Sketchup crash when using MXM materials in Free Maxwell Ren.

Kreativ3D

Hi!
I'm using Sketchup and the free Maxwell Render and every time when I'm trying to use a downloaded MXM material, Sketchup crash and closing down! It happens right after I click on the Fire icon to render the scene. What could be wrong and how can I solve this?

Burkhard

Not sure about the free Version. Have you tried to set different Materials? Does it happens with every mxm?

jason_maranto

Most likely you are using a MXM that contains a displacement based material -- and depending on the settings displacement can easily use more RAM than SketchUp has available (due to it being a 32-bit application, which at best has 4 GB of RAM and more likely only has 2GB).

Likely culprits would be "grass", "fur" and "carpet" materials... which often used strong displacement in previous versions of Maxwell. The need for displacement based approaches has been largely replaced by the Grass features of newer versions of the plugin... but even this (when used at extreme settings) can easily run out of RAM due to SketchUp limitations.

Best,
Jason.

sarah_jane_smith

I'm having the same problem - I'm happy to supply the file.

It's a basic box room with some Maxwell textures. I did have carpet but I deleted it - still crashes.

I'm trying to work on an indie game, solo in my spare time so I only have the free editions of everything. I would like to buy Maxwell and Sketchup, but the crashes scare me to bits - I so thought I had lost 2 hours of work.

This is very frustrating as I want to see what my room looks like!

jason_maranto

PM me the SketchUp file (with the MXMs) and I will take a look.

Best,
Jason.

sarah_jane_smith

Hi Jason, Thanks for the offer.

I tried PM but the sketchucation.com forum system apparently imposes a 2MB limit and the file is over that.

However - I have figured out the cause - it is this material: http://resources.maxwellrender.com/download.php?id=5495

When it downloads I get a folder called "concrete_4379" - and if I apply that material to an empty box with nothing else in the scene maxwell plugin will crash every time.

I have the free version of Sketchup 8.0.15157 and the free Maxwell Sketchup Plugin 2.7.0 6/18/2012.

I tried the same with another concrete MXM by the same author, alexm8a - http://resources.maxwellrender.com/download.php?id=5498 - and I get the same result: crashola.

I notice that both of alexm8a's materials have "Displacement" in the keywords - so I guess that is what is going on here.

Thanks for the tip, I guess that is it.

No more displacement materials for me.

jason_maranto

Yep, both of those used displacement -- which is a shame because they really didn't need it, so I made edited versions for you without displacement:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/41250852/j_edited_concretes.zip

For that matter I have already made hundreds of free SketchUp materials with linked MXM's for all of the Arroway textures (including the Concrete set), which you can get here:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=38528

While it's true the Arroway textures (http://www.arroway-textures.com/) can be slightly expensive, you will find they are the best in the business... and by using my sets you will have whatever you want already ready to use just like any normal Sketchup material.

Best,
Jason.