Render error messages FAQs

This is a list of error messages seen in the Console panel in Maxwell Render. If the Console panel is not visible, make sure it's checked in Window>Console.

1. "There are no light sources in the scene (emitters, sky, IBL). The render will be black"

Maxwell needs at least one light source to be able to render. If you get this message, it means that your scene doesn't contain any emitters (or environment lighting). Check your scene and enable environment lighting or include emitters.

2. "Object [...] is not an emitter but has triangles with an emitter material applied to it"

In Maxwell, an emitter material must be applied to the entire object, it can not be a multi-material object. Make sure you apply your emitter material to the entire object and that the object doesn't have any other materials applied to a sub selection of polygons/triangles. Regular objects can have multi-materials.

3. "ERROR: Maximum number of licenses reached. Render cannot continue"

Deselect all the network ports you are not using on the computers and try again. You can do this in System Preferences/ Network. Leave only those that you are currently using activated.

A computer with a double connection (NIC card plus the wireless card), internally has two different IP. So, the license system recognizes two different IPs for your computer, interpreting it as two different computers, and the license system thinks that Maxwell is being used on more computers, and displays the "Maximum number of licenses reached" message.

To avoid any kind of problems related to this, each computer must be connected just by one way (NIC or wireless) to avoid assigning several IPs to the same computer, and risk getting this error even though you have a sufficient number of licenses.

4. "File /tmp/mxs/xxxx cannot be read"

This message means that Maxwell is trying to read a MXS file and it can not understand it. This is caused by the export plugin you are using, which may be newer than your running Maxwell version, so the plugin produces a MXS file that your Maxwell version (older) can not understand. We also highly recommend to avoid special characters in your filenames and scenenames as these can cause problems on different systems.

If you've recently upgraded your plug-in, make sure you've also upgraded Maxwell. You will usually find in the plug-in release info, which version of Maxwell the plug-in is compatible with.

You will find the latest versions from our Download Area (through the Customer Gateway). The latest version of Maxwell is also there.

5. "UVW channels (2) on object "myobject" not enough for material "mymaterial"

You will get this error message if the object does not have enough UV channels to render the material applied to it. In Maxwell Render, UV channels (UV sets) start from 0. This means that, if an object only has one set of UVs, but you apply a material which has a texture that uses UV channel 1, the object needs to have two sets of UV channels (0 and 1).

If your object only has one UV channel, make sure all textures (diffuse, bump, weightmap etc.) are set to use the projector channel 0 in the Texture Picker.

If the material requires two or or more UV channels, add these extra UV channels to the object the material is applied to in your main application, or in Maxwell Studio from the UV sets section of the Object parameters panel. For more details see the Working with UV sets and textures page in the Maxwell Documentation section.

6. "ERROR: - File "xxxxxxxxxxxxx" has not been found. Render cannot continue."

This means that a file (a texture, an IOR file, a IES file etc.) has not been found in the path specified in a material or the Image Based Lighting environment. Take note of the filename and filetype and make sure the file is actually where it is supposed to be.

MXED/Maxwell Render/Maxwell Studio will look in the following paths to find the textures of a material:

in the same folder where the MXM is located
in a 'textures' subfolder where the MXM is located
in the project folder (ie where the MXS file is located)
in the texture paths specified in Maxwell Render/ Maxwell Studio preferences. To set these paths, go to:
- File>Preferences>Paths (both in Maxwell Render and in Maxwell Studio)

This means that even if the texture isn't actually in the path specified in the material (for example you are using a downloaded material where the texture path is only relevant to that users computer, and not yours) you can still place the texture in one of the paths specified above, and Studio/Maxwell will still find it and the render can run normally.