[Mihnea Balta]

3dsMax Version 1.5.3
-------------------------------

- Only the reflectance and transmittance textures are gamma-corrected now.
- The velocity channel has been removed.
- Removed "AutoRange/Normal" from Tone mapping render settings as it's no longer supported.
- Removed "Seed" from global render settings.
- Nd range changed (1.0 - 1000.0).
- If the export fails due to bad UV values, the code now prints which object it was that had bad UVs.
- Replaced the obsolete "coverage" channel with "shadow pass".
- The "visible to reflection/refraction" Max attribute is passed to Maxwell.
- Added referenced material support. This means:

* a global setting in preferences tab with the default material type to be used on creation time
* possibility to choose the material type when loading old scenes
* translation of parameters between embedded type and referenced type when switching between them
* active MXM texture and parameters (uv, scale and real world scale (max8&9)) from the referenced material will be used for viewport display
* in case of no active texture, a weighted color value will be computed from all layers (or emitters)

- Added 1.5 material properties: Matte and Shadow
- Added Z clipping planes
- Changed parameter ranges for turbidity, ozone and water to match the requirements of 1.5
- Added the "hidden to GI" and "unaffected by clip planes" custom mesh attributes. The UI for this was placed under object properties dialog (right click/object->properties), under a separate Maxwell tab
- Enabled blow-up rendering
- Added support for shift lens in the form of two custom camera parameters
- Updated the city list for the physical sky settings
- The global scale factors now have a minimum value of 0.001
- Camera motion blur is now exported
- Under some circumstances, modifying defaultpreview.mxs caused the preview rendering to stop working; fixed.
- There was a serious bug in the I/O code that caused Max8 and up to crash when loading a scene saved by Max7. In order to fix this you must save the scene with this version of the Max7 plug-in. After saving the scene, it will load fine in all versions of Max. Opening old Max7 scenes in Max8 without doing this will no longer cause Max to crash, but some materials will be corrupted.

[nicole]

Hi everyone,

We have just released an update for the 3dsMax plug-in for Maxwell Render. The following improvements and fixes have been implemented:

3dsMax Version 1.5.6
-------------------------------

- Offset range for image-based environment textures has been changed to [0, 100].
- Wrong colors for MXM previews in the material library browser have been fixed.
- Loading IOR and MXI files in the Maxwell material UI has been fixed.
- Range for film offset fixed to be [-100, 100].
- A crash when loading scenes saved with the 1.1 plug-in has been fixed.
- An error message when clicking on "Maxwell Material" in the Material/Map browser fixed.
- A crash when navigating texmaps using the "go to sibling" button has been fixed.
- The Maxwell material attribute names no longer contain spaces so they are easier to use
in MaxScript.
- The Z clip distances are now correctly converted to meters.
- Bad mapping of the illumination environment channel has been fixed.
- The plug-in no longer attempts to export meshes with 0 polygons or vertices, it simply
skips them.
- The start-up directory for the material browser can now be configured in the preferences
panel.
- The pinkish tint that Maxwell materials had in the viewport has been fixed.
- The "Matte" and "Shadow" attributes are no longer disabled when switching off BSDF.
- A problem with roughness textures not being saved has been fixed.
- A problem that caused MXI files to be created everywhere has been fixed.
- Motion blur is disabled. This feature will be re-enabled in a future update of MXCL.



Thanks!

Nicole

[Mihnea Balta]

Hi.

This is the change list for the 1.6.10 plug-in released on January 31st:

- PFlow geometry instances are now exported as instances to Maxwell Render.
- Importing MXM files no longer changes the name of the material to fix problems with the File Linking system.
- Texture tiling and offsets are adjusted to compensate for the difference in tiling modes between 3dsMax and Maxwell Render (3dsMax has the tiling origin in the center of the image, Maxwell Render has it in the corner).
- Importing MXM files looks for missing textures in the same directory as the MXM file.
- Fixed: animated daylight system parameters did not update during an animation.
- Fixed: negative lens shift was not available when loading an old scene with cameras which had a correction modifier applied.
- Fixed: rendering material previews could fail if the preview scene had textures and Maxwell Render was installed to a non-default path.
- Fixed: making Maxwell Render the active renderer from MaxScript works now.
- Fixed: scenes saved with Maxwell Studio 1.6 could not be used for material previews.
- Fixed: texture UV channel is now correctly set when importing MXM files.
- Fixed: visibility property corrected. An object is visible when its visibility value is greater than 0.
- Fixed: polygonal diaphragm parameters will no longer be disabled when selecting and deselecting a camera.
- Changed camera blades range to match Maxwell Studio (3-96).
- Rendering from cameras with multipass effects is disabled, because 3dsMax tries to render the same picture several times, applying jitter between steps, and that does not make sense in Maxwell Render.

[Bogdan Coroi]

Version 1.7.4 (revision 421)
-----------------------------
- added support for the new 1.7 sky model
- the sun direction can be controlled explicitly using a 3dsmax Daylight System set to "manual" mode
- sky preset files can be saved and loaded in the render globals panel or by using the maxwellLoadSky/maxwellSaveSky MAXScript commands
- added support for viewport preview for both sky and image based environment. It only works with DirectX display drivers. (Check General Settings renderer rollup -> Sky Preview checkbox)
- added support for the new 1.7 SSS model
- added SSS material wizard
- exposed the SimuLens parameters in the global render options and to MAXScript
- implemented EV exposure mode support (check the Maxwell rollup in the camera attributes)
- added support for Max 2009
- added installer support for VIZ2006, 2007 and 2008
- added note in the installer about the 64-bit and VIZ directories being on a separate page
- default value for shutter speed changed from 250 to 750
- reorganized the camera attributes UI a bit to make it clearer
- fixed: visibility tests work correctly on instanced geometry now
- fixed: crash when pressing "show map in viewport" for a referenced material
- fixed: texmap filtering mode was not saved in the scene
- fixed: when exporting PFlow instances, the plug-in created one less instance than the real number of particles
- fixed: mirrored objects which use emitter materials now emit light in the correct direction
- fixed: typo in AGS material layer names
- fixed: bitmap I/O error when animating and having a TIFF file set as output image format

[Mihnea Balta]

Version 1.7.5 released June 24th 2008:
- added support for saving the physical sky to an HDR image; this feature is available through a button in the render options and as a MAXScript command with the following syntax: maxwellSaveSkyToHDR output:fileName xRes:number yRes:number
- fixed: using many Maxwell materials in a scene no longer causes poor viewport rendering performance
- fixed: loading sky preset files works correctly on systems where the regional settings use comma as the decimal separator

[Bogdan Coroi]

Version 1.7.6 (revision 427)
-----------------------------
- fixed: mirrored objects had wrong texture coordinates

[Bogdan Coroi]

Version 1.7.8 (revision 434)
-----------------------------
- fixed bad normals on mirrored objects.
- fix for the material script. Sometimes the multi/sub-material returns "undefined" for its sub-materials and we have to check that.

[Mihnea Balta]

Version 1.7.9 (revision 556)
-----------------------------
- fixed: some objects were not updating when rendering animations

[Bogdan Coroi]

Version 1.7.11 (revision 589)
-----------------------------
- added support for Max 2010