Rhino 5 - Materials
The Materials tab holds a list of all of the Maxwell materials contained in the current scene:
These materials are all saved in the document and may be edited in the Material Editor by double-clicking on their thumbnail.
Context Menu
Several actions are available in this window’s context menu.
| Item | Function |
| New Material | Add a new material (default grey) or emitter to the scene. |
| New Emitter | |
| MXM Browser | Show the MXM Browser page in the plugin's Database Manager. |
| Import MXM | Browse for an MXM file from the file system. |
| MXM Gallery | Browse for an MXM file using Maxwell MXED in MXM Gallery mode. |
| Clone Material | Create a duplicate of the selected materials. |
| Material Wizards | Use a wizard to create a new material. |
| Remove Selected | Remove materials from the scene. |
| Remove Unused | |
| Remove All | |
| Select Assigned Objects | Select objects which use the selected materials. |
| Assign to Selected | Assign the selected material to objects using either pre- or post-selection |
| Select and Assign | |
| Export Selected | Export selected materials to a single library for later use. |
| Import Library | Import a previously-created library of materials. |
| Icon Type | Set the material thumbnail type and size, and specify a sorting method. |
| Icon Sizes | |
| Sort Order |
MXM Gallery Browser
The Maxwell MXED material browser includes a Web tab which is used for browsing the online Maxwell MXM Gallery. Choosing ‘MXM Gallery’ from the Materials context menu shows this dialog, allowing you to search the Maxwell MXM Gallery database without leaving the plugin environment.
To be able to download materials from the MXM gallery, you need to enter your login details in MXED.exe (the standalone material editor found in the Maxwell install folder). See this page in the Knowledgebase on how to enter your login info (FAQ nr 1).
The MXED MXM Gallery Search window looks like this:
When you have located an 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 two places:
- The Alternative folder in Maxwell MXED Preferences, if one has been set.
- [document location]\mxmgallery, if the current document has been saved.
- [documents]\Maxwell\mxmgallery, if the current document has not been saved.
During this process, all files referenced by the newly-downloaded MXM will be placed in a textures folder under the mxmgallery folder. The paths inside of the MXM file will be altered to point to the new location, since many MXMs from the MXM Gallery contain paths which will not exist on your machine.