[Matthew Hermans]

Also don't forget there's a potential to maybe use NVLink to pool memory together - it wouldn't be extraordinary to have 2 x 24GB cards pooling the memory together if Maxwell would take advantage of that NVLink functionality.

[Tea_Bag]

As much as I love the ability to render in Maxwell straight form Maya - I believe that the best way is to reduce the complexity of the plugins and rather make them functional exporters for Studio.

There was a time when I thought completely the opposite - now I understand better how most of us work. And I think the best way is to work exactly like Matthew - personally I started doing the same thing - it is a bit a curve to learn but it is definitely taking off pressure from having a fully functional plugin for my host app.

Consider this - majority of CAD apps are not really suited for a convenient rendering workflow anyway. Some apps don't even have the essential UV mapping tools, or IBL workflow, or light targeting, or light filters (like barn doors), emitter blockers, and etc. Why would you want to start rendering workflow inside such app ?

So - instead of having plugins for every app that could benefit from having Maxwell connection - why don't we just have an exporter to the Studio (say, a free plugin) that does one thing - packs your scene and exports it to MXS (with all the goodies) - that's it - no FIRE, no Maxwell Sea, no Grass, scatter - no realflow import - none of those things. Imagine how lightweight this plugin will be.
Development - waaay easier.

In the end - NextLimit will be able to afford to have such "connections" for pretty much any DCC app.
And MAxwel lStore is super simple now - instead of dozens of versions - you now have Studio - that you buy - and free exporter for your host app. That's that.

... and plus render nodes - for the good measure.

Easy

I think this is a great idea! I currently use Modo with V4 as the plugin was dropped for V5 so I export an MXS from Modo using V4 then open it with V5 Studio and tweak and render etc

[Brian Buxton]

It would be good if Nextlimit started this with an exchange of Studio for useless plugins. Maxwell FormZ is almost unusable for me. Normal shading errors, coupled with FormZ's poor handling of high polygon objects leaves me setting up in Studio v4 and trying to render in v5. Terrible!

[Harvey Fong]

I was looking at Pixar's USD (Universal Scene Description) format and while it probably isn't used much in the archvis world, I figure it might be a good path to get from Blender, Modo and Houdini to Studio. I just coded a proof of concept using Pixar's pxr module and pymaxwell5 and rendered an animated mesh with deforming hair curves in Maxwell5 from Houdini. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around all the USD features but the actual code to grab hair curves, polygons, uvs, animations was dead simple. Maya, 3ds Max also support USD export. A robust USD->MXS convertor could help tie us over when the plugins are lacking features or abandoned.