X-Rite AxF Material

Owned by Next Limit
Last updated: 06 Jun, 2017
2 min read

Appearance Exchange Format (AxF™)

AxF is the foundational component of X-Rite’s Total Appearance Capture (TAC™) Ecosystem. The AxF files are used to define, store and transfer digital materials between other components of the TAC Ecosystem which create, store, edit, communicate or present visualizations. In a typical TAC workflow:

  •  Physical material samples are scanned (TAC7 Scanner or X-Rite Scanning Service) to measure and create highly realistic and accurate digital materials specifications in AxF.
  • Alternatively, existing AxF files can be accessed from digital material catalogs such as the PantoneLIVE Cloud.
  • AxF files are stored and managed in the PANTORA™ Digital Material Hub and can be distributed from there to Digital Material rendering cores, plug-in integrations with third-party 3D rendering systems.

In order to use AxF materials, you need to create a new AxF material from scratch by selecting the Type on creation or change a material's Type to Xrite AxF material.

 

AxF Parameters

The simple panel has 4 parameters you need to define. File is the path to AxF file. Textures Path is the path for extracting textures embedded inside your AxF file. You could point to a temporary directory or a network path for avoiding problems if you are using network rendering. Scale X and Scale Y are there for defining the amount of texture tiling depending on your application purpose. Higher values will tile more and make the texture detail smaller. Maxwell Render internally translates AxF materials to its own material system so, you can hit Convert to Advanced button to have it converted to a Custom Material and make further tweaking when necessary.