How to use emitters in Maxwell Standalone for Sketchup

JD Hill

I don't mean to seem evasive, but as a matter of policy, I never answer that question with any precision. I plan on putting up some pre-release bits for customers pretty soon (the plan for this is on the order of days, not weeks), but I won't make any estimate on timing for a public release.

brodie

I don't think there's any specific plan that's been made known. If you're really interested you could email Jeremy who's the creator of the plugin and very helpful. If he has anything in the works I'm sure he'd be happy to let you know.

-Brodie

valerostudio

This is excellent news. Thanks

markewi

mmh, I still have trouble getting emitters to work. I turned the enviroment settings to none and either changed sketchup materials in the maxwell scene manager to have max watts etc. or used mxm files that suppose to have emitter lights but none of them will glow! The scene will render dark and you see the material but it will not be a light source. What am I doing wrong?

bravoddb

@markewi said:

mmh, I still have trouble getting emitters to work. I turned the enviroment settings to none and either changed sketchup materials in the maxwell scene manager to have max watts etc. or used mxm files that suppose to have emitter lights but none of them will glow! The scene will render dark and you see the material but it will not be a light source. What am I doing wrong?

Hi, make the surface with emitter material a group, then rerender it again.

Bravoddb

brodie

@markewi said:

mmh, I still have trouble getting emitters to work. I turned the enviroment settings to none and either changed sketchup materials in the maxwell scene manager to have max watts etc. or used mxm files that suppose to have emitter lights but none of them will glow! The scene will render dark and you see the material but it will not be a light source. What am I doing wrong?

What are your camera settings (what's the EV) and what are your emitter settings and what size is the emitter?

If you have realistic emitter settings and the emitter isn't too big and you've got a realistic EV (for interior scenes with emitters you're usually looking at 7ish) you should be good.

-Brodie

jason_maranto

Also, Emitters are only going to emit in the direction of the normals -- which means the "front" of the polygon.

So to recap, the short checklist for emitters working right is:

Is the geometry to real-world scale?
Is the camera exposure value realistic?
Are the surface normals pointing in the direction you want light to emit?

In addition to that there are also some limits to emitters as far as their use in components -- However, there are a number of emitter related changes availible in the the latest pre-release preview (2.6.3) on the Maxwell forums and I do recommend you download that and see if that fixes the issue.

Best,
Jason.

markewi

Thanks to all! I'll give it a try.....

Carloh

are there MXM files with IES in the maxwell material gallery? this far i haven't figuered out how to create a spot light with the maxwell standalone sketchup plugin

jason_maranto

@carloh said:

are there MXM files with IES in the maxwell material gallery? this far i haven't figuered out how to create a spot light with the maxwell standalone sketchup plugin

The newest version of the plugin supports creating IES materials directly within SketchUp (as an embedded character type material) -- I would re-download the plugin (from the Maxwell website) to get the new features. Also, I would check the Maxwell forum regularly for the latest pre-release version (which right now is 2.6.11) because often they will be newer than what is available from the Maxwell website: http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=107

Best,
Jason.

Carloh

thank you very much jason! wooohooo finally the possibility to put IES in my scenes!

and i was this close to buying the full render suite just for IES lights

duVriez

I'v been reading all the previous, but I'm still having problems with my lights. I'm using Sketchup pro 8 an the Maxwell plugin only. I added a test-render (attachment: test 7), in which I used no artificial light. Obviously, it needs some artificial light, but I've been trying emitters (on a rectangle) and an IES (on as spere) but it keeps on turning black. I've tried reversing the material, but nothing worked so far.

Stupid thing though: in a test-setup I made (attachment: test 2), the lighst do work (although I'm still struggling with the settings)

Please help!!!

Not fully rendered, because it was just a test.

Same here

numerobis

intensity too low? Maybe try with multilight.

Did you try bouth face orientations? Some time ago a had the problem that emitter faces got reversed on export.

Sketchfield

Hi, I am a newbie to Maxwell - I have the free Maxwell render plug-in for SU.

I have read all the above posts and I appear to have the same problem as many.

I am working in an outdoor scene.

I read the whole of the manual that is relevant to the above and followed the guidelines, but I'm not getting any light emission from geometrical objects created. I applied light emitters to each face of planar emitters and then made them a group but still no light. I tried various means: such as IES lights, customised emitters, daylight and 1000W lighting.

I have HDRI loaded as background and also in associated channels, reflectance, etc. Can this affect the light emitters? But I did disable the HDR at one point.

Many thanks in anticipation for help with this.

novena

Sketchfield, check units and scale of the objects in your 3d model, make sure that you are working with real scale and the size of objects correspond with units used...
best
V

Sketchfield

Thanks for the prompt response novena - the objects scales certainly need to be reviewed and revised. I will give it a go ... here's hoping!

Sketchfield

Interesting one - under materials texture I clicked 'Link to Application' instead of 'Texture' and hey presto! we have light. Link to application seems to give a more exact fit with the selected material, emitter, etc, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I also had to review a range of things like the exposure values, scale of objects and so on. Trial and error the order of the day! Thanks again.

novena

good to hear that it's solved!!!
interesting the issue with 'link to application' and 'texture' will give it a try myself
best
V

skippy_28

Just wondering is anyone knows how to hide Emitters from the camera so you get the light but not the geometry that it is coming from.

neets

@skippy_28 said:

Just wondering is anyone knows how to hide Emitters from the camera so you get the light but not the geometry that it is coming from.

Hey, right click the component, you'll see a sub menu, go to Maxwell, another sub menu will appear, select 'from camera', there's a few other options in there too for invisibility, for example, if you want to illuminate an area and there are windows/mirrors and you don't want the actual source of light to be visible in the reflections, then you'd need to enable 'from reflections/refractions' too.

Anita