[carbon]

Hello,
A little while ago I decided to complete what started as a simple mesh exporter into a fully featured addon.

List of features (almost everything i think):

• Works on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows
• Compatible with Maxwell Render 3.2 and Blender 2.76
• UI as close to Maxwell Studio as possible
• All renderable geometry (except Metaballs)
• Object hierarchy (not renderable objects are removed unless they have renderable child objects)
• Mesh objects using the same mesh data (and renderable Curves) are exported as instances (optional)
• MXS references
• Dupli verts, faces and group
• Multiple UV channels
• Custom Material creation and editing with inside Blender or with Mxed
• Save/Load custom materials from/into Blender material editor (extension materials support will be added)
• Material assignment (including backface materials) and multiple materials per object
• Extension Materials creation and editing inside Blender
• Cameras
• Render parameters
• All render channels including Custom Alphas
• Environment parameters (Sun can be optionally set by Sun lamp)
• Object parameters
• Maxwell Extensions: Particles, Grass, Hair, Scatter, Subdivision, Sea, Cloner, Volumetrics
• Export Subdivision modifiers if their type is Catmull-Clark and they are at the end of modifier stack on regular mesh objects (optional)
• Wireframe scene export (all edges are converted to instanced cylinder of user defined radius)
• Scene import (objects, emitters, cameras and sun selectively)

changelog:

• 0.3.7 custom material editor, custom material import/export
• 0.3.6 added: export particle uvs, camera lock exposure, choosing external materials with mxed in browser mode, choose scene for auto preview in mxed, fixed: import mxs: object transformation
• 0.3.5 particle object/group instances, quick setting object properties/object id to multiple objects, blocked emitters, many fixes (reading/drawing material previews, missing cloner objects, hair uvs, ...)
• 0.3.4 hair with children particles root uvs (requires blender 2.76), wire export faster and with smaller files, fixes here and there
• 0.3.3 simplified installation procedure on Mac OS X, pymaxwell is now imported directly from /Applications/Maxwell 3, also fixed some bugs..
• 0.3.2 Maxwell 3.2 update, includes majority of new features: material priority, saving to psd, reflection and refraction channels, reflectance channel, scatter and grass updates. also wireframe and auto-subdivision export is restored, added basic progress reporting, hair uvs, hair extension material and many more small fixes and tweaks
• 0.3.1 last version working with Maxwell 3.1 (with a few bugs): ddbad692a25c6e6e72d11092d8f063f6ed1d048e
• 0.3.0 refactored exporter part, added: hair uvs, curves instancing, material global properties, fixed: object transformations when opened and saved in Studio
• 0.2.4 added: automatic subdivision modifiers export to speed things up
• 0.2.3 added: mxs export menu operator, quad export when using subdivision modifier, 2.75 compatibility
• 0.2.2 added: mxs import (objects, emitters, cameras and sun selectively), save extension materials to mxm, embed particles in mxs (saving of external .bin files is now optional)
• 0.2.1 added: extension materials creation and editing inside blender
• 0.2.0 added: much faster large mesh export on Mac OS X, Extra Sampling panel, Volumetrics extension (constant and noise 3d), external particle bin works with animation export
• 0.1.9 added: MXS References, Windows installation simplified
• 0.1.8 added: Linux and Windows support, cloner extension, lots of refactoring
• 0.1.7 added: presets, texture panel, basic material preview, RFBin export with size per particle, lots of refactoring, Linux and Windows ports are working without extensions
• 0.1.6 added: maxwell hair, subdivision, scatter and particles export as realflow bin, fixed: render shortcuts, ui spaceing
• 0.1.5 added: maxwell grass modifier, incremental export, minor ui tweaks and additions, launch multiple instances of maxwell and studio, fixed: material placeholders on triangle groups, maxwell particles transformation, error reporting
• 0.1.4 added: render layers panel, fixed: path handling, instance bases on hidden layers and many more
• 0.1.3 first release

And now, without any further delays, here it is:
https://github.com/uhlik/blendmaxwell

j.

[Fernando Tella]

That's awesome. Thanks!

Impatiently waiting for a windows version

[Asmithey]

I would test it....But I am on Windows.

Is FIRE on your to do list?

Can you except donations on GitHub? I did not see a place to do that.

[Hillmeister]

Hello Carbon,

You definitely have my attention and I'm eager to see when you start at a windows version.

After N.ildar's excelent work, I really hope someone is going to make and continue a good plugin for Blender. Have used some 3D apps the last decade, but Blender is really good. Allthough Cycles is an awesome renderer, for me it is just missing something which I do find in Maxwell Render...... I'm hooked so to say.

So please keep up the good work, make contact with Next Limit (if you not already did ) and bring something very usefull to life

I think Maxwell References would be very nice (visible) and offcourse Maxwell Sea to float some boats.

Cheers

[ptaszek]

Is it better then B-maxwell?
Maybe it should turn into the crowdfunding project if NL is not interested to work on it.

[AlexP]

+1 for fire and references

[Asmithey]

Here is some feedback from a user on Blender artist forum...

Well, I installed this new add-on and it doesn't work (OSX 10.9.5), it seems to make a mess with paths (note how it searches for Application into Library and Support into user home):
(EDIT: for not Mac users, it should search for '/Users/Pi/Library/Application\Support/Blender/2.74/scripts/addons/render_maxwell/log.txt')



Code:
usage: maxwell_new_addon_prova-4e5f1442-d160-11e4-be9b-0023dfff773a.py
[-h] [-a] [-w] [-i] log_file scene_data_path result_path
maxwell_new_addon_prova-4e5f1442-d160-11e4-be9b-0023dfff773a.py: error: unrecognized arguments:
/Users/Pi/Desktop/RENDERINGS/maxwell_new_addon_prova.mxs
The files /Users/Pi/Library/Application and /Users/Pi/Support/Blender/2.74/scripts/addons/render_maxwell/log.txt do not exist.
The file /Users/Pi/Desktop/RENDERINGS/maxwell_new_addon_prova.mxs does not exist.As for the current state of implementation, it lacks of Render Layers (I don't know how it should work), no embedded Material editor, nor Texture editor (and this breaks also textures setting for displace modifier, particles, etc.), it has no blender particles (only imported .bin) and no Hair.


If you want to respond, I will post it to the Blender artist forum. We should start a new thread on Blender artist form for this new add-on perhaps. So it does not get confused with B-Maxwell.

[panos]

It doesn't seem to work for me. I'm in Macosx 10.7.5 and followed your installation instructions and Blender is clean install with only your addon. Mxed is opening correctly though.

Here is a screenshot of what is written in Blender console, if it helps.

[andyjacobs]

Hey,

Thanks for all the effort you have put into this!!! I have followed the instructions and it doesn't work for me.

I tried creating a new material and got the following error.



Loading a mxm file worked, clicking edit launched the maxwell material editor.

When I click the render button, I see a temp folder created, and I can see a .bin file created but they then disappear without studio opening.

[carbon]

hi all,

If you want to respond, I will post it to the Blender artist forum. We should start a new thread on Blender artist form for this new add-on perhaps. So it does not get confused with B-Maxwell.

blenderartist thread is already there

about the error, it should be fixed now, the problem was the space in path (damn "Application Support")

my exporter works in a bit weird way. current blender cannot load pymaxwell directly, it will crash immediately. so what is happening under the hood is scene is in first step serialized to json and custom binary format for meshes to temporary directory (and to not interfere with existing files using uuid in its name, that's the "4e5f1442-d160-11e4-be9b-0023dfff773a" for example), then in system python is run other script which will load serialized data and makes mxs file. temporary files are removed afterwards. i will add some debugging steps to first post..

I tried creating a new material and got the following error.

i guess, you tried to save mxm without .mxm extension, got to change this to better error messages, thanks for reporting

also everyone, there was a nasty bug with spaces in paths, please redownload repository and reinstall addon
just the addon, no need to do whole procedure,

[andyjacobs]

Just installed and its working!! Thanks a lot.

[ababak]

Hi carbon, very nice progress with this plugin!

May I ask to elaborate a bit on this:

Maxwell Render python bindings, "pymaxwell", provided by Next Limit is not compatible with python used in Blender. It can't be loaded directly and this is why separate python 3 installation is needed and exporting is done in two steps. What happens internally is, blender scene is serialized to JSON and custom binary mesh format to temporary directory together with extra python script which is then run with system python and creates Maxwell scene file using pymaxwell. It's a bit slower, but what is a few minutes extra in unbiased rendering anyway..

My copy of Blender 2.74 says it uses Python version '3.4.2 (default, Nov 25 2014, 12:01:44) \n[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.54)]'
What's the reason that pymaxwell is not compatible? Looking at bmaxwell files I see there was a 707 KB pymaxwell.so used, while current pymaxwell libs offered by NextLimit are 13.8 MB. Was it a custom build just for that plugin? Do you know how it was done in nildar's plugin? Have you contacted NextLimit on helping to resolve this issue?

Thank you.

[carbon]

hello,
i made a progress with addon, see the first post. some highlights: multi platform, more extensions, mxs references, faster mesh export
j.

-

What's the reason that pymaxwell is not compatible?

try to import and you get instant crash, this is the case only of mac os x. linux and windows works

Looking at bmaxwell files I see there was a 707 KB pymaxwell.so used, while current pymaxwell libs offered by NextLimit are 13.8 MB. Was it a custom build just for that plugin?

i am guessing bmaxwell uses custom pymaxwell with a bit of added code. that's why it so fast, but new blender version may break it..

[seghier]

that's very nice
can you work with nildar to develop the plugin ? it's better than create two different plugins with different features
i hope you work as team with nextlimit

[seghier]

Nice work Carbon
i test the latest updtae and it is very nice
i didn't test all the features :
- when i render a scene it show me that i must save the scene ; is it possible to render without save the scene ?
- i can't export particle bin file in external folder but blender particles worked fine