Interface and Layouts
The Maxwell Studio interface consists of these main components: the Menu bar, the Toolbar, the Panels, the Dock and the Info bar. The toolbar and the panels can be customized and their size, placement and visibility can be changed. All the panels can be minimized to the dock for easy access.
Component | Function |
|---|---|
Menu bar | It gives you access to all the commands available in Studio in an organized way through nine different menus. |
Toolbar | It provides easy access to the most commonly used tools through different buttons. |
Panels | Each of them shows and allows for interacting with specific aspects of the 3D scene, like the environment, general settings, lights, materials, cameras, objects, viewports, the interactive previews,... |
Dock | It allows docking all the panels mentioned above; it's a quick way of having the panels at hand without crowding the layout. |
Info bar | Shows relevant messages related to the user actions in the 3D scene. |
High-resolution screens
The interface in Maxwell 5 will automatically scale to adapt to 4K or higher resolution screens, avoiding tiny texts, icons or menus.
Customizing the layout
Maxwell Studio’s layout is fully customizable. To open or close any of the panels you can either go to the Window menu and switch it on or off, or right-click on the header of any open panel and choose the panels from the menu.
Example of a panel header
Button | Function |
|---|---|
Toggles horizontal and vertical panel disposition of the panel (only available in Attributes panel and Material Editor panels). | |
Attaches or detaches the panel from the layout, making it embedded or floating respectively. | |
Minimizes the panel to the dock. | |
Closes de panel (only available in the Viewports and the Interactive Preview panels). |
Moving and docking panels
Panels can be moved to another place by clicking their header and simply dragging & dropping them in another area of the layout. The layout will automatically re-shape to allocate the new window giving you a preview of where it will be placed. This makes it very fast and easy to configure a layout.
Docking a panel
Creating tabs out of panels
Panels can be grouped together in tabs by dragging and dropping a panel on top of another panel, allowing you to easily switch between panels by clicking on their tabs. Some tabbed panels will switch automatically. For example, if you tab the Material Editor together with Materials panel, the tab will switch automatically to the Material Editor tab when you click on a material in the Materials panel.
Combining the Material Editor with the Materials panel to create tabs
Detach a panel
Panels can be detached from the main layout by clicking the attach/detach toggle button in the title bar. In order to put it back to the same place, you only have to click the attach/detach button.
Resizing a panel
You can resize a panel by clicking on its border and dragging it. When you move the mouse close to a border the cursor will change to indicate that you can click/drag to resize it.
Opening a new floating panel
Open the Window menu and choose which panel you wish to open as a floating panel. If the panel was previously part of the layout but had been closed, it will instead re-appear where it was placed last in the layout. All of the panels are unique except for the Viewports, which you can open as many as you wish by using the New Viewport button in the toolbar, pressing Ctrl+1 (or Command on MacOS) or using the Window menu.
Removing a panel
Panels can be removed by clicking the cross icon. The layout always reconfigures automatically, expanding or stretching the other panels.
Splitting a panel
Panels are flexible and can be split horizontally or vertically by dragging and dropping another panel on them. This allows new panels to be added to the layout. This is the usual way to build a new layout.
Rearranging the interface demonstration
Saving and loading your layout
Saving a layout
Once you are happy with your custom layout, save it using the Save layout option in the Window menu. The file will be saved as a .stlay file (stands for Studio layout file). It is recommended to save your layout files in the Maxwell > layouts directory so they are available in the layout switch dropdown - see below.
Opening a layout
Click the Load Layout option from the Window menu and navigate to the folder containing the .stlay file.
Quick switching between layouts
You can quickly switch between different layouts by using the drop-down list located in the top row of buttons. You can also switch layouts using Window > Layout, choosing from the list of available layouts.
Make sure to save your custom layouts in the Maxwell > layouts directory on your computer so that they appear in the list. You need to restart Studio for a newly saved layout to appear in the list.
Setting a custom layout as default
Saving any layout as “defaultlayout.stlay” to the Maxwell/layouts folder will make it the default layout when Studio is launched. It is recommended that you first rename the “defaultlayout.stlay” file in the Maxwell folder if you later wish to reload the original default layout.
A set of layouts comes in a layout folder with the Maxwell installation. These layouts are focused on various specific uses of the software, like mapping, rendering or editing.