Archicad/Maxwell PhotoRendering Settings for Physical Sky

[Anonymous]

I am stuck on the settings for Physical Sky located under: PhotoRendering Settings/Maxwell Rendering Engine/Maxwell Environment/Physical Sky as follows:

Latitude/Longitude values: In Google earth for example a latitude is specified in this format: 12°53'46.79"N, where a latitude same format for Longitude, eg: 100°54'10.81"E. In the Archicad/Maxwell settings it allows values from -360 to 360. Although I know it is quite simple, I can't find the definition for how to map the Google type format to the Maxwell format, for example, when would the value be negative? Also the sample values I'm now using taken from a Maxwell doct are -3.68, 40.40, how would this map to the Google earth type values?

Date/Time: The time value goes from 1:00:00 to 12:59:59. There is now way to specify AM or PM that I can see. Seems like it should allow values from 0:00:01 to 23:59:59. How are times such as 4PM specified? 4AM? Is this a bug?

GMT: Understand the GMT is an offset to GMT, but when is it needed? Doesn't the time calculation look at the coordinates to figure out the location/local time so GMT would be needed would it? Also, if it is needed, how is it entered? Let's say for Sacramento, California where time is GMT -8 (PST) how would this be entered? As a -8 or a +8?

I hope someone who is using the Maxwell plug-in and physical sky will answer and if you can refer me to any documentation which covers these that would be appreciated as well as any that I find don't offer any explanation or examples for these particular fields.

[Anonymous]

I just found your entry and would love to hear where you got to with it. I just now determined that I had to enter a negative value for my longitude, otherwise there is no sum at all!

[Anonymous]

I have yet not received any info on this. Seems odd that the interface isn't documented anywhere. Please let me know if you find anything out!

[Anonymous]

You should just check the box to use ArchiCAD's sun position and set your location in ArchiCAD. You can verify your sun matches by doing a couple test renders with a crude sun dial made of a slab and post. The current plug in works fine. It would be - 8 hours in California and longitude is negative. SF is -122°.

However, I have found that if you open the MXS file in Maxwell Studio and try to render the same camera from there, the sun position settings do not import with the file. You need to set the sun position again in Studio. The difference here is that the location is decimal degrees rather than ArchiCAD's degrees/minutes. So you might need to do some math or find your location precisely in decimal degrees on the internet.

You can select a city form the list of cities. I find that there are way too many random cities in the list, so I open the cities.txt file in the maxwell folder and delete all the cities I don't ever care to use. If you want, you can save a backup of the original cities list.

The only other issue to consider is daylight savings time. But I dont worry about it too much as it is doesn't have much relevance to the end result. i just turn it off in ArchiCAD.