[John Cantu]

What a wonderful afternoon treat, can't wait to see the new gizmos! Thanks JD

,John

[JDHill]

I hope you find the new stuff useful. I've just posted a pretty long release-notes announcement at the top of the forum that goes through some of the changes, let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,

JD

[ernchesto]

JD,

Thanks for the update. So far I quite like it. Right away I do miss the ability to have the Material Editor/Material Browser/Scene Materials all tabbed within the same window. Maybe it's an option I've not found, or something to get used to.

I really like the LCD Back Panel though. It really integrates the 'photography' feel to Maxwell that got me so excited about the software in the first place.

Great work.

ernchesto

[JDHill]

I thought about that for awhile, but I had quite a few questions and requests to the effect of wanting the Scene Materials browser to be separate and dockable, like it was in the original release of the plugin. So, I removed it from the Material Editor, and made it so you can have it as a window, or as a dockbar (see Plugin Options > Dockable Material Browser). Personally, I am running it as a dockbar (MXM Browser as a window) parked right above a docked Scene Manager. Since there was now only the MXM Browser in another tab, I decided that I'd rather give the Material Editor a slightly smaller screen-footprint, since getting MXMs is one of the less-used functions, speaking in terms of time. Note, you can 'roll-up' the MXM Browser by double-clicking its title bar...same with the Scene Manager when it's in standalone window mode.

[Cadhorn]

Thanks JD! Looks like a bunch of great improvements. The auto-rename alone will save me much suffering... if I had a dime for every *hour* of rendering lost to careless file overwriting... I'd have at least 20 bucks...

[hyltom]

Nothing could be better to start a new fresh day...what a good surprise! Thanks a lot Jeremy.

[raja]

nice update!

few questions:
Is it possible to have material wizard similar to that in stand alone material editor?
Is it possible to reset camera settings to default?

regards,

[JDHill]

a) it's on the wishlist, but it's not been a top-priority since the functionality already exists in MXED
b) not currently, but I can easily add a command for this

[Cadhorn]

holy toledo! jd, you've made real scale work! and, i can see my background hdr's like... where they're supposed to be.

i'm doing cartwheels!!

i'm pretty sure those were the only two things forcing me to use maxwell studio (which i hate... nice program and all but i never wanted it).

thank you!

[jvanmetre]

JD-

Thanks very much for the update...especially like being able to select an hdr and then seeing it in the browser.

Question, I'm working with the environment settings and I'm trying to rotate an hdr that's being used as the background -- should I be able to do that under Environment --> scene rotation --> and manipulating the degrees. I just tried that and the hdr isn't rotating.

Thanks.

jvm

[JDHill]

Hi jvm,

No, if you run a couple of test renders, you'll see that the Scene Rotation parameter does not affect the position of the HDR background in the render - it only affects the Sun, I think. To re-position the HDR, you should use the Scale and Offset parameters in each Image Based channel. Besides for when the Background channel has Screen Mapping enabled, the Image Based viewport display provided by the plugin should give you a what-you-see-is-what-you-get preview of the actual render.

Cheers,

JD