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The buttons on the left do not change, and they have the following functions:
| Button | Function |
|---|---|
| Enable Real-time materials | When this button is enabled, the plugin will adjust the viewport appearance of materials in real-time as they are modified in the Material Editor. If it is not enabled, the plugin will not alter the appearance of objects in the viewport. |
| Refresh Viewport materials | For various reasons, it may occur that the viewport appearance of Maxwell materials may become unsynchronized. When this happens, or when ‘Enable Real-time materials’ is not enabled, using this button will bring the viewport up to date. |
The Database Manager window contains seven pages, which are accessed using the buttons contained in the bottom toolbar:
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The first button shows the plugin's MXM Browser which is used for importing and exporting Maxwell MXM files. The remaining buttons show Catalog pages, each one storing a specific type of component, i.e. BSDFs, Emitters, etc.
MXM Browser
The MXM Browser, shown above, is unique among these pages. It contains:
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MXM files may be imported by dragging them from the thumbnail-view into either the Rhino viewport, or the Scene Manager’s materials page. Additionally, multiple MXM files may be imported by windowing them in the thumbnail view, or by dragging an entire folder from the folder-tree into the Scene Manager’s materials page. materials may also be exported from the scene as MXM files by dragging them from the Scene Manager’s materials page into the thumbnail-view of the MXM Browser.
Catalogs
The other pages are all similar to one another, with each storing one of the following: Layers, BSDFs, Coatings, Emitters, Displacements, and Textures. At the top of each page is a Catalog node. In addition to the single, permanent Catalog node, each page can contain variable numbers of two other node types:
| Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Volume | Volume nodes contain other Volume nodes, or Component nodes. |
| Component | Component nodes represent individual BSDFs, Emitters, etc. |
Shown below is the BSDF Catalog page, with three Volume nodes, each containing two or three BSDF Components.
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