All in all I must say I'm pretty happy with the new RC, but there are a few issues that are either not working properly, or I obviously cant grasp.
Hello, thanks for using our software and for your suggestions.
The style editor desperately needs to be able to copy\paste between RC objects, and to be saved as presets.
Agreed. Both features are already in the wishlist.
Style editor needs to behave like the rest of max (and windows) in regards to right-click-canceling, resetting spinners by right clicking, and having the option to minimise the window, and not having it sit on top of any other open window in windows (trying to read something on the net while the style editor is open and covering it).
The style editor runs a separate application from Max, and unfortunately this is the only way to keep it stayed on top of the Max window. If not, some operations will not work properly (as picking objects).
About the spinners, we had to implement manually the Max behaviour, but most of features should work in a similar way, including resetting by right clicking. What parameter exactly doesn't reset ? We will check it.
Is there a reason the style editor is not using the slate material editors interface (with all it's functionality)? Was there some issues preventing it from being used?
Yes, there is a good reason: the slate manager is for internal use only, the interface is not published for third party plugins. Therefore, each plugin developer must write its own node manager. Probably Autodesk will make the slate manager public at some time, but only for new Max releases, not for previous versions.
Initialy, we tried to link our style editor with Max, but we found critical problems because incompatibilities with the libraries we use. Basically, Max uses the same libraries, but different versions for each Max release. A real pain... because this, we implemented the editor in its current way.
I often sit at home working as my own computer is a lot faster than my workstation at work. I use Cisco's AnyConnect to establish a VPN connection, and retrieve all my licenses through it (Max & VRay). This works flawlessly, but RC (running as floating license also), often suddenly tells me it can't find a license after using it for x amount of time, and subsequently either crashes Max, or makes Max hang indefinitely. This is a real show stopper
It's strange because this error seems related with the style editor link, not with the license. Does it fail only when the style editor is open ?
Some times I notice that editing geometry that is already used in my RC objects, doesn't update properly.
This would happen with some specific operations, specially converting the geometry to editable mesh/poly. The reason is that Max creates internally a new object, breaking the existing references. This is a Max limitation, for example the Boolean compound object has the same problem (when using instanced references).
As you pointed out, the workaround is clicking the "Reload Segments" button in the style editor.
The compose node is very confusing. I often want to assemble my parts from its sub parts to maximise the amount of reused geometry, but the compose node seems to think that all objects have to be beside each other
Well, really the Compose operator was designed to work in this way. Instead modifying it, i think would be better to provide suports for groups in Segments. We will think on it.
In general, I am having a hard time getting the Array2s to do what I want it to, and get strange spacings on my parts where there should be none. Maybe some more lib presets made like templates so one can modify the existing temp parts and use ones own?
Did you get the spacing in the X or Y axis ? This may happen when using segments with different Y sizes in a same row. RailClone adjusts the Y size of the row to the largest segment (on Y). Please, post a screenshot or scene to see what is the problem exactly.
On the other side, we are working hard to offer additional RailClone tutorials, to explain this and other features. We will also publish many tips and tricks in the
RailClone blogRandom transformations break segments apart. It would be useful if one could randomly "jitter" segments while still keeping the mesh-continuity to make thinks a little more "rough" (I.e a large curtain wall of glass and steel, where each glass pane is ever so slightly rotated to break up the otherwise mathematically perfect reflections.
Please post a screenshot or scene. It should work fine now... also be sure that "Segment->Random Transform->Transform affects Size" is on.
Make RC read map types like Bercon gradient (for it's random function), and multitex map, or even make your own that does the same, so we can have randomised maps is a more streamlined manner. Making material-clones and using mat-id functionality is quite cumbersome compared to these 2 mentioned.
I should make some tests about it. I will post later.