[nicole]

Hi everyone,

We are pleased to announce plug-in updates for 3dsMax, Maya for Windows and Lightwave for Windows. The following improvements and fixes have been implemented:

3dsMax Version 1.5.6
-------------------------------

- Offset range for image-based environment textures has been changed to [0, 100].
- Wrong colors for MXM previews in the material library browser have been fixed.
- Loading IOR and MXI files in the Maxwell material UI has been fixed.
- Range for film offset fixed to be [-100, 100].
- A crash when loading scenes saved with the 1.1 plug-in has been fixed.
- An error message when clicking on "Maxwell Material" in the Material/Map browser fixed.
- A crash when navigating texmaps using the "go to sibling" button has been fixed.
- The Maxwell material attribute names no longer contain spaces so they are easier to use
in MaxScript.
- The Z clip distances are now correctly converted to meters.
- Bad mapping of the illumination environment channel has been fixed.
- The plug-in no longer attempts to export meshes with 0 polygons or vertices, it simply
skips them.
- The start-up directory for the material browser can now be configured in the preferences
panel.
- The pinkish tint that Maxwell materials had in the viewport has been fixed.
- The "Matte" and "Shadow" attributes are no longer disabled when switching off BSDF.
- A problem with roughness textures not being saved has been fixed.
- A problem that caused MXI files to be created everywhere has been fixed.
- Motion blur is disabled. This feature will be re-enabled in a future update of MXCL.


Maya Version 1.5.5 for Windows
--------------------------------------------

- The glass wizard has been updated to match MXED 1.5.
- The MXI path is now always set to prevent MXCL from writing MXI files everywhere.
- Motion blur is disabled. This feature will be re-enabled in a future update of MXCL.
- New projects could not be created because the Maxwell exporter was called "Maxwell Scene".

The space has been removed, so now it is "MaxwellScene". Please note that if you have exported a scene and saved it, when trying to export it again with this plug-in you may get an error about "MaxwellScene" not being recognized. If this happens, select any other format in the "Files of type" dropdown, then select "MaxwellScene" again (without exporting in between).


Lightwave Version 1.5.8 for Windows
----------------------------------------------------

- Minor cosmetic errors in the shader panel have been fixed.
- The glass material preset has been fixed.
- The AGS material preset has been fixed.
- The exporter now skips polygons with less than 3 vertices instead of reporting the mesh as invalid. As a result, skelegons should no longer cause the export to fail.
- The rotary shutter custom camera attributes have been removed. This information is now taken from the native Lightwave camera attributes.
- The "Save MXI" render option has been removed as 1.5 always saves MXI files (the "MXI Path" setting is still available).
- A bug that rendered the Maxwell shader panel unusable in 64-bit builds has been fixed.
- A bug that caused MXI files to be created all over the place has been fixed.
- A bug that caused invalid UVs to be exported has been fixed.
- Support for automatic texture sizing in the Maxwell shader has been added.
- The render no longer fails when multiple projectors are used on objects with multiple layers.
- The code has been improved to better detect when two textures are using the same projection settings and no longer creates duplicate UV channels.
- Motion blur is disabled. This feature will be re-enabled in a future update of MXCL.
- The viewport texture preview for Maxwell shaders has been disabled in Lightwave 9 because it causes a crash. Newtek has confirmed the crash to be a bug inside Lightwave and they said a fix is in the works, but in the meantime this functionality will only be available in Lightwave 8.


The updated plug-ins can be downloaded from the usual customer download site.

Thanks!

Nicole