[PA3K]

Hello, does anyone knows when Maxwell for Rhino will be upgraded? I just upgraded to Rhino 6 and maxwellrender plugin 4.1.7 is not supported. I already asked on customer portal, but if there will be sooner answer here ... Thanks.
Patrik

[Forum Moderator]

Hello Patrick,

Sadly, the plugin has to be rewritten from ground up (we have been working on that for quite a long time already). I don't know much about coding, so I only repeat what I hear, but it seems in Rhino 6, the older SDK for .NET has been deprecated, so it's time to rewrite it for the new SDK. The good news is that both Windows and Mac will benefit from that, but it will take time to get the plugin to the same level as it is now.

Best wishes,
Fernando

[PA3K]

Hello Fernando, thank You for your answer.
There is c++ plugin migrator on rhino website, but it is for plugin developers.
Do You know some more - when it will be ready, or if there will be some beta for testing ? I mean if it is about days, weeks or months ? Approximately. Thanks.
Patrik

[Daniel Kerbler 20180301220533]

Hi Fernando,

I am also quite curious how fast things will move on from this point.

Being aware that there is major restructuring going on concerning the plugin development, I still want to point out that Rhino has always been one of the most used plugins, at least from what I can tell in respect to forum posts/activity.

Since Rhino itself has epic long release cycles (rhino 5 was released 5+ years ago) there is a lot of need updating to the new version 6 asap. Rendering from the old version is of course possible(for those who bought Rhino 5) but not desirable form many reasons.

If the release of a working maxwell plugin is pushed far away in time, I am afraid that users will be pushed into other options.

Would be glad for some info on this!

cheers,
Daniel

[Alonso Rosado]

Hello all!

My name is Alonso and I'm the new developer in charge of the Maxwell | Rhinoceros plug-in. I've already introduced myself in another post and given a general answer to the concerns exposed here. Regardless, I wanted to give a more definite answer and assess the issues directly.

First:

Hello, does anyone knows when Maxwell for Rhino will be upgraded? I just upgraded to Rhino 6 and maxwellrender plugin 4.1.7 is not supported. I already asked on customer portal, but if there will be sooner answer here ... Thanks.
Patrik

Patrik, sorry for the delay in the answer. I wanted to assure you that the plugin is being worked upon full time, and that it will be available as soon as humanly possible. I intend to post in a separate thread any remarkable progress as I program the plugin, so stay tuned for updates!

There is c++ plugin migrator on rhino website, but it is for plugin developers.

I'm aware of the existance of the migrator, but, unfortunately, it works over a different API and thus it is of no use to convert the old plugin. The main problem would be that the .dll upon which the old plug in is based, even though it's still shipping with Rhino 6, has deprecated much of its functionality and erased some more, which means that the old plugin can no longer even compile correctly.

Since Rhino itself has epic long release cycles (rhino 5 was released 5+ years ago) there is a lot of need updating to the new version 6 asap. Rendering from the old version is of course possible(for those who bought Rhino 5) but not desirable form many reasons.

If the release of a working maxwell plugin is pushed far away in time, I am afraid that users will be pushed into other options.

Hello Daniel. First of all, welcome to the forum! I understand and share your concern, and I'm working as fast as possible to deliver the best experience for Rhino users. Regarding the long release cycles, I understand that getting the new features that the newer release of rhino provides is key for our users. Developer side, sadly, I must say that the feature lock of Rhino 6 was only a month or so prior to the realease, which difficults to make reliable progress over the plugins as many things developer-wise were susceptible of changing. Regardless, since the feature lock, I've worked exclusively on the plugin, and will keep doing so to get a release as soon as possible.

I hope this answers your questions, but if you have any further doubts, dont hesitate to post and I'll answer as fast as possible.

Kind regards to both of you,

Alonso

[PA3K]

Hello Alonso ,

Thank You for answers. Welcome aboard. I had little more concern of what is going on "behind the scene". You have got difficult job after great work of J.D.Hill. I wish You will be going on well with plugin development.
Please always give us as much informations as You can. If there will be some beta version to test, I will be glad to test it and help to find bugs. I always felt, that this maxwellrender community is more, than just the list of customers. We can help each other.
I already contacted McNeel, and they told me, that their SDK is locked, and now it is everything on third parties.
I know, that this will be very difficult, but do You have some estimation (very rough) - i mean 3-6 months, 6-12 months ... ?
Good luck Alonso .

Patrik

[JDHill]

I have been talking to Alonso quite a bit during the transition, and can tell you that he is a good and very competent guy. The old plugin was really old, and had been stretched to its limits... mostly having been designed before the idea of something like FIRE had even occurred to anybody. So all other factors aside, my opinion has been that re-doing it from scratch, with the benefit of a decade of hindsight, and with newer tools we now have available, is just the right thing to do.

And ten years from now, it will probably be the right thing to do, again... because, it seems this is the story of software development:

[Daniel Kerbler 20180305181853]

Hi Alonso!

thanks for getting back to us
good to know you are on it.

As PA3K mentioned, if you need any feedback concerning the development of the plugin or some testing we will be happy to help.
Somehow the last forum update swallowed my old users, I have been around since 2007 and have always witnessed the creation of JD's plugin with great interest,
and things haven't changed

cheers,
Daniel

[PA3K]

Hi JDHill . Will You stay here on forum, just watching the progress and as a friend of us and maxwell ? You moved on just from development, right ?
I understand that development of software You described by pictures. The older is software, the more difficult is to keep it functional. At my work we use one software with DOS enviroment. This software dinosaurus work in windows 10, but I think this is just thank to emulators or something like that . In my own experience if I do something second or third time from scratch, it is faster every time.
And to Alonso, once again, we are ready to help You with testing or with whatever we can do to make plugin alive .

Patrik

[JDHill]

I'm sure I'll be around here still... like you, I bought maxwell in 2005, long before I became involved in development... and maxwell is all I know, since I didn't know anything about rendering before finding it. It was literally the gallery images by you guys who were a little earlier than me, that made me buy the beta -- I was about five minutes away from purchasing McNeel's Flamingo, and said, "well, just one more google search."

[Alonso Rosado]

Thank you all, and Jeremy overall for his kind words! I'll be sure to ask if we need some testing on our development.

Also, answering the timeframe question, our intention is to have it available within a timeframe of 3-6 months. And afterwards to keep iterating and improving.

Meanwhile, as soon as I get something visually remarkable, I'll be sure to post some images of it here in a thread, so I can give you guys something to look up to. I must say that, as of now, much of the work done has been invested in the backend and foundations of the plugin, and thus this may take a while.

[Daniel Kerbler 20180314151919]

as soon as I get something visually remarkable,

as long as things are accessible via command line, we can work.
Of course some things, like material assignment and material tables, need to be manageable somehow, but not everything needs to be visually elaborated in order to get going.. imho.

this is what cycles looks like in the current rhino 6 release...

[piem]

Hello, does anyone knows when Maxwell for Rhino will be upgraded?

+1
To be honest, I'm still running MR 3.2.1.5 and its Rhino5 plugin.
But since I recently upgraded to Rhino 6... maybe I could be motivate to upgrade to MR 4, who knows.

[ATHarvey]

What's the word? I miss you Maxwell.

[Forum Moderator]

Hello everybody,

I just wanted to inform you that Alonso recently quitted his job here, which was a big setback for us (if you read this, Alonso, I hope you enjoy your new job; they get a great person and professional). However, I also wanted to inform you that getting this plugin ready is a top priority for us and we'll do our best to get it as soon as possible. Hopefully, you can wait for us. I'll try to keep you updated.

Fernando