Food4Rhino

The second public release of my plug-in to interface Maxwell Render in Grasshopper.

This library for Grasshopper currently exposes components in five groups:

IO

• mxBake. Bakes Grasshopper geometry with Maxwell materials. When connecting to this component nothing will happen. Bake this component with the Grasshopper menus to bake.
• mxmBake. Saves materials to MXM files.
• mList. Gets all the current materials from the Maxwell scene manager. You can use this list if you don't want to create your own materials but bake materials to your Grasshopper geometry.

Materials

• mxDiffuseMaterial. Creates a Maxwell material from diffuse reflectance colors.
• mxEmitterMaterial. Creates a Maxwell material that has emitter properties. Inputs are emitter color, power and efficacy.
• mxBasicMaterial. Creates a Mawell material that exposes all basic properties of a single BSDF layer.

Params (this section is mainly for internal use)

• mxMat. A collection of maxwell materials.
• mxTex. A collection of generic texture slots. The textures represent the slot that controls i.e. Reflectance or Bump color/texture in the material editor.

Components

• mxTexSimple. Use to combine texture files with alternative colors or values or set the tiling properties of the texture.
• mxTex. Exposes all parameters you get when doubleclicking the texture patch in the material editor.

Special

• mxTexView. Displays the texture and its connected properties. You can use this to verify your texture slots.
• mxRoot. Exposes the main paths of Maxwell Render.
• Folder. Searches a folder for all the files matching asearch pattern.
• Split. Splits a path into the components path, filename, extension.

Generic

In addition to the Maxwell Components, Scarab now has some Components, that work without Maxwell Render present.

• CreateBitmap. Creates a Bitmap from a list of Color values.
• SaveBitmap. Saves the Bitmap to disk.
• Viewports. Lists all present Rhino Viewports.
• Decompose. Extract all parameters of the Viewport.
• ModifyViewport. Change the parameters of a given Viewport. If no Viewport is specified, Scarab will create a new tabbed Viewport with the given name.
• SaveView. Capture a screenshot of the given Viewport and save it to disk.
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I have tested this project, but it is the first release and it might contain still bugs. Please use it "as is", it does not come with warranties. I spent a lot of time developing the logic and implementing it, please give credit where credit is due. This component is neither a product of nor officially supported by NextLimit.

To install:

• In Grasshopper, choose File > Special Folders > Components folder. Save the gha file there.
• Right-click the file > Properties > make sure there is no "blocked" text
• Restart Rhino and Grasshopper

You need to run Maxwell Render by NextLimit in order to use this component. The plugin is compiled for version 2.7.0 and the Maxwell for Rhino Plugin 2.7.20. If you are running the 32bit Versions, you might experience problems. Be sure to contact me in this case.

- Hannes