Maxwell Render for Sketchup

There are two main types of lighting used in Maxwell Render: Environmental and Physical.

Environmental Lighting

This type of lighting, which contributes globally to lighting the rendered image, may use one of four types: Sky Dome, Physical Sky, Image Based, and None. Environmental lighting is set up in the plugin using the Environment tab in the plugin's Scene Manager window.

Physical Lighting

This type of lighting is concerned with the creation and use of individual emitters; in Maxwell, emitters consist of geometry which has been assigned an emitter material. The basic steps involved in creating an example rectangular light, then, are these:

1. Draw a plane.
2. Select a material, as described here.
3. Set the material to use an emitter Character type.
4. Assign this material to the plane.
5. Render the scene.

The geometry determines the physical position and directionality of the light, while the emitter material determines the nature of the light that is emitted from that geometry. Besides for these creation steps, there are two main factors to consider:

Surface Normals

In Maxwell, light is emitted according to the normals of the mesh in question. In SketchUp, the normals point in the direction of a face's front material, so use SketchUp's right-click > Reverse Faces command if necessary. Since this alters the geometry physically, it is necessary to use the Re-export Scene function in Maxwell Fire, before changes will be reflected in the rendering.

Emitter Power

Since Maxwell is physically correct, it is necessary to ensure that you provide it with realistic model. This includes both the overall scale of the scene, and the values given to the power-related parameters of emitter materials. Since the output of an emitter is spread across the surface of the mesh to which it is assigned, modeling at too-large or too-small of a scale will result in lights which shine too weakly or too strongly.

You can reactivate your license up to 2 times on different computers (unlimited times on the same computer)- by simply repeating the license activation process on the new machine as described here

Whenever there is an image available to save, the Maxwell Fire window's Save Image button will be enabled (it is the fourth one in the following image, with a blue 'disk' icon):

Clicking this button will bring up the Save Image dialog box. To save your image, it is necessary to enter the file name you wish to use, optionally including an extension indicating the type of image to save (i.e. image.jpg, image.png, etc). The available formats are:

• .bmp
• .tga|.targa
• .jpg|.jpeg
• .png
• .tif|.tiff
• .jp2
• .ppm
• .pbm
• .pgm

If no extension is specified, the image will be saved as .png.

If SketchUp crashes when you try to render in Maxwell Fire, it is likely that you have run out of memory. This can be checked by using Task Manager on Windows, and Activity Monitor on OSX. Likely causes for such crashes include very large models, the use of very large textures (especially HDRIs in Image Based Environment), and the application of Maxwell Grass to large planes.

If you experience a crash which does not seem related to memory, first ensure that you are using an up-to-date plugin. The current version is always available for download here. Otherwise, it will be necessary for the development team to investigate. To do that, we will need a copy of your SketchUp file, along with any related files (textures, etc) that it references. Once you have gathered these materials, you should log into your https://portal.nextlimit.account and file a support ticket.

The Standalone Maxwell for SketchUp plugin does not support animation.

The Render Suite Maxwell for SketchUp plugin can be used to produce animations, provided that you have a way of creating multiple scenes in your SketchUp file, where each corresponds to a frame in the animation. There are 3rd-party animation plugins for SketchUp which produce animations this way. If you have such a file, when you export an MXS, each Scene will be exported as an individual camera; this is just how the export works. When that is the case, you can render an animation from your exported MXS by scripting Maxwell Render. Here is an example script that does this:

// This script loops through a set of cameras, specified by name and
// index. It must be customized to fit the characteristics of the given
// MXS file. As set up, it expects to find the MXS filled with cameras
// whose names begin with 'Scene '. This base name is stored below
// in the 'baseName' variable. It expects the scene numbers to begin
// at 1 and to end at 3, with these limits being stored below in the
// 'firstFrame' and 'lastFrame' variables. It will loop through the frame
// range looking for cameras which fit the pattern 'Scene 1', rendering
// each one as it is found.

var firstFrame = 1;
var lastFrame = 3;
var baseName = "Scene ";

// internal vars & events

var isRendering = 0;
var currentFrame = firstFrame;
var outputFolder = FileManager.getFileFolder(Scene.mxsPath);
RenderEvents["renderFinished()"].connect(renderHasFinished);

// render loop

while (currentFrame <= lastFrame)
{
  renderCamera(currentFrame);
  while(1)
  {
    if(isRendering == 0)
    {
        break;
    }
  }
  currentFrame++;
}

// functions

function renderCamera(frameNumber)
{
  var sceneName = baseName + frameNumber;
  Mxi.setActiveCamera(sceneName);
  if (Mxi.activeCameraName != sceneName)
  {
    Maxwell.print("The MXS contains no camera named '" + sceneName + "'!");
  }
  else
  {
    Maxwell.print("rendering Scene: " + sceneName);
    Scene.setMxiPath(outputFolder +  "\" + sceneName + ".mxi");
    Scene.setImagePath(outputFolder + "\" + sceneName + ".png");    
    isRendering = 1;
    Maxwell.startRender();
  }
}

function renderHasFinished()
{
  isRendering = 0;
  Maxwell.print("Render finished!!");
}

To use this script, you would either save it as an .ms (Maxwell Script) file, and load that file into Maxwell Render, or you directly copy, paste, and run it, directly in the Maxwell Render Script panel.