[JDHill]

Maxwell for Cinema 4D
Version 2.5.1.1 Release Notes

Version 2.5.1.1 of Maxwell for Cinema 4D brings the powerful new Maxwell Fire feature to the plugin.

Changes

• Added Maxwell Fire functionality, both for Scene rendering and in the plugin's material editor.
• Added new 'Render previews for converted materials' option to the Convert Cinema Materials command.
• Added new Maxwell 2.5-style SSS Preset material wizards.
• Added Advanced Wizard option to either modify the current material, or create a new one.
• Added new Shutter-based Blur option, which blurs objects and cameras based on FPS and camera shutter.
• Motion blur is now interpolated using the current frame plus and minus half the computed time span.
• Export filenames for animations now use the associated Cinema frame number, rather than starting at zero.
• Added 'Randomize all' function for Material ID colors (button located in main Material page).
• Added 'Pre-roll Timeline' option, which animates the document through all frames prior to the one being exported.

Fixes

• UVs could be exported incorrectly for polygon selections which resided in an object hierarchy.
• A memory leak could occur when polygon geometry was lacking UV coordinates.
• Linear workflow was not being taken into account for viewport bitmaps under Cinema

Notes

• There are many changes in this Maxwell Fire-enabled version of the plugin. Fire in the plugin is Scene-centric; you activate it from the Scene Object's AM interface, and in versions 11.5+, the icon for the Scene in question switches to the Fire icon, making it easy to tell which Scene is rendering in Fire. Material previews are also rendered using Fire, and you can set how many threads are used in the plugin preferences. Changes to materials, environment, and camera are all fully interactive; material assignments and physical changes to geometry are not. There are other new features in this version as well, as noted above, and everything should be covered in the plugin manual.

Downloads (please do not share these links):

• (version superseded)

So, take it for a spin and let me know what you think.

Cheers,

JD

[Oli4D]

Hello Jeremy
Looking really nice, thanks a lot for this!

What I don't understand however is this:
When I move an object, the preview does not get updates.
So lets say when I have a light from a plane with an emitter on it, and I wanna use that plane as an area light and move the plane around to check how it looks... the preview does not update... I have to click the "re-export scene" button for every little move of an object...
Can't this be automated?
Because if the camera position is the only thing that updates automatically... but everything else (like a light repositioning) needs a new export... well, that makes FIRE only half as useful as it could/should be in my eyes.

Or did I miss something?

Kind regards,
Oliver

[JDHill]

Yes you are correct; as I wrote above, altering the geometry of the scene is not interactive. It may be possible in the future, but at this point I don't know.

[Oli4D]

Yes you are correct; as I wrote above, altering the geometry of the scene is not interactive. It may be possible in the future, but at this point I don't know.

Hmm ok, sorry I overlooked that
Well, sad... especially because replacing lights and see the change without reexporting would be really useful.

Is there a way to add a shortcut to the "re-export scene" button?
I did not find the function in the shortcut-manager (Shift-F12).
To press a shortcut instead of always moving the mouse to that re-exporting function would be pretty nice.

[JDHill]

No, there isn't a command for that, but the button is available both in the Scene Object, and in the Fire window. I'll put it on my list to add a command though. I understand that you'd like the plugin to be able to handle this automatically, but the way Cinema is designed is not very friendly to the idea; honestly, it's been more than a little tricky to get things to this point.

[macray]

JD - in a german forum (c4dnetwork.com) there was an issue with the spacemouse posted:

using the mouse to move the camera - the interactive preview is refreshed
using the spacemouse to move the camera - nothing happens in the interactive preview

something else with the material editor:
using the DEL key to remove a coating layer - cinema crashes
using the right click menu - everything is fine! (can confirm that)

[mashium123]

...
something else with the material editor:
using the DEL key to remove a coating layer - cinema crashes
using the right click menu - everything is fine! (can confirm that)

can confirm that.

[JDHill]

Thanks for the reports. I do not have a space mouse, but I'll try to check it out. On the coating-delete crash, I confirm it, and will fix it for the next build.

[macray]

another question to fire:
is it foreseen to have the render region working with Fire?

and something to the active camera / editor view button:
I can switch from the camera to editor camera, but not back no matter how often I click on it
(win7 32bit, c4d R12)

[JDHill]

I don't know the answer to the first question; it was not in my plans, and I do not know if it works in Fire either. I can check it out, but first, where do you see this really being useful?

On the second question, are you referring to the R/A (Use Render or Active view) button at the top-right of the Fire window? It switches back and forth fine here, so maybe you can provide some specific steps to reproduce the behavior.

[macray]

1. might come in handy for details, but not necessary. just wanted to know if this is foreseen or I just missed something.

2. yepp, the R/A button. I'll check that more in detail tomorrow to give more examples or to find out what it is about. here it only works once, then I have to set the cam in the editor view again to be able to change it in FIRE.

[Oli4D]

[*]Added 'Randomize all' function for Material ID colors (button located in main Material page).

Awesome! This is really handy! Thanks Jeremy!

[JamesColeman]

Cinema crashes when I'm using Fire to preview a scene that's using a .exr environment.

[JDHill]

Confirmed, thanks.

[JDHill]

Spoke too soon. I thought I made it crash on the first try, but it ends up that was just a coincidence. I have now downloaded and tried all of the ILM sample EXRs, and I found one (WideFloatRange.exr) which crashes Fire -- and Studio and Maxwell. All the others work fine though.

Is your crash happening with one EXR only? If so, where did it come from? If not, did they all come from the same source? What was it, and do they also crash Studio? Can you send me (jeremyatnextlimitdotcom) one which crashes Fire?