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You can open this dialog from the 3D Visualization palette or from the menu Options > Element Attributes > Material.


There are 2 separate mechanisms for handling materials:

Automatic conversion of native ARCHICAD materials to Maxwell materials

  • Emitter materials are converted to emitters

  • Materials with transparency are converted to transparent materials

  • Materials with shininess are converted to plastic materials

  • Other materials are converted to diffuse materials

  • Textures are supported

Maxwell MXM materials as special parameters of native ARCHICAD materials

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Tip

It is possible (and advisable) to use Maxwell MXM materials (stored as separate files) with ARCHICAD projects. There is an extensive library of MXM materials distributed with the Maxwell rendering engine or you can easily create your own materials.

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Dielectric material - typically any transparent material such as water, glass, etc. Please see the Transmissive Properties properties page in the Maxwell documentation for more details.

  • Nd: index of refraction

  • Distance: attenuation distance in millimeters - half of the light is being absorbed when it passes through the given distance of the material.

  • Smaller
  • A smaller attenuation distance means the material will turn opaque faster.

Emitter

Light-emitting material (must be applied to an object which will act as the light source). Please see the Lighting with Emitters page in the Maxwell documentation for more details.

  • Watts: the power of the light

  • Efficiency: the efficiency of the light source (how much power is actually used to emit light).

  • Temperature: the temperature of the emitter (in Kelvins). If the checkbox is off the color of the emitter is taken from ARCHICAD's emission color control

  • Presets: presets for typical emitters from the real world

Material browser

The material browser is used for loading Maxwell MXM materials into the material dialog of ARCHICAD. The Browser allows for quick and easy location of desired materials even you have many MXM files on disk. The Browser view contains individual previews of MXM materials and sub-folders of the specified location. You can enter the sub-folder by double-clicking on it.

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WEB Gallery

From the MXM Material Browser you can easily connect to the MXM gallery server and choose from thousands of materials made by other Maxwell users. After you click on the WEB Gallery button the plugin opens the MXM Gallery database. You can read about it more at Resources Browser Panel (see text under Browsing the MXM Gallery (Web tab)).

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