By JDHill
#255727
Hello All,

Version 1.6.1 is now available. It addresses a few minor bugs, but it is not technically a major update. A few quick notes first:
  • a. the location of the plugin's toolbars has been moved from Program Files into the user's profile. Hopefully this will prevent some of the funny toolbar-behavior that has been observed in Rhino. The reason why is this: Rhino wants to write to the .tb files, but if they are under Program Files, it may not have permission to do so. Therefore, when you install the plugin, do not be surprised to see your toolbars have disappeared...go to the Maxwell menu and choose 'Show Maxwell Toolbars' to get them back.

    b. local help files are no longer installed with the plugin. By default, it will try to send you to an on-line version hosted on NL servers, to facilitate ongoing modification/improvement to the structure of the help files. If you do not prefer this, simply download the big help .zip file, unzip it somewhere on your machine, and use Plugin Options > Plugin Help URL to point the plugin at the 'index.htm' file directly inside the unzipped help directory. The plugin will then use this local copy by default.
With those out of the way, you may be pleased to find there are also some other additions/improvements:

1. Completely-new Mesh-processing Method
  • As the plugin progressed from version 1.0, more and more checks were added to prevent scenarios with meshes which were invalid, or at least invalid as far as Maxwell is concerned. Detailed reporting was added to the export as well, and as time went by, things became slower and slower. In 1.6.0, I included a modified mesh-processing function, but this was done in somewhat of a hurry, and was less-than-successful, in my opinion. So, for 1.6.1, I went in re-evaluated the core of how this processing was being done, and came away with a completely new method.

    The difference between the old and new methods is night-and-day, to put it mildly. Depending on the type of geometry you typically work with, you should find the 1.6.1 plugin capable of translating your models into MXS at rates around 5 to 50 times faster than those of the 1.5.1/1.6.0 plugins. The best-case-scenarios are architectural-type scenes which consist predominantly of flat planes, i.e. walls, windows, etc. In one production scene (an excellent scene one of my users sent in for debugging) consisting of two high-rise condos, mesh-export with 1.5.1 took 1m 13s, while with 1.6.1, it takes only 1.43s.
2. Support for Maxwell Motion-Blur
  • The plugin now supports both Camera- and Object-based Motion Blur. Since Rhino doesn't really have a concept of time built into it, it was a bit tricky to implement this in a way which makes sense, but I think you'll find it quite easy to use. To begin with Object Motion Blur, you will find a new item in the Maxwell page of Rhino's Object Properties window:

    Image

    Objects which have this option checked are able to have two physical positions defined: their current (as-exported) position, and a 'previous' position, where 'previous' refers to: one frame before the one being rendered. Basically, it means even though your object is in a certain location at render-time, that you can tell the plugin that this object would've been located somewhere else prior to this frame - motion blur will be calculated using these two positions. Ok, so there is an object with 'Enable Motion Blur' checked, how to tell the plugin where its pre-rendering location is? In the Animation toolbar, you will find a new button:

    Image

    The commands associated with this button are:

    LMB: Maxwell_SetObjectsInitialPositionForMotionBlur
    RMB: Maxwell_SetCameraInitialPositoinForMotionBlur

    For now, we are concerned with the LMB function. What will happen when you left-click the MBlur button is that the plugin will memorize the current position of each object which has motion-blur enabled. After doing this, you may move these objects anywhere you like - the next time you render, they will show motion blur from the position which was stored when you left-clicked the MBlur button.

    Camera Motion Blur works in a very similar way. In Camera Settings, you will find a new section:

    Image

    The 'Motion-Blur' parameter enables or disables this Camera from generating motion blur in the render. But you do not need to worry about setting this right now - simply position the desired Camera where you would like it to be one frame before the frame you intend to render, and right-click the MBlur toolbar button. When you do this, the current Camera will have its 'Motion-Blur' parameter enabled, and its current position will be stored by the plugin for use later. After storing the position, move the Camera wherever you like, and render - Camera motion blur will be calculated between the stored and current locations.

    Now, this has all been in reference to creating still images with Motion Blur, and not animations. So how are animations handled? Well, they're handled automatically - you do not really need to worry much about anything other than enabling motion-blur. There is one case where need to do something special, and that is when you would like to render a turntable animation (using the AnimationTools plugin) with motion-blur. In this case, you should use AnimationTools to define the loop as you normally do. Once it is defined, you should right-click the MBlur toolbar button to store the current view as the first frame's previous location. This is true, because AnimationTools considers the current view to be the last frame of the loop - this is convenient for us, because in the loop, the last frame is also the first frame's previous one. So setting the Camera's initial position here will ensure a smooth motion-blur calculation throughout the entire animated loop.

    That's about it. Except for one note: this is the first implementation, and as of now, object motion blur is limited to linear, not rotational movements.
3. Maxwell.Script.dll Scripting Library
  • This is technical stuff, so I won't go into it here. You can download the library from the same place as the new plugin. For a complete rundown on how it works, see here: http://www.maxwellrender.com/manual/rhi ... script.htm . Suffice to say, this is a much better option than accessing the plugin by way of the plugin's RhinoScript-accessible commands.
Well, I think that's about it for now...I hope you enjoy this new version.

Cheers!

JD
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