter, which in this case was image based (mxi) and the second layer with a totally transparent material (void) both layers blended in the ADITIVE mode.
If the second layer is removed everything will work ok.

Then, the fourth test was editing the original material, removing the first layer only (the layer containing the emitter) and it worked ok.

In the last test I used the same conflictive material and changed the emiter component from MXI to simple colour emiter, and it worked normally.

Possible conclusion: It seems that it is a conflict between the image based emiter, when combined with a void or transparent layer, and in case multilight is set to colour.

Ernesto

[Ernesto]

I found a diferent behaviour that could be related.
In about 20 diferent tests I have got two cases in which the caused malfunction was not the Stucked Sun, but that the Colour picker was not present.
The file in both cases was set to multilight Colour, but it worked as if it would be set as Intensity only.
These two cases got that was and no matter all I tried it was not possible to make visible the colour picker in the multilight console.

Only in two cases I could be aware that emiters that were supposed to behave as transparent, were suddenly visible.

Ernesto

[tom]

I have an idea. What about sharing one of these problematic MXS?

[Ernesto]

Thanks Tom! it is going to you
E

[tom]

OK, it's a known limitation of color multilight. I hope it's not a big problem for you.
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 13&t=38749

For other issues, I edited and sent your MXS back. Check it

[Ernesto]

Thanks Tom!

Regarding the stucked sun slider, I can live with it!

Regarding the "Other issues" Tom is refering to:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 97&t=39792
If I am not wrong the issue was apparently in the material!
I tried for some hours to reproduce your material using a mxi instead an hdri, and finallly could do it editing yours only.
God!! I know I have to learn so much on materials (more than i suspected) but still wonder how.

Ernesto

[Ernesto]

UPDATE:

I could live not using Colour Multilight, to avoid the Stucked SUN.
But now that am not using it, I have got stucked 3 Multilights Channels, and in this case it is a problem for me.



As you can see, the SUN and the two other light sources at the left seems not to work, no matter the sliders settings.
One thing that is interesting is that the other two lights are Emiters based in images.

E

[Mihai]

Instead of muting them, try soloing them. If the render appears black then, try doing a non multi light render to see if that emitter has enough strength or if the camera exposure is off. I would suggest not to try and match the default camera exposure which is set for daylight, with regular emitters as you'll need to raise their strength to unrealistically high values. Please have a read through the "Before you begin" section in the docs.