Maxwell Render

See them yellow thingies? Those are instances.



But ... where are they in my test render? Looks like they dissapeared. Oh wait ... there they are ... somewhere in the distance ... all rotated and stuff.



Gee!

I agree. If I start a brand new database in SketchUp, and play with the units settings, I can eventually get instancing to work. With existing databases the instances show-up in studio, but are super tiny scale wise. I tried adjusting the units settings, but no luck.

Sometimes if I export directly to render, the instancing works, go back and open in Studio, nothing shows??

Very confusing

with some combined components and groups i get a very strange result if i open the mxs in studio (components missing/moved or rotated) - the same scene straight out of sketchup works fine...

Yup. That's what I'm talking about. Persistent bug. Shouldn't be there, not in software this pricey. And certainly not this long. Can anyone notice I'm slightly annoyed?

Man I can tell!

Mate I've been using maxwell since the beta days before the earth cooled and I get frustrated by bugs every day!

Funny but my exports are ok but mate I have so many problems in studio I can't begin to tell you! I counted 32 times on saturday I had to close it and reopen to get it to work and I was so P....D! I had to work on a weekend and my whole day was just spent trying to render a simple scene!

_________________
Move your arse and your mind will follow!

lol. Yeah ... the Studio's the reason why I chose Maxwell over Fry. Little did I know that one can make it crash by looking at it the wrong way. I'd find it annoying when a $ 150 app would do that, but when a $ 1000 insists on crashing every ten minutes ... well ...

Instances support was another reason for buying Maxwell ...

Dam I've just upgraded to 1.7.1 and now I get a crash in SU as soon as I export! Doesn't occur until I link to an MXM!

GRRRRR!

_________________
Move your arse and your mind will follow!

Sounds familiar. I'm considering a clean re-install.

I can understand the frustration here - there were (and apparently still are) instancing problems. There is a few points I have here:

- just to make sure: the latest version of both plugin and Studio have important fixes in this area, check whether you are running the latest version.

- I cannot comment on the Studio side of the problem but if you have problems with missing/displaced instances when rendering from plugin directly do not hesitate to contact me via PM.

- I am considering a bigger change to the way the geometry is exported from SketchUp when it comes to transformations. At the moment unit conversion (millimeters to meters, inches to meters) is stored in object transformation matrix. This works fine with MXCL but sometimes it causes problems for Studio. It is a bigger change and one which can cause some additional problems so I was delaying that but now might be the time to do that...

_________________
Pavol Elias
Next Limit Team

Everything's up to date. I'm nevertheless considering a fresh re-install. Can't hurt.



So far, rendering from the plugin is fine in this respect. No problems with instances.

It's the Studio that's the problem. Yes, I know, you can't comment. But if any of the Studio peeps are reading this: get it to work, will ya? I like to get my money's worth - as does any client. NL should realise, by the way, that, in theory, the Studio is an important tool for any serious SU user, as it provides (again: in theory) a plausible way to bypass SU's poly limit. Therein lies, for SU users, Maxwell's greatest advantage over, say, Fry.

I share Richard's, errrr, concerns with regards to the Studio (as I had similar experiences). When an application is that crash prone, something's terribly wrong.