SketchUp - Menu and Toolbar

The plugin adds a new Maxwell menu to SketchUp's Plugins menu, and also a new Maxwell toolbar, with commands which duplicate most of those found in the menu. The toolbar looks like this:

Open

Rendering & Export

Open

As a matter of course, rendering always involves exporting data from the SketchUp model into the Maxwell format. Depending on which of the above commands is used, an MXS file may be written to the location specified in the Output page, and subsequently, opened in Maxwell Render, Maxwell Studio, or the Maxwell Network Rendering system, as requested.

When the scene is to be rendered in Maxwell Fire, the exported data will be loaded into memory for rendering. It is possible afterwards, to write an MXS file directly from this data, rather than performing a completely new export from the SketchUp model. This may not always be desired, though, and this is the purpose of the MXS Cache Policy option.

MXM Functions

The MXM browsing functions are basically shortcuts for the following steps:

1. Creating a new SketchUp material

2. Editing that material in the Scene Manager

3. Switching the material to use MXM Mode

4. Linking the material to the chosen MXM file

These steps are what occurs when an MXM file is chosen, either from the local disk, or the Maxwell MXM Gallery.

Browse for an MXM File

This command starts Maxwell MXED in MXM-browsing mode. To choose an MXM file, double-click its thumbnail in the MXED view panel. When this is done, MXED will close, and the plugin will import the selected MXM file into the scene; a new SketchUp material will be created, and its Maxwell attributes will be set up to reference the chosen MXM file.

Browse the MXM Gallery

Similar to the Browse for an MXM file command, but uses MXED in its MXM Gallery Browser mode, allowing you to search for and download an MXM file from Maxwell's online MXM repository, the MXM Gallery. When you have located the MXM you would like to download, simply click the ‘Import’ button in the search window to import the selected MXM file into the Scene. The file will be downloaded and unzipped to one of three places:

1. If there’s an alternative path set in Maxwell MXED Preferences > Materials > MXM Gallery > Alternative Folder, the MXM file and textures will always be saved there.

2. If no alternative folder has been specified in Maxwell MXED, the MXM and its textures will be saved in a folder called “textures” next to the MXS output, which is:

   1. If the SketchUp file has not been saved: <Documents>\Maxwell\output\

   2. If the SketchUp file has been saved and no output folder has been set in the Scene Manager > Output tab: next to the SketchUp file.

   3. If an output folder has been set in the Scene Manager > Output tab: next to the output files.

During this process, all files referenced by the newly-downloaded MXM will be copied to the destination directory, with the paths inside of the MXM file being altered to point to the new file locations, since many MXMs from the MXM Gallery contain paths which will not exist on your machine.

MXM Status Report

Shows a listing of all materials in the scene, along with the status of their MXM links:

MXM files and their directories are shown as hyperlinks; clicking them will open MXM files for editing in Maxwell MXED, or open their location in Windows Explorer or OSX Finder. MXM files that cannot be found are indicated as such.

Light Tools

The plugin offers this small collection of ready-made lights, however, you can create your own lights by assigning light-emitting characters to custom geometry. These are the lights you can create from the toolbar.

Here is the default look of the different lights once inserted in the scene.

When you click on the button on the toolbar, a new component and material are created with the name of the corresponding light (Area Light, HDRI Light, etc.) and subsequent lights of the same type that are created will generate a new component and material and will append a number at the end of the name.

If you want to change the properties of the lights you have created, you have to do so in the corresponding material where you will find all their properties.

You can easily pick the material from a Light object in the viewport by using the SketchUp's Sample Paint picker:

Or using Maxwell’s material picker:

However, in this case, you have to press Alt key (Command key on Mac) to select materials from inside components or groups, so the cursor will change to this (on Mac the cube will look red instead):

If you want to create an instance of one light, you can just drag the same component from the Components tray. The instanced lights will only create one slider in Multilight as they share the same material and will save some memory.

If you want different lights to be controlled by only one slider in Multilight, you can use the Multilight Group field in the Scene Manager > Material tab > Character section of the material. All the lights sharing the same group will be controlled by one slider in Multilight.

Scene & Camera Tools

Scene Manager and Object Properties

The Scene Manager is the main user interface of the plugin, containing tab pages for editing Maxwell Materials, Cameras, Environment settings, Output settings, and global plugin Options. The Object Properties window is used to manage various rendering properties on a per-object basis. The Maxwell Grass, Sea, and Volumetric windows allow for setting up their respective render-time effects.

Select Tool

This command toggles on/off the plugin's Select Tool, which is used to sample materials from entities, and to add or remove them from the current selection set. When the tool is active, it uses the following modifier keys:

• SHIFT: add or remove the picked Group or Component from the selection.

• CTRL /Option (Win/OSX): add or remove the picked Face from the selection.

• ALT /Command (Win/OSX): set the material of the picked Group or Component as current.

• no modifier: set the material of the picked face as current.

Normally, it is necessary to use SketchUp's Paint Bucket tool to accomplish these things; however, it is not possible to use the Paint Bucket without also opening the SketchUp materials window, so you may oftentimes find this plugin tool to be preferable.

Set DOF, Z-Clip, or Z-Buffer

This command prompts for two input points. Depending on keyboard modifiers, these points will be used to set one of the following:

• SHIFT: set the current camera's Z-Clip planes.

• CTRL /Option(Win/OSX): set the Z-Buffer min/max distances.

• no modifier: set the DOF (Depth Of Field) of the current camera, while maintaining its current exposure.

Set Focal Distance

The focal distance of the SketchUp camera moves along with the camera as it is zoomed in and out; this causes objects which are in focus with the camera at one position to come out of focus as the camera is moved to a different position. It is often necessary, therefore, to re-adjust the camera's focal distance, and this is quickly done using the Set Focal Distance tool: just click this button and choose some point in the model.

Note that this Focal Distance is only used when the camera is using Manual focus mode.

Maxwell Grass, Maxwell Sea, Maxwell Volumetric and Maxwell Scatter

These are called "Maxwell Extensions" and this buttons give you the option to add them to your scene. In this dedicated section is explained how to work with them in SketchUp: SketchUp - Extensions

Help & Info

Licensing

This command only appears in the menu when the plugin is not licensed.

If you already have licensed the plugin, but you want to add more licenses, you can do it from Maxwell Render application, from Help menu > Activate License...