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Introduction

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All three approaches can be useful, even if your plugin fully supports all Maxwell material parameters. For example you may wish to quickly open and edit an MXM file (a Maxwell material file) found on your machine. For this, MXED can be very practical.

 

Noteinfo

While the Material Editor is implemented inside all the compatible plugins, the interface and/or functionality can be different depending on each 3D platform, but the underlying principles remain the same.

The information below shows the main areas of the material editor found in Maxwell Studio and MXED. In your 3D platform the interface may be slightly different.

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The five main areas of the material editor are:

1. Layers Tree

Maxwell Render’s materials are made up of different “components” which are organized into folders (Layers). Each Layer can hold one or more BSDF components (BSDF is the main material definition), plus one Coating (varnish), one Emitter and/or one Displacement component.

Each folder represents a Layer, which are stacked vertically one on top of the other, similar to layers in a 2D image editing application. Please see the Stacking Layers section for more information about this. 

  

The Layers tree

2. Material Preview

This window allows you to get a quick preview of the material while you are editing it. When you are changing your material parameters, double-click in the preview sample image to refresh the preview with the new parameters, or click on the Refresh Preview button (green double-arrow icon). During the preview, the green icon will be replaced by a red square icon, to indicate that it is calculating your preview. 

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  • Scene selections: You can choose a different preview scene from the list, load the Next/Previous scenes in the list or load an MXS to use as a preview scene. The list is populated from the MXS files found in the "preview" folder found in the Maxwell Render install folder. To learn how to create your own preview scenes, see Creating your own preview scenesbelow.
  • Previews: While experimenting with different material settings, the Previews option allows you to store a material "snapshot" of your current settings. Use Store to store the current settings and Remove to remove the currently displayed preview. You can use the white back/forward arrows beneath the preview window to quickly jump between different stored previews.

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Pressing the lock icon in the lower right of the Preview will enable real-time editing of all material settings - the preview will update as soon as you change a setting. Unlock it to return to normal mode - you have to double-click the Refresh Preview button for the preview to refresh.

Choosing which texture to display in the viewport (Maxwell Studio)

Clicking the black/orange squares icon shows a list of the current textures applied to the material. Pick a texture to choose to display it in the viewport in Maxwell Studio. You must set your shading mode to Textured or Textured decal for textures to be shown in the viewport.

Creating your own preview scenes

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Tip
  • Try to make your preview scenes as efficient as possible to get fast previews - for example a simple object and one emitter is usually enough.
  • Use approximately the same scale for your objects in the preview scenes compared to the scale of the objects you plan to use this material on to get a better idea of how it will look on those objects.
  • Create different scenes for different purposes - if you want to see better what a transparent material will look like for example, place something behind it to see how much it refracts the light.

 

 

 

3. BSDF Properties

Contains the parameters to control the main physical behavior for each material component.

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The BSDF properties of a material

4. Surface Properties

Parameters to control the surface properties of a material (mainly the physical roughness or smoothness of the surface itself).

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The Surface properties of a material

5. Subsurface Properties

Parameters to control the internal behavior in case of a translucent material, commonly referred to as Sub-Surface Scattering (SSS). 

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 The Subsurface properties of a material

The Color Picker

When you click on a color chip, the Color Picker opens (in a separate window when using MXED standalone, or the Color Picker panel in Maxwell Studio).

Image Added

The Color Picker panel

To control the Hue: click and drag in the outer circle

To control the Saturation & Value: click and drag in the triangle

The two large color bars beneath the main color wheel let you compare the color that was selected when you clicked the color chip to open the Color Picker (right color) and the new color you've chosen (left color) in case you've edited the color. This lets you make fine adjustments to a color by seeing the old color next to it.

The Pipette icon Image Added lets you pick a color from anywhere in the MXED or Maxwell Studio UI. Click once to activate it, and then select a color.

The color chips on the right let you store your favorite colors. Simply drag & drop the color from one of the two large color bars to one of the color chips to store that color. Click on a color chip to load that color.

You have three color modes available for selecting colors: RGB, Hue Saturation Value (HSV) and xyz.

Material Browser

For information related to the browser panel, please see the Material Browser panel page in the Maxwell Studio section of the manual.