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Wow ! I wonder how you can keep track of the material assignments in that case I'll get back here with examples of the mapping bug when I get the time to download and re-try the Fry demo. Thanks Fran !

Fran, here's where the name of the material is supposed to appear. But of course you know that. We were probably not speaking of the same thing ? As per the mapping bug, it's simply that the scale of the texture does not stay consistent from one session to the other. I had this problem both on my laptop, and on my box, so I guess it's not hardware related. I'll have to give it a try with RC5. ...but I also need to re-install the Fry demo. Cheers

Hi Fran, The issues in assigning materials via the layer dialog are : -it's tedious -the material name does not appear in the layer manager after assigning the material to the layer. There is a "Name" item in the Rhino layer material editor, and it is not filled correctly either. I also have been systematicaly plagued by mapping inconsistencies in the rendered viewport which do not occur when using the Maxwell trial. For example, the mapping size for a box mapping goes bezerk when I re-open a file. Stangely, the values in the mapping panel are not changed, but the aspect in the rendered viewport has gone haywire. I haven't run into the specific problem that you described though... Is there any dramatic improvement / plug-in overhaul / hiring JD HILL scheduled in the near future ? Cheers, -- Olivier

Hi Fran, I've got real frustrated in fighting to assign materials in Rhino with the Fryrender plug-in, and have been testing the Maxwell trial for a while now. The Rhino plug-in works quite smoothly. The developper, JD HILL seems to be doing a great job there. How about those "useless" Maxwell licenses you've got ? Are they for sale ?

Fran, Am I doing something wrong that prevents me from naming the materials in the layer manager, and getting the right mapping in my render ? Thanks, -- Olivier

Hi Fran, Here's what I meant : The original idea (if I got ot right) with the RDK material editor is to create any third party renderer material from a single interface : the RDK material editor. But the Fryrender plug-in doesn't make use of that, and teleports you to it's own material editor. That's why I said they're not using the RDK the way it's meant to be used, and that's why Andy can't be blamed if it doesn't work. Feversoft was probably right when they considered the RDK material editor was not suitable for creating Fryrender materials, but in that case, they should have developed a full-blown plug-in like Maxwell has. Regarding the worflow you suggested,I trust it works because you can still pull out those amazing renders, but I ran into several problems : To assign an existing Fry material to a layer, I need to "Edit" or "Create" because the "Browse" button is greyed out. Then the default material is converted to a Fry material, and the Fry material editor pops up. It would be nice to browse directly without the useless "conversion" thing. Then I wasn't able to give the material a name in the layer manager. In the Fry Material properties, the "Name" slot is not editable (bug ?), and neither the file name or the "Alias" is transfered to the layer properties box. The manual edition of the name in the Rhino material editor does not work. I also had an issue with mapping showing up properly in the Rhino render preview, but not in the render. I might have not followed the steps properly though. It's a shame Rhino and Fry don't play nice because they are great programs. Thanks for your help, Cheers, -- Olivier

Thanks Fran ! I guess that If I do the mapping trick, I should not use map tiling within the Fryrender material editor, because the Rhino render preview would not take it into account. But that's not a big price to pay to actually get rid of the crazy mapping bugs and get the job done. I had a mail exchange with Andrew Le Bihan from McNeel on the subject of the RDK. It looks like Feversoft would have been better off either not using it at all, just like Maxwell did, or use it the way it was intended to work. But in that case, we would probably have lost some of the material options which are really specific to Fryrender. I did try the Maxwell demo along with the Rhino plug-in. Apart from a few bugs like the time settings and environment options playing musical chairs behind my back, I found it quite pleasant to use. I also had some annoying mapping issues, but nothing that drove me to the asylum. But it misses the single sheet SSS which I find very interesting for architectural membranes. Fry's licensing scheme is also better for me because it allows to set up an el'cheapo render farm with a couple of low-life quad core slaves. Well... off I go with my testing ! Cheers, -- Olivier

Hi Magnus, Thanks for your answer. At some point, my stone walled house had stone doors... So I closed and re-opened the file : my house was a log cabin ! Two layers were swapping their materials behind my back. I'll try the copy-paste thing, but I just can't make this part of my workflow I suspect the problem comes from the RDK which messes up the assignment of materials to Rhino layers. I tried the Maxwell demo and Rhino plug-in, and I never had these kinds of problems... Cheers, -- Olivier

While I agree non-customers should not be allowed to POST in an official forum like Fryrender's, I can't see any good reason why they would be banned from READING some areas... For instance, I am going through frustrating times with the Fryrender Rhino plug-in (see my thread), and I can't access the Fryrender forum's area dealing with this subject. I guess that everyone trying out the software will have questions pertaining the specific plug-in for their modeling package. I'm even convinced that most of the problems that new demo users will encounter will be related to the plug-ins, so why hide the place where they would find usefull help ? I have lots of sympathy for Fryrender, but I found them to be sometimes clumsy in their relationship with potential customers : -The whole "no demo in beta stage" thing was my first disappointment. -The hardware key... thanks god, they got rid of this thing ! -The ambiguity around their virtual reality engine. If the renders didn't kick that much ass, I would be discouraged by now. Fran, your renders are probably the reason why I'm still giving them a chance. Cheers, -- Olivier

Hi there ! I use Rhino for modeling, and I'm trying to convince myself that Fryrender is the best render engine for me. Why ? -Fry's single sheet sub-surface scattering (SSSSS !) is a great feature for me because I deal with Architectural membranes. -Fry's virtual reality looks real good, I just hope they will release it in my lifetime But then I tried the demo. The Fryrender plug-in for Rhino uses McNeel's "Render Development Kit". In fact, the RDK interface is a -confusing- extra layer between Rhino and Fryrender. By chance, one of Fran's posts helped me figure out how to apply a Fry material to a Rhino layer which is far from obvious. But just when I thought my troubles were over, I started working on the material mapping in the Rhino rendered viewport, and things went haywire : the materials got mixed up on the display, and I simply could not go any further. Materials were propagated to other layers, and changed randomly when I re-opened the file. Fran, if you hear me : HELP ! Cheers, -- Olivier