> Rendering via Maxwell Render is not working. I get the following error message: “.MXS file exported by the rendering does not start”.

You should have Maxwell Render installed and configured on your machine in order to be able to render. Follow the instructions in the Maxwell Render application (MXCL) document to install and configure it properly.

> Exporting does not work properly for me.

If the exporters experience a problem, a log file is generated with the same name as the exported file, with the file extension .log. The file contains information on what went wrong during the export. You can check the log file yourself to try to figure out what went wrong, or you could send the log file to the Next Limit technical team for inspection.

> How do I specify materials for a Maxwell rendering?

You can use the Ruby MaxwellExport plug-in to set the Maxwell material parameters for SketchUp materials in your model. Note that material parameters set using the plug-in are persistent - they are stored with the scene when the scene is saved to file. On the other hand the connection between a SketchUp material and a Maxwell material is model-based. That means that it is not stored in SketchUp itself, instead it is stored in the .skp file only.

> What happens if I do not specify the Maxwell material settings for the scene?

The default settings for the materials will be used. The Maxwell diffuse material will be used for all non-transparent objects (color and texture is inherited from the SketchUp material), and Maxwell dielectric materials will be used for transparent objects. See the materials chapter of the Maxwell manual for details.

> I can’t see the Maxwell Material panel, what’s going on?

You need to enable the panel first – go to the Ruby MaxwellExport menu (in Plug-ins) and select “Enable Material Panel”. If you work with OSX you need to “activate” the material. This can be achieved by clicking on the entity while having the bucket tool active or by inspecting the material from entity (hold the option key and select the entity while in bucket mode).

> How can I create a light for Maxwell Render?

There are 2 possibilities here:
It is possible to enable the physical sky with sun in the Ruby MaxwellExport plug-in.
You can also assign "Emitter" properties to any material you have in your scene. In order to do this, select the material and assign an "Emitter" material to it with proper parameters.

> The texture map is not working for me. What am I doing wrong?

If you want to use a map with SketchUp geometry you need to set the material with textures for the given geometry (face/component/group). Otherwise the UV coordinates (responsible for "mapping" the image map to the geometry) are not generated by SketchUp at the point of export and the map will not appear in the rendered image.

> None of the Camera/Environment/HDRI/Material panels are showing up. What should I do?

Check the installation of the Maxwell Render plug-in, in particular the Ruby script and its related files. Go to /Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp6/SketchUp/Plugins and check the presence of the following files:
MaxwellExport.rb

The Maxwell sub-folder should contain the following files:
- Camera.html
- Environment.html
- Hdri.html
- MXM.html
If any of the files are missing, copy them from the installation file (on OSX) or reinstall (on Windows).