Maxwell Render

you're right, not from within MXed i just found out.

i was trying with the mxm editor from the rhino plugin and here it does indeed work!

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workstation: EVGA SR-2 / dual x5650@3.5Ghz / quadro 4000

I haven't tried the drag out trick in Max yet.

re Curves: Another thing we'll have to agree to disagree on . I think curves are essential. I use them almost exclusively because they are unmatched for control and I definitely need that level of control quite a bit. Colour balance is useful too, but if it is one or the other my vote is for curves for sure.

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Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

But I thought we just needed to tweak maps, surely if you need curves the map needs more serious work.

Does everyone get the point that when you save the bitmap in PS, maxwell picks up those changes on render, even inside mxed preview, so you can work on things side by side. - IF you need major changes, like I said the ability to quickly tweak a colour is useful, perhaps its being left out to prevent people generating bad R90's , if that makes sense...

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Materials, Arch-viz, C4D Dynamics

Curves are for tweaking - or gross manipulations too. The main reason I want them is for the precise level of tweaking that *only* curves can give you. Levels or brightness/contrast type adjustments just don't come close. If I had only two new ones I'd take hue/saturation (but working like it does in Pshop) and curves. Those two can do what all the others do.

I understand that Maxwell picks up bitmap changes, but the transfer is not instant and the back and forth is not a smooth and fluid as manipulating and seeing live changes in Fire etc. That's the gold standard that I'm after, but even without the live preview of Fire, it's still preferable and more efficient to just make those changes inside Maxwell, just as you do in Max, modo, and maya (pretty sure about maya...)
/b

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Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

Hue shifts always look bad if you go beyond 2 %. maybe put a small limit on it??

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Materials, Arch-viz, C4D Dynamics

Draging the Map out of a Channel into PS works from Rhino, which is very cool.

Does not work in Max. Too bad

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Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

On the issue of curves et al.

I would say the primary value of being able to do any image editing in Maxwell is that you can extract almost any kind of map you might need from a single bitmap source without actually needing to save out variants (as you would with an external workflow).

The biggest saving grace of this is it reduces the number of external dependencies. So IMO the more editing power the tool gives users the better it will be, and there is very little more powerful than curves... which have been around forever and should be pretty easy to implement.

Hue/Saturation is really most useful in the context of colorization... without a "colorize" option I'm not sure how much value a Hue option has.

I use Substance Designer for most of my texture editing and creation needs at this point (not Photoshop) and I think that it would offer alot to MXED if incorporated (but I think I am in the minority on that issue).

Regardless of whichever path they choose to take I am not worried about any extra complexity because I can teach-up anything they put out in regards to image editing tools -- it is really the strongest part of my background when it come to digital work (3D or otherwise)... I was teaching Photoshop to PhDs and university professors 15 years ago.

Best,
Jason.

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My Tutorial Video Series: Maxwell Render 2 - SketchUp to Maxwell Workflow - ZBrush 4 - Corel Painter 12 Advanced - Substance Designer 2.1

that's awesome.

xoxoxo

Yeah, it was a cool job -- the University (USF) where I worked got their first scanner and copy of Photoshop 3 and I was assigned to teach all the Professors and PhDs how to use the stuff (one-on-one) as needed for their grant proposals... which was big money for the school not to mention prestige. Alot of those people were pretty sharp and I had to make sure I knew really my stuff... but I learned alot about how to explain things clearly and accurately during that time, and it proved pretty useful experience when I started teaching my video tutorials

The core tools haven't changed much (if at all) in the interim, most of the new stuff just being simplification of the old tools (like curves) for people who don't want to (or can't) learn how to use the really powerful stuff.

Best,
Jason.

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My Tutorial Video Series: Maxwell Render 2 - SketchUp to Maxwell Workflow - ZBrush 4 - Corel Painter 12 Advanced - Substance Designer 2.1

please don't do that.

Classy, I thought you might be stupid enough to post a PM publicly -- and you proved me right...

Man how did you get to be so incredibly stupid? Don't try to bait a baiter -- you are completely out of your league, go back to the minors where they might be impressed with you (maybe).

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My Tutorial Video Series: Maxwell Render 2 - SketchUp to Maxwell Workflow - ZBrush 4 - Corel Painter 12 Advanced - Substance Designer 2.1

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Materials, Arch-viz, C4D Dynamics

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sing with me.... la la la... la la la

So let me explain exactly what happened here:

Rusty was trying to bait me – this has been his game for quite some time now I decided a while back to treat him accordingly... this would not be my typical response to somebody here because these forums are generally more professional than that, however people like Rusty are actually very common on some of the football fan forums I go to. I learned a long time ago how to deal with his type(typically in that venue I would characterize him as “hanging off my nuts”). That is to say he is “trolling” or “fishing”, and his desired outcome is for me to react to him publicly.

So, bearing that in mind – when he tried to troll me here I decided to turn the game around on him.

Since what he desires is a public reaction (from me) – he has a very specific goal in mind, and he fails if he does not achieve it, I set out to frustrate him with a two pronged approach:

1) Give him the reaction he wants -- but not publicly... doing it “big” to make it irresistible to him.
2) Publicly frustrate his efforts by playing dumb and acting as if he was actually giving me a compliment (which was designed to infuriate him, I subtly gave him the screws throughout that post)

Now as a result of that he has two things he must deal with – he can choose to try again to get the desired public response based on my last public post... or he can choose to make a private message response public in an effort to get the satisfaction he craves.

However, he already realizes that trying to get a response from me publicly is going to be harder, since I have shown that I am completely onto his game – so he takes the “easy” way and posts the private message on on public thread in an effort to prove to everyone that he actually got to me.

This “seems” to have achieved his desired goals, however what he has actually done is seriously undermine himself. What he has demonstrated is that he does not know where the line between private and public is – anybody who is watching this will now know that he cannot be trusted with any confidential information because he was so easily manipulated into crossing that line.

The end result is doors that might have been open to him (to have access to sensitive information) will likely be closed tightly.

Now, he may not care about that – but I certainly do... and I think most other users would like to be considered for things like beta testing at some point in the future. Something that clearly would be a serious security risk with Rusty... since he is so easily manipulated.

So yes, in this case I was “feeding the troll” – but with a specific plan to ruin the credibility of his trustworthiness.

Now in all fairness I have said clearly that I can be very nasty, and have even demonstrated a small bit of it in the past with non-Maxwell users who were here to try trolling Next Limit. But generally I keep that side of myself more or less hidden here, because this is not the appropriate venue to go all out and really tee off on somebody. However, I find it annoying that Rusty has tried to take advantage of my generally good-faith approach to this forum and so I purposefully set out to harm him this time.

He's not the only one, there are other users who are trying to play the same game with me -- and I will have them eventually, but Rusty made himself a target here and he got what he deserved.

Best,
Jason.

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My Tutorial Video Series: Maxwell Render 2 - SketchUp to Maxwell Workflow - ZBrush 4 - Corel Painter 12 Advanced - Substance Designer 2.1