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The following discusses how MXS files are written and therefore pertains only to the Render Suite plugin. |
| Note |
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When exporting MXS files, do not use File > Export > 3D Model. The ability to do this is added by the plugin's C++ exporter, but it is intended to be used not directly, but rather by the plugin itself, after data in the model has been synchronized. Instead, use the menu & toolbar functions specifically provided for exporting MXS files: Export MXS, Export to Studio, etc. |
Instances
By default, the plugin's Use Instances option is enabled. This is a good thing, since SketchUp is still a 32-bit application, and can therefore use a maximum of 2GB of memory. Instances can drastically reduce the amount of memory required to export a model; additionally, they also enable Maxwell Render to use less memory at render time, though this is not as important, since Maxwell is offered in a 64-bit version, which effectively has no memory limit.
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The MXS format requires that objects each be given unique names. As such, objects in the MXS are named for their corresponding SketchUp entity, along with a bracketed number:
<Component#1> [1.2.1.19]
The bracketed number encodes information about how the object was exported. The first number indicates how faces were separated, where:
Number | Separation By |
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0 | None |
1 | Face |
2 | Material |
<Component#1>, then, was exported with its Separate by Face flag enabled. The second number indicates if UV coordinates were overridden, where:
Number | UV Coordinates |
|---|---|
0 | Default SketchUp |
1 | Ignore Distortion |
2 | Cubic |
3 | Planar |
4 | Spherical |
5 | Camera |
<Component#1> was exported, then, using Cubic UV coordinates. The third number deals with situations in which multiple copies of the same entity are exported, and indicates with which copy any given object corresponds; this, then, was the second copy of <Component#1> to be exported (numbering starts at 0).
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Materials in an MXS are also required to have unique names. In an MXS, you may find more than one copy of the same SketchUp material, where the SketchUp material name has been changed, similar to this:
Material [5]
Material here corresponds to SketchUp's name for the material, and [5] to the index of the material's texture inside of the SketchUp TextureWriter, which is a SketchUp API tool used by plugin code to obtain unique textures for faces which require them.
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