[JDHill]

The plugin is still in final testing. However, if you'd like to try it before that's finished, here are some links (please do not re-post or share these, I am hosting them on my own server). Please let me know if you run into any issues.

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• V1.8.1.8 (for Maxwell 1.x)
  
  [links removed, please see the regular download page]

• Release Notes
  
  Version 1.8.1.8 of the Maxwell for Cinema 4D plugin is a minor bug-fix update which also introduces compatibility with Cinema 4D R11.5. Following are some of the particulars.
  
  Changes
  
  • added support for Cinema 4D R11.5 (there are two downloads, one for R9.6-R11 and one for R11.5)
  • Cinema 4D R11.5’s new ‘Render Instance’ feature is supported automatically
  • added new real-time feedback for tile/offset/etc. in the plugin’s texture editor
  • texture tile/offset/etc. are now shown in the Cinema viewport
  • added CTRL/SHIFT key modifiers to texture editor to allow adjusting multiple textures at once
  • improved the appearance of Maxwell materials in the Cinema renderer
  • added new Object Properties: ‘Ignore Normal tag’ and ‘Ignore Phong tag’
  Fixes
  
  • an object’s material would be copied when the object was copied
  • Cinema material alpha was not translated properly in some scenarios
  • Cinema XRef materials were not read correctly when the XRef was under another object
  • crashes could occur when reading certain types of TIF files
  • lights could be exported even when their render dots (or layers in R11) were switched off
  • transparency and luminance are ignored in Cinema materials if they are pure black with no texture

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• V2.1.3.0 (for Maxwell 2.x)
  
  [links removed, please see the regular download page]

• Release Notes
  
  Version 2.1.3.0 of the Maxwell for Cinema 4D plugin is a minor bug-fix update which also introduces compatibility with Cinema 4D R11.5. Following are some of the particulars.
  
  Changes
  
  • added support for Cinema 4D R11.5 (there are two downloads, one for R9.6-R11 and one for R11.5)
  • Cinema 4D R11.5’s new ‘Render Instance’ feature is supported automatically
  • added a ‘Link MXM’ field to the main Maxwell material page
  • material editor UI now shows a duplicate of the Attribute Manager UI for MXM Linked materials
  • added MXM Gallery browsing button the Attribute Manager material UI
  • added new Object Properties: ‘Ignore Normal tag’ and ‘Ignore Phong tag’
  Fixes
  
  • fixed an issue caused by running in 64-bit mode under OSX Snow Leopard
  • fixed an issue with the render low priority switch not working
  • scattering is now set to 0.0 as default to prevent maxwell.exe rendering it even when disabled
  • transparency and luminance are ignored in Cinema materials if they are pure black with no texture

[Mr. Gog]

Thank JD!

Happy New Year!

[philmartin]

Thanks JD!!!

[macray]

thanks! giving it a try very soon.

finally something for 11.5

[Jacques]

Thanks for the updated plugin, it is a great help.

Just one thing, the manual that installs with it is the Maxwell 2 manual, and not the Maxwell for Cinema 4D Plugin Manual as with the previous plugin - not sure it is intentional but it was more useful with the plugin specific manual.

J

[JDHill]

Ah - good catch. Actually, if you rename the pdf in the plugin's /doc directory to manual.pdf instead of manual_v2.pdf, then the plugin should ask you whether you want to see the plugin help or the regular Maxwell help.

[Josephus Holt]

Rusteberg's recent post of the forest of 8,000 or so trees done in 3DsMax/Maxwell is quite incredible. I'm wondering if this could be done with the same hardware using c4d's v11.5 Render Instances? Maybe the question should be more like, "does C4D's Render Instances>Maxwell work the same way as 3DsMax proxy>Maxwell"?

[JDHill]

I don't know much about 3DS Max, but the Cinema plugin has had a lightweight instance object of its own for quite some time - R11.5's Render Instances work pretty much the same as the plugin's Instance Object, except they can draw more than just a wireframe in the viewport. So, if I read the subtext of your question correctly, you don't really gain much here with R11.5, since the plugin had lightweight instancing covered before Cinema did.

[Josephus Holt]

I don't know much about 3DS Max, but the Cinema plugin has had a lightweight instance object of its own for quite some time - R11.5's Render Instances work pretty much the same as the plugin's Instance Object, except they can draw more than just a wireframe in the viewport. So, if I read the subtext of your question correctly, you don't really gain much here with R11.5, since the plugin had lightweight instancing covered before Cinema did.

Yes, you read me correctly...interesting...I'll have to see if I can render out 8,000 trees with my v10.5.
Just tried it...it ran out of memory with the first 90 instanced trees. In the 11.5 demo it generated 8100 trees with a little under 150MB ram using the Render Instances. I could not test to see how that would render out in Maxwell because my time on the 11.5 demo ran out and I can not export it. BTW, it did take quite some time before all 8100 trees showed up on my screen.

[JDHill]

it ran out of memory with the first 90 instanced trees.

How exactly did you create these? Because, it does not sound right; you should be able to render as many instances as you want to.

To test, I just exported around 120,000 instances of the 'low poly girl' from BodyPaint presets...it took about thirteen seconds and used around 30MB of memory during export.

[zoppo]

How exactly did you create these? Because, it does not sound right; you should be able to render as many instances as you want to.

So, what would be the right way to do this?

And do those "around 120,000 instances of the 'low poly girl'" show up in the objects list of C4D?
I find that a huge number of items in the objects list slows C4D down a lot.

[JDHill]

So, what would be the right way to do this?

I don't know that there's really any right or wrong way - my guess would be that Joe was using regular Cinema Instances, rather than the plugin's Instance object.

And do those "around 120,000 instances of the 'low poly girl'" show up in the objects list of C4D?
I find that a huge number of items in the objects list slows C4D down a lot.

No, for this quick test I just used one instance with a particle emitter...

[Josephus Holt]

So, what would be the right way to do this?

I don't know that there's really any right or wrong way - my guess would be that Joe was using regular Cinema Instances, rather than the plugin's Instance object.

I tried it both ways and got an "out of memory" message.
I started with a single fairly high poly count tree (probably around 200,000 polys), put it under a Maxwell Instance, and then duplicated 100 times in the x direction...that worked fine. As soon as I attempted to duplicate those 100 Maxwell Instances 100 times in the c4d-z direction to get a total of 10,000 trees, I got the "out of memory" message.

[JDHill]

I can't get that result here; somewhere around 100 x 100 x 10 using a mograph grid cloner, the viewport stops drawing the clones, but memory usage is still low.

The polycount of the reference should be fairly unimportant, as you are only going to be having one of those in the scene. The number of individual objects in the reference though, is important - if each leaf is a separate object, that would be a bad strategy, and will eventually cause problems; mainly, an unnecessarily-high number of instances in the MXS. So, the geometry should be joined into a single polygon object where possible to balance the size of the mesh to the number of instances of that mesh you'll be creating. Rule of thumb would involve thinking about the size, in data, of the mesh, vs. the size of an instance; under no circumstance do you want to end up instancing something that is, itself, smaller than instances of it will be (instances are not zero size; they hold a name, a transform, a material assignment, etc.). So, for something like a tree, it should generally be two meshes; one for the trunk/branches, and one for the leaves. If you can place ten trees in a visually-appealing arrangement and join the trunks/branches and leaves of all ten into two objects, then instance those, all the better -- up to the point where this mesh geometry gets large with respect the the overall polycount of the scene.

If you want to send me your tree, I'll take a look and see what can be done.

[shaun]

I have Maxwell 1.7 and I'm using it with C4D 10. I'm thinking of upgrading C4D (but NOT maxwell) and I notice my version of the plug-in doesn't work with the Demo version of C4D 11.5.

Is there a newer version of the plug-in for Maxwell 1.7.1 to work with C4D 11.5 and if so where can I get it from? I've checked the demo page on the Maxwell home page but it only has the plug-ins for version 2.

What can I do?

TIA,