[Sheik]

I have SKP2MXS (alpha.02) installed on SU4.170. I have had no crashes so far, so maybe the plug-in really isn’t compatible with 5 yet. After just some fast tests most things look ok, but I have found some problems already (witch I think is natural in this early alpha stage):

Plastic materials (A) are not working correctly. I get strange colours on some faces, and the plastic is causing first “black dots” in the image and they turn into “strange shadows” (B) at a higher sampling level. It also looks like the plastic isn’t reflective at this stage (?).In the second picture I changed all plastic to diffuse, and that got rid of the strange shadows.

There also seems to be a problem with assigning a Maxwell material to a group, (at least after it has been assigned a different Maxwell material on the face level first). (C) One object I assigned with a metal material and it also said it has a metal material when checked, but it still rendered as plastic. I the opened the group, selected all faces and the assigned them with the metal, and then it was changed. On the wooden handle I had the same problem as it was initially assigned with a silver material, but I managed to change it to diffuse after re-mapping the wood texture.

If you have several faces selected when using the Check Material Type function you will get a message window for every face, one would be enough if they all have the same material.

One problem is the field of view in the MXS isn’t the same as in SU (D) (or the camera is closer in SU). This was a problem also in 3DS2MXS, ant it is probably mostly a SU related issue (?).

The location of the sun (E) is totally wrong.

The dielectric material looks ok with caustics and refraction. I guess I would need to use a white transparent SU material to make clear glass. Here I used transparent grey. It would be nice if the Su material would look like a preview of the assigned Maxwell material also when using metal and dielectric material. I am curious about how we can create a Maxwell material library…
Smoothing works! I am looking forward to the next version .

Sheik

[pelias]

I will answer some problems right away - other answers will follow later on...

There also seems to be a problem with assigning a Maxwell material to a group, (at least after it has been assigned a different Maxwell material on the face level first). (C) One object I assigned with a metal material and it also said it has a metal material when checked, but it still rendered as plastic. I the opened the group, selected all faces and the assigned them with the metal, and then it was changed. On the wooden handle I had the same problem as it was initially assigned with a silver material, but I managed to change it to diffuse after re-mapping the wood texture.

This is how material specification in SketchUp works - there are different levels you can apply the material on and the lower level takes precedence. In other words - if you apply material on face level, than you cannot override this material on the group/component instance level. On the other hand - if you do not have material applied at the face level than material specification from group/component instance level is used.

The location of the sun (E) is totally wrong.

The most likely cause for this is that you need to re-apply physical sky using Ruby script every time you change the shadow settings in SketchUp (this is a limitation of SketchUp as the shadow setting can be accessed from Ruby script but not from SketchUp SDK-based exporter. The other potential issue there would be if you have north rotated in your model - that feature is not yet supported.

It would be nice if the Su material would look like a preview of the assigned Maxwell material also when using metal and dielectric material. I am curious about how we can create a Maxwell material library…

Unfortunatelly this is not gonna be possible - material system in SketchUp is not open enough for us to access it.

Pavol

[Sheik]

Thanks Pavol for the quick response,
The sun position does seem to work after re-applying physical sky.
Assigning material on different priority levels is logical now that I know how it works. No problem.

It is really a shame the SU SKD doesn’t support materials better, and that the UI is so closed. How has @Last responded to the problems?

I made the lens material transparent white, and I changed abbe to 130, so you can now se more clearly. Also I made the model more physically accurate as the magnifying glass is no longer flying in the air…


Sheik

[Sheik]

I wanted to test how bigger files work. I tested on this old city model (witch is a badly built model imported as dwg to SU). The model is close to the maximum size that SU (4) can handle comfortably.
First I had some problems: the file conversion took several hours, and then ended up as an invalid mxs file. I exploded the model and things became much faster. It still took some 15 minutes to do the conversion. There are about 40 000 triangles in the mxs file.
Just one diffuse material and physical sky used.

I have also tested on some other old models. In some cases they won’t render/crash, but I haven’t yet found out what in those files causes the problems.

Sheik

ps. That is Turku in Finland

[RedRaven]

Sheik

I've not had any succes with large models. It had been taking far to long to export the files. But you state that if you explode the model it is much faster.

Do you explode first before addng the max materials

or can you explodeat any stage

and does exploding the file always make the export quicker?

[Sheik]

Red Raven,
In this test I first exploded, and then added the materials. I just tested on this one model, so I can’t say if exploding always makes it faster, or at what stage you should explode the model. I will make some more tests…
Sheik

[Sheik]

I tried an even more torturous model. This model was created mostly in ArchiCad and then imported to SketchUp. This is already really slow in SketchUp, and it seems I can’t even explode the model. So I selected all geometry and applied an aluminium material to it and rendered. I was not at my computer, but I think the conversion took some 25 minutes (not exploded). Only some of the surfaces have been changed to metal, as you can notice, so it doesn’t look that nice. This model has 169 263 triangles. 30min redering= sampling level 10.

I also tested with another large model witch I did manage to explode, but it didn’t render.
Sheik