Maxwell Render

Can somebody explain to me the workflow to assign mxm materials through the MR plugin? Here's what I've been doing & where it goes wrong:

I want to use Wood7.mxm on my model, so I...
-Create a SU material called "Wood7" & paintbucket it onto my model
-I activate the Maxwell Material plugin.
-The Maxwell Material plugin opens.
-I select Maxwell MXM, load, navigate to the Wood7.mxm file & select it.
-I go to File Export & tell it to export to Maxwell.
-When MR comes up, it gives me an error message that says it can't find the jpg used in the mxm material (Error - File"/Applications/Maxwell/materials database/mxm files/wood7/C.jpg" has not been found. Render cannot continue).

So then I...
-Go to File/Export/Maxwell Render again.
-In the Options dialog I select "Use Auto MXM Conversion" & set the path to the Wood7.mxm file.
-MR gives me the same error message as before.

So then I...
-Go back to the Options dialog & set the "Image Search Path" to the folder where my jpg is.
-When I do that a DOS shell message comes up that says "Error: Unknown argument: Files\Next"

I've even tried leaving the Image Search Path set & turning off the MXM Conversion but I still get the DOS error.

I've obviously got the process wrong, but can't figure out where. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

when you select the wood7.mxm in the plugin... go to 'edit' and open it up...confirm all the images are attached..and click to save it.. usually does the trick.. sometimes the path to the images in the mxm are saved however they were on the creators computer....

if this doesnt work, do the same...but 'save as'..and save it with a different name.. wood7a or something... and load this one in with the plugin...no idea why this works, but it seems to work everytime for me..

This is what you should be doing - this allows to specify the path to look for missing textures (and other files like .ior) which are referenced by MXM files used in the project.

Now I am not perfectly sure what goes wrong with the DOS box - does this occurs when rendering (exporting) or does this occurs when working with the export options dialog? Can you be a bit more specific about that? BTW - that platform are you on?

Pavol

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Pavol Elias
Next Limit Team

I think the problem must be related to the particular material I was trying to use. I downloaded the Sketchup materials library that you have on the site here & was able to successfully apply them to my model. I still can't figure out why this wood7 isn't working. I didn't try using any of the other materials I downloaded from the Think site, just wood7. I tend to get kind of stubborn when I run into a problem like this & obsess about getting the one particular material to work or die trying, rather than just try a different material.

I think that by way of experiment, I'll copy down all the settings from this material & create a new one with the same settings to see if maybe it's a problem with the mxm file itself. You never know...

The DOS box opens when I'm exporting, not when I'm working with the export options.

I'm running MaxwellExport 2.1b, MaxwellRender 1.71 on XP64 ver. 2003 service pack 2, using an HP xw8400, Xeon 2.66 & 8gb ram.

My workflow is a bit different, am not using the material editor within SU..
I'm only using auto mxm option

1. i want to use woodXY.mxm
2. I take the color texture jpg and copy and resize it in a SU textures folder i always keep in the material database
3. I create a SU material woodyXY, load that resize texture, then save it as .skm so i can have it always.
4. I just use that SU texture all the time and it seamlessly switches to the mxm file using automxm.

Nils

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