[Josephus Holt]

What are some of the emitter types listed, A, B, C, D65, etc?

Also, for the interior of a room, what is a good scale to start with? What about the scale for, let's say, the outside view of a house?

[Matthew Schrock]

The emitter types are the color temperature designations commonly used in the lighting industry. You can define your own color temp by selecting 'Custom' from the menu and entering a value.

With the formZ plugin you set the scale to .01 when you are modeling in metric units and .0254 when modeling in english units.

The reason for this is that formZ uses either centimeters or inches as native units. When you choose to work in other units, formZ merely translates the native units to display units.For example, if you choose to work in feet, formZ still stores/manipulates geometry in inches and translates on the fly to display feet.

[Josephus Holt]

Matthew, thank you for your reply. For the time being I'm okay with the scale issue...not sure why the scale slider goes up to such a huge value (1000) when .01 and .025 are appropriate for mm/inches respectively. maybe the highest settings would be for those modeling solar systems?

Speaking of sliders, the one for the longtitude goes only up to 40 whereas I believe there are 180 degrees east and the same west. Also, although I suppose most of us are in the northern hemisphere, but I don't see any options for settings below the equator. I take it someone is/will be correcting that?

Regarding the emitter types, since I'm not a lighting designer (I'm an architect), I'm not familiar with these (other than cool white). Since the Maxwell documentation does not elaborate, can you give me a brief overview what these are or "send" me to a website that explains in terms I could understand?

Also, in the FZ plug-in, under the environment tab, what does "sm" stand for? Looks like something having to do with the GMT hour adjustments. If that is the case, do we still enter the GMT time for the hour below that (in other words we still need to add or subtract those hours from our local time and enter the GMT time)?

Is the moonlight extension available for the physical sky? I have not run across it yet.

Maybe one more question, what should the pixel aspect be set to? The documentation does not help with this at all.

BTW I'm working on Win PC

[ivox3]

Josephus,

The documentation does elaborate on the emitter types. ....take another look. .....in the Reference Manual: [start] > [All programs]>[NextLimit]>[documentation]>[Reference Manual:PDF]

.....print it out, that'd be best. ......best of luck to you, it doesn't take that long to become familiar. .....and since you'll probably do a lot of exteriors, i think your going to be pleased with the exterior lighting options.

[Matthew Schrock]

The primary function of the scale setting in the formZ plugin is to translate the unit of the modeling app to the native unit of Maxwell Render (meter). This allows Maxwell to produce a physically accurate simulation of the behavior of light. The only reason I can think of to use the scale setting in some other way is if one wanted to create some non-realistic effect. (take a building that has been modeled in real world scale and make it look like a small-scale model, for example)

For a good intro to the illuminant types as well as other things Maxwell check out:

http://www.metinseven.com/article_maxwe ... tricks.htm

I am still trying to understand the quirks of the geographical location/sun/sky settings. I think I'm getting close but I'll wait to report until I have a better grasp of it.

There is not a moonlight simulation in the current version... but NL has made quite a few references to a revamped full-featured sky system... I'm hoping this will be part of v1.0

There are some image formats (mostly TV/Video) that use a pixel that is not square. For everything leave the pixel aspect at 1. (If you need to set it to something else, you probably already know what it needs to be.)

Let me know if any of this is not clear....

[Josephus Holt]

Ahhh, a user manual! Yes, I just found it....very helpful indeed

Thank y'all (as they say here in TN:) for the good info.

Does anyone know what the "sm" in the environment tab stands for?

[Guest]

Josephus,

Your welcome, .......as for that pesky sm tab , have no clue ---- i'm using another plug-in. ....If it ain't broke ....., you know..... ......