Video tutorials for Studio?

[RyanSpaulding]

Are there any video tutorials that exist for Maxwell? Just curious cause I'm more of a visual learner than a book one.

 

Thanks guys.

[Devin Johnston]

The only place your going to find tutorials is going to be the Maxwell forum, I know that Mike was going to do some video tutorials but he decided not to because he was to busy insulting forum members....just kidding....not really.

[RyanSpaulding]

I think I just might turn back to learning VRay.

 

While this all seems like it'd be easy to do, since it's "as easy as taking a photo" , it just isn't that way at all.

 

1st off, the material editor is rediculously complicated. Over-complicated if you ask me. Yeah, the wizards are ok, but there is a serious lack of tutorials and help to be had. It's cool you don't have to mess with AA settings and all that, but the added headache of the material editor, to me, supersedes the time it takes to learn the AA settings and lighting in another engine.

 

There needs to be some guides for this renderer.

 

I love the look of Maxwell's renderings...but I'll have to go another direction for now.

[Devin Johnston]

Don't give up yet, if you have never used Vray believe me your going to have to deal with just as many if not more settings. The material editor in Maxwell is complicated but once you start messing around with it you will get the hang of it. Don't forget about all of the materials you can download from the Maxwell home page, you can probably find anything you need there and you won't have to mess with creating anything.

[RyanSpaulding]

Yeah, I was actually headed back here to edit the post. I'll give it more time. I actually want to UNDERSTAND what's going on in the editor tho. Seems thats where Maxwell's power is.

 

BTW, where does one change the size of their texture within Studio? Bentley just wrote a Maxwell exporter but the imported textures come in way too large...I'm creating EFIS and the bump map is waaaaay too big...but I cant find size properties anywhere.

 

Any ideas?

[Devin Johnston]

I wish I could help you there but I don't use Studio and won't use it as long as I have 3D Studio Max.

[superbad]

BTW, where does one change the size of their texture within Studio? Bentley just wrote a Maxwell exporter but the imported textures come in way too large...I'm creating EFIS and the bump map is waaaaay too big...but I cant find size properties anywhere.

 

Any ideas?

 

There are a couple ways. The easiest in this case is probably in the material editor, open the dialog where you load the map and change the Tile values. Higher numbers make the texture smaller. Remember to do this for all the maps if you are using more than one (eg, for bump or reflections). Also, I would make double sure your models aren't actually coming in at the wrong size, rather than the textures being wrong. Scale problems will affect your results in a big way.

 

The material editor isn't that bad once you get used to it. Most common nonmetallic, nonglass materials use two layers, one for the base color and one for reflections. The only thing I usually vary is the amount of roughness on the reflective layer and how the two interact. The best way to figure it out is to download a few that you like and see how changing parameters affects things.

[Fran]

Yeah, I was actually headed back here to edit the post. I'll give it more time. I actually want to UNDERSTAND what's going on in the editor tho. Seems thats where Maxwell's power is.

 

BTW, where does one change the size of their texture within Studio? Bentley just wrote a Maxwell exporter but the imported textures come in way too large...I'm creating EFIS and the bump map is waaaaay too big...but I cant find size properties anywhere.

 

Any ideas?

 

Open the materials in the editor and edit the bitmap parameters. There is one for x and y scaling.