I am on OSX , when using the material panel I have to hoover over the materials to see the names of materials slowly popup. With some dozens of shades of grey or whites its a nightmare for daily use. I know this will never change. I will not mention how slow the material panel is in daily use. To think texturing geometry is a major part of the workflow one can imagine SU wil be taken over by an other easy to use modeller sooner than later.

The real development of SU is now in the plugins and extensions. Soon someone will see what is happening and says hé, I can sort of rewrite the whole thing into something more sensible. It would be great if a few of the most talented plugin developers would group together and actually started rewriting and come up with a new 3D application based on what @Last had in mind. I think this is already happening somewere. We all know there is a huge whole in the market. I think all experieced SU users would jump the Google ship and with that users base the new app should not have to be expensive to be profitable.

Francois

I hope Glare will change their policy as they stated and I will have a look again later if the new Maxwell plugin is still not as it should be.

I remember my enthusiasm for Sketchup years back. Once I bought a license there was never any hassle with it. It was all positive energy. I can not image @last back then with Glare's look on licensing.

Some weeks ago I was ready to move over to Skindigo but it is my strong believe that their license policy reflects a character present in Glare Technologies. It takes a certain attitude to hassle your paying users in their disadvantage to make sure you do not loose a penny on the bad guys. Many companies have a decent license policy that does not conflict with the majority of their users. Glare has a good example by SU itself.

I really liked the demo version of Skindigo though. Anyhow, the Maxwell plugin is going to get a major makeover by someone who has gotten good feedback on other plugins for Maxwell so I am with Maxwell still for a while. v2 is a lot faster and I think Maxwell still has a little edge over the other render app's for SU like camera shift, and a very advanced material editor and lots of materials in their public library.
Francois

Hope someone at Google uses a Mac and puts that option under OSX as well. Since I edit the models all the time it does not help to use distinct colors while modeling. I need to see what the model looks like all the time.

Some other issues with the material panel are now under 7.1

1. You can no longer change the height and width in the edit material panel. You can change the numbers though but without any effect
2. the backface of materials behave weird, once assigned its hard or impossible to set them to the default material again.
3. matarials dissapear, workaround is to purse unused.

therr must be more but I am used to the clumsy panel As Einstein said, make it simple but not too simple. The material panel in SU is too simple and does not work simple in daily work with larger models. I would like to see groups of materials within the "in Model" section to make looking for sets easier.

Can anyone help me. I have about a dozen gray colors in my material panel. How can I keep them apart ? I have to hoover my mouse over them to slowely see the names pop up and then assign the appropriate color to my geometry.

Is there a quicker way to work with the material panel, can you turn on the names of the materials to see permanently. I can hardly believe this is the only way to work.
I am on OSX and SU 7.1

Tx Francois

I am trying to take a misplaced texture from the backside of a face by aplying the default texture but nothing happens.
This annoying since I am making some sections were you can actually see the backside of some planes. There is an imagetexture applied to those that are there to stay unless I make a new face. That is a bit too much work in this case.

Anyone else had this problem in 7.1

If Photoshop started like this it would not have gotten as popular.

Now, Skindigo is starting their app like this I am confident to state its the end of it as well.

There are no architects or architectural firms were people work on one system only. All work late, at home or at systems of others. The concept of linking a license to hardware is plain silly and this policy shows fear and bad judgement of Glare.

I would be happy to buy Skindigo but I don't want to invest my time over the next months to master Skindigo knowing its a deadend to start with.

Just imagine yourself before a deadline switching after a crash to a back system and having to wait till Glare decides to provide you a new license. Or you'd like to finish some hours work in the weekend and have to drive back half an hour to the office to get it done. At Glare they assume we are all students since its Sketchup...or that we do not read the license policy before we buy.

and the bug is now back again. Somehow the settings for the width and height of a texture does not work anymore. I never had a problem with this on SU 6.
I am on a Macbookpro, OSX 10.5.8
Francois

Just deleted my p.list preference file and started up again and its all fine again. I can now change the dimensions of textures effectively again. Have no idea what caused the preferences to become corrupted.

Am I doing something wrong or is it 7.1
I am changing the width and or height of a texture in the color-edit material panel but nothing happens. I can not imagine its a bug not seen before. I a must be doing something wrong.
I am on OSX Leopard.
Any help is apreciated much.
Francois

Tx Sheik,
I understand the plugin works with PC's but I have found no one yet who used Maxwell on a Mac. I thought there were a few more. Maybe the recession hit the Mac crowd harder ...

There was a guy who wrote MXM reporter as a plugin and also run into to a coding problem with the path to the MXM library. He solved it somehow. I am afraid at NL they have other priorities right now.
I have several different system and they all have exactly the same problem using autoMXM with the new plugin. If you test it with small files its not a problem but slightly larger files take forever to export were the previous plugin exports within seconds.
Francois

Your license will be a installed-hardware key-code. It just works with one system. If you buy a new computer you need to contact Glare to get a new key .

I asked Glare about this yesterday but have not recieved a reply yet. If I had a deadline I would thus still be waiting for a new key for my backsystem in case I had a crash during a project. Considering timezones, the small size of their company, I can not risk using their hardware keyed app as an important part of our workflow making me depended on their willingness to provide me a new key in time.

For homeuse its fine of course but in an office its obviously a nightmare. We use several computers per person at the office at home and with laptops.

Maybe in your case in does not matter but do not expect Skindigo to become a mainsteam add-on to SU with this kind of license policy.

Francois

I just export with the older version of the plugin and open the file in Studio and so on. Going the Modo way is really not handy, Modo does not import as well as Studio does and the Modo to Maxwell plugin is also not really perfect.

As it is, on OSX you can work with Maxwell 2.0 but with autoMXM on the export is too slow to work with. The only problem you have exporting with the old plugin you can not automatically start Maxwell to render. You have to start the render by Studio.

I had almost gotten Skindigo which I like a lot by the demoversion but they have a major license issue I don't want to be involved in.

Hi,
I had decided to get more into SKindogo and prepared myself for the buy of one license. But as it seems one license means one hardwarekey installed. If you like to use SKindigo on your laptop, or on your system at home you can not. If you buy a new computer you can ask Glare Technologies for a new key, provided for free.

I once bought a Dutch lessons application for my wife a few years ago. That app also worked by a installed hardware key. She first studied in Holland, got a second computer, then one at the school in Leiden, then went back to the Philippines and had a disk crash, came back to Holland and used my laptop and now she sometimes studies at my office on my desktop. Including all she had to email the maker of the app about 7 times to get a new key. In the beginning they sent them within 2 days and now they don't respond anymore due to overload of key requests.

Glare Technologies, change this silly license policy into the usual license key solutions. You will make more money, have more users and look more friendly.

As it is now I will not pay 300 euro's just to be able to use SKIndigo either at home or at the office or at my laptop. I also can not risk a project in case I get a system failure and have to wait (days ?) for a reply from Glare Technologies to sent me a new key for my backup system.

For th rest, SKindigo looks really good.
Francois

I will now have to convince myself spending another 300 euro's in SKIndigo after just spending just that on Maxwell 2.0

I was just hoping someone had it working to save me the money. It might be my system but I seem to be the only one here on the forums with an updated version on OSX-SU.

Yes I did.
They mailed me they are working on it.
I am leaning over to Skindigo. From what I see by the demoversion SKindigo the plugin is mature and much better concieved. But I have a lot of time invested in MAxwell. I will give it a few more weeks and then I will ask Next Limit for a refund because the plugin fails to export. For now I have to advise SU - OSX users not to upgrade to v.2.

I would like to ask anyone here who has the new version of Maxwell v.2 and new plgin working with autoMXM enabled and has an Apple OSX system.

I can't get it to work properly. With autoMXM switched on the export goes very slow. Compared to the old plugin were export was usually a matter of seconds, minutes max with big files. The new plugins takes 50 times longer to export. A file of maybe 5 Mb with lets say 15 textures can take up to hours to export. Under v1.7 of the plugin the same export took less than 20 seconds. If you are patient though the export by itself does render.

I hope someone can help out who also works with Apple OSX and has bought Maxwell v.2

Francois

I just downloaded SKindogo and I am impressed. After working with Maxwell since it came out I think its time for a chance. NL(Maxwell) has a company-character bug that could be described as indifference toward their clients. Maxwell by itself is a rather superb application but the userinterface just does not make sense. That is because they hire the wrong people to do the job. They don't see it themselves and due to the amount of modeling app's they cater to they can not really provide service or decent plugin's update to keep up with the bugs.

I now own the v2 of Maxwell but can not use the appropriate plugin to render with, I have to reinstall the old plugin to export to Studio and render from there. If they had tested this at all on an OSX system they would have fixed it before releasing the update. Another problem is that NL markets Maxwell v2 as something big for a while so you get all excited. It feels like having tickets for a big show and when you have seated yourself to watch it happen a curtain rolls down before your OSX-SU seat that reads sorry we did not expect you here, wait till the next show..... For how many times would you put up with that. I do not give up so easily were I should have quickly moved on. I am going to seriously look into Indigo, tx Kwistenbiebel for showing me your examples. How did you do the trees rendered in SKI ?

By the way Richard, you are right about the rather messy new layout in Studio. even though it is advertised as comletely new and rewritten it still lacks hiärchy. Its hard to find what you need and it is needlessly complicated to work with.

I need Maxwell for all its options to tweek the settings. If you know what you are doing the proces is actually fast. Proxy components, 2 point perspective (shift lens), rather fast till SL 10 which works for me in most cases and its real light simulation.
I can already get a look and feel of how a design will work in natural light. That means I can experiment with dark or light colors, less or more reflective surfaces etc. Other apps are too much a matter of articficial tricks to get good results. Natural light simulation is a bit like having a studio with with handmade actual buildingmodels available.

I got a mail from NL that they are working on the autoMXM issue under OSX. I am sure it must be a simple bug, MXM reporter also ran into a bug in the way OSX writes a path to the library and he fixed it somehow.

Oh, and Richard, for as long as the bugs are not yet resolved, could you set up a different photo for your profile. You look like a its all perfect for you now. We might send the wrong message to Nl ...