[pabl0]

hello

i live in paris, yesterday i tested sun system in maxwell

In the maxwell global, i put "8th february" city "Paris", SM "+1" and hour "20 pm".
I render a basic scene
And surprise! the picture don't black !
i saw trough my home window, it was 20:00 pm in paris, it was very dark like in the middle of the night, only city lights.
what's wrong ?

the sun system in maxwell seams to be incorrect !
or is it a maya plugin problem ?

[Takumi Takahashi]

Maybe Maxwell is based on Z-up coordinate (as other postings suggest North direction pointing Y-Up direction).

You can roughly get by adjusting the time offsetted (in Maxwell Render Global) by 6 hours +/- .

Or you can rotate the whole scene by 90 degrees in X-Axis, but your camera may render image rotated 90 degrees...

I haven't tested it though, so please correct me if I am wrong.

-tak

[sidenimjay]

this still is confusing me . . .


i htink i have it figured out then i cant tell . . . .


i thought that east/west was on the X-axis and pos Z would be north

but im getting wierd results as well . . .

i guess Y could be north south but then i . . .


oscar? victor? anyone?

[jep]

so after reading this a second time, I realized.... "No wonder!"

OK hopefully they will fix this becuase to get Maya to align properly with the sun you HAVE to do one of two things.

Bottom Line: the sun system has adopdted the CAD philosophy of Z-up.
So to get correct sun where you expect it to be you can:

- select all geo and Maxwell Cam in you r scene -> ctrl+ g to make a group then place a global rotation of 90 in the x axis on that group you just created... then you need to make sure you go to your maxwell camera and bring it up in the attribute editor.
Under the MxCamera tab got to the Misc. section and twirl it open... make sure your camera "up vector" is 0,0,1 or else your camera will look tumbled or twisted in some way.

-OR-

- (Thanks Sid for this one) you can go into your maya settings and change the up vecotor to "Z up". I'm not sure what else you have to do to get it to work, if anything as I'm so darn stubborn, I just refused to work in a Z-up space... hahaha, but I clearly have my own problems......

I really hope they fix this becuase I really don't want to have to do either. Not to sound like a pain, but I'm used to working in a Y-UP world... Almost every piece of software in the VFX world is Y-up. - I do understand that the arch industry is used to Z-up - no problemn there at all , in fact, a user shouldn't even have to worry about it - I think a mark of a good plug-in/exporter/package is that it allowes the user to work as usual in the given host package and converts the work to whatever the render needs invisibly, under the hood - Since Maxwell, is all about ease of use, as a result of doing things the right way, I hope they will see these two alterantives as the obtrusive work arounds they are... however, until then - that's two ways to work around the current situation with the sun.

Hope this helps,
jep

[sidenimjay]

after much consideration of all the facts going into my confusing scenes, i traced my steps.

i convert a .max file to a maya binary thru deep exploration.

the objects in the scene have a group translation on them with a rotation of -90.

i orient a building along the Z -axis, i render at 0900, 1200,1600 and the sun remained on the +X side of the building.
following steps in your post jep, i was even more than confused. nothing seemed to line up and when i zoom out to see the building shadows, i see what appears to be a large spotlight framed around the building.
so after twirling objects and rotating cameras, i ended right back where i started.

so i set up a clean scene, with an arrow pointing down each of the axis
rendered , and the rusults were as expected.

i tested at 0900, 1200, and 1600. without making changes to any of the cameras or up vectors results were as expected. the sun moved from -X at 0900 to +X at 1600 as denoted by the shadows.

i can post a link to the arrow file if anyone is interested.

[jep]

yeah sid... OK everyone- forget the second alternative... I've only personally had success with the first. I'm sure you can get somewhere by making maya z-up but I haven't done it so I can't speak for it. Sid has just sent me scene where he says the sun is back to it's Maya friendly, Y-up position.... Has Next Limit already addressed this somewhere that I've missed? If so, I apologize, I thought I had looked everywhere.... Meanwhile, Sid and I will come up with 30 different solutions that we'll swear are correct... and then we'll find out we were wrong the whole time! hahaha


...anyone?
...Bueller?

[jep]

OK - I'm tapping out... UNCLE.. I give! Sporatic and erratic - I've seens Sid's scene and He's right... Y-up is working - however, he and I have seen one of his scenes where Y-up was clearly not working (i.e Shadows coming from underneath at high noon?!?!?!) I'm thinking I have no idea what the heck is going on.. truly a bug?

[jep]

OK - so we realized thatwe should be at -8 instead of -9 SM - I found this made a noticeable difference on January 1st! I'm still not getting what I'd expect on June1st but I hoenstly think it might be to several other issues (i.e Not Maxwell ) I'll verify and update.

Sorry for any confusion this thread may have caused...

Thanks!
Jep

[Takumi Takahashi]

I only work in Y-up since Maya has some features only work under Y-up, and I did some tests ...
So far setting my time "Hour" offsetted 6 hours forward or backward from actual time I want, seemed to solve this problem as I posted earlier.

ie., if I wanted noon time environment,

1) Set my City to Tokio (should be spelled 'Tokyo', but...)
2) Set Hour to 18 (not 12)
3) Set SM to 9 since Tokyo is in Japan
4) Set Month + Day accordingly

Rotating in X -90 degrees the whole thing is usual method of converting from Z-up to Y-up, however, maxwell camera setting (as someone posted earlier) needs to be adjusted further to alleviate a 90-degree-twist.

IMHO it should not be so hard to fix/implement to accomodate Y-up option in Maxwell Render Global... ?

[jep]

Takumi,
I agree, I only want to work in Y-UP.. I 'll try the 6 hour offset. thanks,
Jep

[jep]

no - six hour offset didn't work for me. I get what I'd expect, in Los Angeles, as long as I stay on January 1st. For instance, whaen I try anything in June, nothingseems to work.

[Takumi Takahashi]

Hi jep,

I just found that latitude and logtitude values are swapped for presets for cities such as Tokyo and Los Angeles.

You may need to go into custom setting in the city presets and swap values there.

Someone please verify -

I looked up on the web and, Lat + logtitude of Tokyo should be

latitude:35.42.19.96
longitude:139.34.23.32


but Maxwell settings are;

latitude : 139.4600
longtitude : 35.4200

I think same thing goes for LA and other cities.


Now ...

Is this just GUI issue ?
Or presets are swapped ?
Do we still need to offset 6 hours ?

now things are a bit more complicated

Sorry - I don't have a time to verify all this right now.

just letting you know.

-tak

[iker]

I'm using Y-up and 2 more SM numbers, for example for Madrid, Paris, etc.... that is SM 0, i use 2, and it seems more aproximate to reality.

But I think Takumi is right , it seems that lat+long are swapped

[pabl0]

yes, Takumi

it seems that you're right, i've tested with swapped values (lat <-->long) for Paris (48.52/2.2 in place of 2.2/48.52), and it work's fine !
that can be only a cities presets bug ! i hope !

thanx

[iker]

Yes , if you swap the values works!!