[CDRDA]

I am most likely going to upgrade my SketchUp and Studio licenses in due course, but, like others have a few questions before taking the plunge.

1. It would be really useful to know when the pre-ordering phase will end, even a rough indication. This year/ early next year? Knowing my luck it will be the day before I decide to purchase the upgrade.

2. The GPU engine finally working with additive materials and FIRE is a great thing that many of us have been waiting for, since the release of Version 4. Will the new GPU renderer have support for all the features within the Maxwell Material out of the box, or will there be further development after shipping needed to get those working? Is it possible to implement all of those features on GPU?

3. The same question as above, but regarding GPU suppor for Maxwell Extensions, full channel compatibilty and Multilight.

4. I am sure there would be a great response to a beta testing period, either open, or closed... Is there any intention to do this before release?

Thanks for any clarification.

[Bernard Bunuan]

I'm grateful that they've now releasing more information on where v5 is going. But as someone who only needs it for Form Z I must ask what good is it to me if it doesn't include that plug-in? Can you post any updated demonstrations of how Maxwell Studio 5 can be of use to others who don't have the supported programs? Version 4's documentation mentions how it accepts geometry from other formats like LWO and OBJ. I'd like to see the limitations of its acceptance into Maxwell Studio 5. For example, how well can v5 perform subdivisions with the various file formats?

[Nasok]

Hey there I'm on your side and I'm on Mac so not much of the GPU hype for me I guess .. I would love to see less crashes and maybe more little convenience features ..
But speaking of Maxwell Studio conversion / import / export ability - is actually something very impressive (at least V4). My pipeline in many cases involves Cad data from Solidworks - and exporting Cad data from that software to something like Maya (for further animation, visualisation) is kinda hustle. So we tried multiple options of export / import (fix, obj, stl, iges, and etc) eventually the best and the cleanest result came, to our surprise, from Maxwell Studio. Aparently the conversion (tessellation) that Maxwell Studio has ... is pretty good. So this was the only option we could possibly use.
So I truly hope that Tech Geniuses at Maxwell will keep that in V5.
Cheers.

[dexter]

I'd love SolidWorks support, as well, since that's been the main program at the past few companies that I've worked for.