I don’t know if it’s a bug or not but I have a .sdl shader on my desktop along with a .tx file (that where I saved my scene) and I put the dir of both those files in the maxtor additional paths and still the maxtor material can’t find those files (but it renders out fine).
EDIT: Nevermind, it seems the newest version fixed it. 
EDIT 2: I think it would be useful if we could somehow rotate the sphere in the material preview so we can see it from all sides.
Good to know 
EDIT 2: I think it would be useful if we could somehow rotate the sphere in the material preview so we can see it from all sides.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this will be possible with the current system. If you want to see it from other angles, you’ll have to assign it to a scene object and render.
(AFAIK Slim, Liquid, Shaderman, etc don’t support this either.)
Scorpion, first of all, congratulations on your excellent work and for sharing this. Your work as opened my mind to start looking at Renderman and maybe try to integrate it in production, the thing is, we have our pipeline assembled in 64 bit workstations, Max 9 64 bit… which to my sorrow doens’t work with your script. Do you have plans to port it to 64 bit? I sure hope so!
Keep up the good job!
hmm seems I keep getting a maxscript error, when I open Max9 after installing MaxToR The script opens maxtor_ui.mcr, highlights the line “local opts = maxToR_options()” and gives “–Type error: Call needs function or class, got: undefined” for the error
Hmm, that’s strange. How long ago did you download MaxToR? Does downloading the latest version fix it? I will investigate to see if I can reproduce the error.
EDIT: Dunno, I can’t seem to reproduce your error. Does anyone else have such issues?
Kameleon,
Thanks for the comment. I do actually have a 64 bit compiled binary for the plugin, named “maxtor_util_x64.dlx” in the base folder of the zip. While I’ve compiled it, it hasn’t actually been tested, as I don’t have access to 64 bit windows at the moment. Did you give that file a try?
Ok, new release!
The maxtor globals now have a new rollout “Shadow maps” for configuring [deep] shadow map settings.
The most important setting is “Recompute shadowmaps”. If this is on, it will always compute shadowmaps, and if it is off, it will reuse existing maps, and if an appropriate one cannot be found, it will generate one.
This will save you heaps of time when you are tweaking the lighting/shading in your scene and you are doing many renders, potentially from different camera angles, without constantly recalculating the (potentially expensive) shadow map each render.
Some settings from the light mod have been moved to this rollout, so you can quickly set a DSM driver for all the lights instead of going through each one manually. (As likely the dsm driver and channels won’t change on a per-light basis.)
Available now.
EDIT: And a little bug fix is up now.
Hi
well a few ideas, could be posible to select the background color for the rendering, like in max going to enviroment and changing the background color, could be that posible?
and the other thing could be, if its were posible to put maxtor in the renderer selector, were you select mentaray or another renderer you have intalled, instead in an script window?
another thing, nothing from maxtor, but anyone know how i can delete my acount from here? i contected cgtalk and they never respond
thanks
That would be possible via an imager shader, though I don’t think there’s anyway of specifying one at the moment through the UI.
and the other thing could be, if its were posible to put maxtor in the renderer selector, were you select mentaray or another renderer you have intalled, instead in an script window?
That’s only possible with the pure C++ implementation of the plugin.
another thing, nothing from maxtor, but anyone know how i can delete my acount from here? i contected cgtalk and they never respond
thanks
Errm, you might try the Support forum.
I just tried the latest off your site & still get the same error. A workaround for me is to evaluate the line “local opts = maxToR_options()” after okaying all the error popups, then everything works fine. I’m guessing maybe that at the time maxtor_ui.mcr is run the script that declares maxToR_options() hasnt been run on my system?
[edit] right, I had maxtor as a button on my main toolbar, after deleting that button and putting it in as a menu item instead the error has gone…
Ah! I never tried it as a button. Thanks for letting me know it causes problems. Will investigate it
A new release is up fixing some minor bugs. This release is not vital, but it does fix some stuff.
EDIT: Ah, thanks for reporting the issue Chris! It should now be fixed in the latest version.
Hold up, maybe not, let me test it a bit more.
Ok, give it a try now. Let me know if you have any problems.
Hey scorpion, I’ve sucessefully installed your plugin and it seems to work fine as far as I can… work with it lol I just have some troubles with 3DElight license, sometimes it hangs saying all licenses are taken… dunno why. Anyhow I’ve notices something maybe you could fix/change that would help newbies in RM… in the Maxtor Material, maybe you could filter the extensions because actually I dont know what to put there and a filter would help on the “fire and forget” method lol Well, congrats once again, and if you need help on testing anything in Max 9 64, just gimme a pm or something, I’m running a dual quad core, xp 64, max 9 64 bit, 8 gigs of ram, geforce 8800. Cya!
Damn you have a crappy computer. Mind giving it to me to play with for a while? 
Anyhow, glad you got it working. Is this in 64 bit? (I’m guessing it is). Thats excellent news.
However, there are some bugs which I’m trying to resolve at the moment, so you may come across them. I’ll let you know when I update it.
Now, regarding the file extensions on the material picker, I can’t really do it as all renderer’s have their own shader extensions. Of course, I only support 3dl at the moment, but I don’t want to restrict myself in the future.
I did mention some tips when I first released the material plugin, but I’ll write all the extensions here:
3Delight: .sdl
Aqsis: .slx
Pixie: .sdr
PRMan: .slo
So at the moment, you’ll want to select the .sdl files (for 3delight). Note that you will get an error message anyway if you try to pick an invalid shader.
EDIT: Ok, uploaded an updated version. Hopefully this fixes some bugs.
Just thought I’d let you know, i popped that new release on one of the machines exibiting the button problem & it seems to have gone, nice one!
Chris, great news Thanks. The newest version (just uploaded) should fix some material bugs, BTW. Just letting you know, so before you report anything, try the newest release. 
Hey, thanks for the info, I didnt knew about the different file extensions, in that case, you are totally correct! Anyway, I had some problems with the maxtor material, got class undefined or something, but I’m going to try the new version and I’ll let you know if this is fixed. Another thing is that I cant get shaderman to work… cant render the shaders, but i’ll figure something Cya
Edit: One thing you could try to do is an update button, it would be more easier to update your fixes and patches, update, restart Max and voilá! Since you do alooooot of updates (and that’s good!)
Edit 2:The Maxtor_Material is now fixed and working on Max 9 x64!
Edit 3: Lol, always editing… but I’ve remembered something, yesterday when trying this for the first time, I’ve created a plane and then a sphere, and selected Base to pivot, but it seems the translation to rib doesnt work very well in this case because the sphere appears as if it had base to pivot turned off, I even tried converting to edit poly but the problem remained the same.
Did you have a look at the instructions I posted before on how to set up shaderman?
EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot to mention, did you have a look at all the shaders 3delight comes with? Should be a fair bit to start you off (in $DELIGHT/shaders IIRC)
Edit: One thing you could try to do is an update button, it would be more easier to update your fixes and patches, update, restart Max and voilá! Since you do alooooot of updates (and that's good!)
Hmm… That would be kind of tricky, since I often move files around, and do non-trivial changes (I.e. not just change a few lines of code here and there) with every update. I’ll have to think about it though. (There’s also the issue of people not having an internet connection on their workstation, etc).
Edit 2:The Maxtor_Material is now fixed and working on Max 9 x64!
Sweet! Good to know, having never used 64 bit max myself. :)
EDIT: Re: the sphere issue. I just tried it, works for me:
Could you post the steps you took to encounter the issue, so I can reproduce them?
EDIT2: Also, regarding the 3delight licensing, you’ll be able to get a better answer from the 3delight team, but IIRC one license lets you run 2 processes/threads. Since you have 8 cores (dual quad-core), I think you need 4 licenses to utilize them all. But you should ask DNA for the facts.
Well, I do exactly the same thing, and it doesnt work, it works on the viewport but not in the render and I’ve tryied with a normal sphere and RiSphere, both dont work. Another thing is that the shaders dont seem to work, they render black, although it renders well in the Maxtor Material… weird 
Do you have a light in the scene? You need one if you have shaders with an illuminance() loop.
Can you send me your scene for the sphere thing? I’d like to have a look. (Also, make sure you’re not using old archives, tick “Delete old archives” and see if that fixes it)
Well, it works now but it’s kind of random, anyway, here’s the file. About the shaders, the light solved the case… my bad sorry, I really dont know anything about RM.