Hrmmm....further info on my issue.

I export to Studio. Enable "Fire" preview, and scene looks great. Then hit "render viewport" and scene is dark (just like when I render from google sketchup). So from what I can tell, Fire is a separate process of sorts to Studio/Render/Network, etc.

So I need to figure out how to get lighting to show up when I hit render viewport and I think I will have this one sorted.

mmmm one more question if I may....

I have lighting working now and have a lot to learn about it. When I click the Maxwell Fire preview within sketchup I can see my lighting on the scene which is great. When I render the scene via the Maxwell Render button, and the render finishes, I get no lights.

FURTHER to this (but probably the same issue) I actually have a small network render farm running now to help speed things up and want to be able to use the Maxwell Network Render button from within SketchUp (blue one) and let the network do the hard work, but I suffer the same issue as above. Renders dark with no lighting showing.

I am wondering if I MUST go through Maxwell Render or Studio first to get it right, or should I be able to do the rendering correctly directly from the SketchUp Maxwell Plugin?

Again, thanks in advance!

Thanks Jason.

You were right. Needed to only make emitter in one place, and turn environment to none, and lower EV.

Legend!

@jason_maranto said:

You have done too many steps there -- you either use the IES MXM in MXM mode or use the emitter character but not both. You also need to set your environment settings and exposure setting so that the emitter material is more visible-- here's an example:
[attachment=1:yc2i7jm9]<!-- ia1 -->emitter_example.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:yc2i7jm9]
[attachment=0:yc2i7jm9]<!-- ia0 -->emitter_example.skp<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:yc2i7jm9]
Best,
Jason.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the fast response.

I loaded your file and it works fine....however

I am thouroughly confused looking at your example! I get that I should only be applying it in either Character type (auto or emitter), or in MXM mode selecting a file right?), however, when I load your file, it appears your sphere does not have anything applied to it at all! See pics:

Further to this, and something I am failing to understand, it that your 96,96,96 material does not seem t be applied to the sphere (as 96,96,96 is dark grey, and sphere remains white....

I am obviously missing something critical here so I appreciate any help to help me over this bump...Cheers.

Hope this makes sense...

Hey all,

First post here so hello everyone. Great little forum this!

So I am a long time user of Sketchup, and really like the product. I recently discovered Maxwell (and a bunch of other rendering engines). I like Maxwell a lot.

I want to get emitters to work but no matter what I try, its just no good. I have read guides, read this forum, and watch youtube videos, to no avail. So...here is what I will do. I will post screenshots of each step, and hopefully someone can correct an error I am making. From here I will correct the screenshots, and it can be used as a reference point for others with the same issue (it appears a lot of people have this issue!).

So here we go:

Download Sphere from 3D warehouse, and create "black box" for sphere to sit in:

Select Sphere, and then go to window, materials. From here create new material (lets call it "Light Test")

Now we need to apply the Maxwell MXM emitter material to the sphere, so open the Maxwell scene manager:

From the drop down on the first tab, make sure our "Light Test" material is selected, and then select the MXM button:

Now we need to browse for the MXM (emitter) file we want to apply:

You should now have an emitter preview in the scene manager window:

Select the MXM button once more:

Now change the "Type" dropdown under the Character menu to "emitter":

Now select "Assign":

Once done you should be able to do a test render and see light emitting from the sphere (I DONT!!!):