User avatar
By Mihnea Balta
#260040
Hi.

This is the change list for the 1.6.6 plug-in released on January 31st:

- The last directory used for the material browser is persistent between Maya sessions.
- The default directory for the material browser can be specified in the plug-in options.
- Additional MXCL flags are made available when rendering from the command line with mayabatch.
- The emitter MXI attribute uses Maya file texture nodes now, so tiling, offset and image sequences can be used.
- Emitter MXI textures can be previewed in the viewport by selecting "Emitter MXI" in the "Textured channel" drop-down.
- Fixed: some material preview scenes which used textures did not work if Maxwell Render was installed in a non-default directory.
- Fixed: wrong camera focal length in some preview scenes.
- Fixed: the plug-in could not load material preview scenes created with Maxwell Studio 1.6.
- Fixed: error message about Hypershade when rendering from the command line.
- Fixed: OSX: preview swatches are no longer tinted red.
- Fixed: OSX: the plug-in correctly locates the Maxwell Render installation directory so the material browser and material previews work again.
- Fixed a number of errors which showed up when using namespaces (i.e. when objects had colons in their names).
User avatar
By Mihnea Balta
#273061
Version 1.7.7 released June 19th 2008:

- added support for the 1.7 SSS model

- added SSS wizard

- added support for the 1.7 physical sky

- the physical sky and image-based lighting textures can be previewed in the viewport

- reorganized the sky UI to make the sun settings accessible when the sun is used with constant sky

- the sun direction can be controlled explicitly using a transform node (e.g. a directional light, camera etc.)

- added support for Linux

- added SimuLens attributes in the global render options

- added support for EV exposure modes (check the Maxwell rollup in the camera attributes)

- added note in the installer about the 64-bit directories being on a separate page

- the "protected geometry" export flag is off by default now

- the plug-in no longer converts HDR and TIFF textures into TGA at export time since MXCL supports these formats natively

- changed the way in which custom Maxwell attributes are added to native Maya nodes (e.g. geometry, cameras etc.). The attributes are added only when they are changed from their default value in order to minimize scene bloat. This also allowed us to remove some overhead when loading a scene and make the plug-in more lightweight, improving the overall stability of the code.

- Maxwell materials no longer show up as lights in Hypershade, since that wasn't too useful but required a hack to figure out when to enable the emitter component

- streamlined some parts of the attribute editor code to make the Maxwell material AE more robust

- changed the UI text for the R2 and IOR attributes

- changed the default shutter speed to 1/750

- reorganized the camera attributes UI a bit to make it clearer

- fixed: object visibility was wrong when shape nodes were assigned to hidden/templated render layers

- fixed: material previews are saved and loaded correctly now

- fixed: the alpha channel is correctly brought into the render view after rendering (if it's enabled)

- fixed: when projected textures were used, the plug-in always assumed perspective projection, although planar projection was also supported in the code. Planar projection works correctly now.

- fixed: the attribute editor for the Maxwell material would sometimes show up empty after many error messages were printed in the script editor. This is a Maya bug, but we've attempted a workaround.

- fixed: "export static fly-by" mode
User avatar
By Mihnea Balta
#273756
Version 1.7.8 released June 24th 2008:

- fixed: converting from a native Maya material to a Maxwell material using the "shader type" dropdown was broken

- fixed: error message "Scattering or absoption cannot be 0" when trying to use the vapor SSS preset

- removed some useless debug messages which were sometimes shown in the script editor

Note: if you click the "See the list of changes" button in the update dialog, you will be taken to the 1.6 change list. This was a bug in the previous build which has been addressed.
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milk[…]