The plugin implements a custom material editor, which is very similar in operation to Maxwell's MXED standalone material editor:
To open the material editor, click Maxwell > Plugin Windows > Material Editor, or the appropriate button in the plugin’s Tools toolbar. The main difference between the two is that while MXED is used to edit Maxwell MXM files, the plugin's material editor is used to edit embedded plugin materials. To create a new material:
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As such, a Maxwell material in the new Maxwell for Rhino plugin may operate in one of two ways: either linking to an MXM file on your machine, or simply embedded in the Rhino document. To control whether a material behaves as Linked or as Embedded, use the MXM Linking section in the material’s top node in the Material Editor:
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In order for a material to use Linked mode, it is necessary that its source MXM path points to a valid MXM file. The border color of the preview image indicates the MXM link state of the material:
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| Dispersion | This switch enables the calculation of dispersion. Dispersion is the ‘rainbow’ effect seen when light is split based on its different wavelengths as it passes through refractive materials. Enabling this option can raise render times because of the extra math involved in calculating these wavelength-based refractions. |
| Matte | Materials which have this switch enabled will cause the background (i.e. Physical Sky, etc.) to show through all geometry where the objects they are assigned to are seen by the camera. This can be useful for creating composite images. |
| Shadow | Materials which have this switch enabled will have the objects they are assigned to casting shadows when the Shadow channel is rendered (see Output > Render Channels > Shadow). |
| Material ID Color | This is the color which will be used for this material when the Material ID channel is rendered. |
| Custom Alphas | A comma-separated list of Custom Alpha channels, in which objects using this material will be included. |
Layer Page
The operation of this page is similar to that of the Layer page in MXED. As a shortcut, the Layer Blending parameter may be set either by using the drop-down list in this page, or by clicking the small A/D toggle in the Material Editor Layers Tree.
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