Modo plugin - Materials

Our plugin has complex mechanisms to convert modo materials to Maxwell materials automatically. You can set your modo material, adjust its values (transparency, reflectivity, etc.), add your texture images and the plugin creates the Maxwell material for you. It is so easy!

Automatic conversion is good enough in some situations, but for a really high quality render you have to use real Maxwell materials. Maxwell plugin for Modo R2 can handle “*.mxm” material files, so you can use your own Maxwell materials inside modo or you can download material files from the more than 3000 free Maxwell materials you can find on the WEB.

Maxwell MXM item

To handle Maxwell mxm materials inside modo you have to add Maxwell MXM item(s) to your scene. Maxwell MXM is somewhat similar to the Image Map item, but while Image Map connects image clips to the scene materials, Maxwell MXM does the same with mxm files.

Actually the plugin loads the mxm material files into the scene as clip items, and Maxwell MXM represents the mxm file in the Shader Tree and attaches uv maps or texture projection (via Texture Locators) to the textures inside the material file.

You can add Maxwell MXM items to the scene from the plugin window (Load MXM Material button), from the Shader Tree (Add Layer > Maxwell > Maxwell MXM) or you can drag and drop it from the Preset Browser onto a geometry item.

Click on the Add Layer drop-down button to add Maxwell MXM item.

Enable

Enable/disable Maxwell MXM layer.

Render in modo

Set it to ON if you want modo to display Maxwell MXM in preview and final render.

View

Quick display of the mxm material preview thumbnail.

Edit MXM

Opens the mxm file in the Maxwell Material Editor.

MXM file

The mxm file connected to the Maxwell MXM item. With this control you can load other mxm files from your computer (load mxm), download it from Maxwell web catalog (load from Web Gallery) or you can create a new mxm file (new mxm).

Displayed in modo

You can select the material texture you want to display in modo. In the drop-down list you can see the layers and components of the material (bsdf, emitter, displacement, coating) and the available textures with the associated channel numbers. The first item in the list is an automatic proposal from the program (plugin tries to find the most typical texture or color for material display).

Channel Locators

In the Channel Locators area you can see the channel ids of the mxm file and the associated Texture Locators.  With these controls it is very easy to connect Mesh uvs or projected uvs (via Texture Locators) to the Maxwell materials.

You can follow the uv projection changes in the modo preview render window or in any 3D Model viewport with RayGL.

The connection between Maxwell MXM and Maxwell Material Editor is live. It is especially useful if Maxwell FIRE is running and you want to fine tune the material, or if you want to change the uv projection parameters. (In the second case you can follow the changes not just in Maxwell FIRE but in the modo preview window too). After you save the changes in mxed, the material updates automatically inside modo.