Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hi guys, check the download page!

Cheers, Alex

Omg.. you're right! thanks for the news, now let's have a look at it

/ Max

The new feature list sounds not bad:

New features and bug fixes in CineMaxwell 1.1k
==============================================

-Fixed a bug with multimaterials.
-Fixed export of maxwell camera tag values: fstop, shutterspeed, iso, etc
-Shutterspeed input value is the divisor of 1.

Past bugs fixed
===============
-ReFixed Yusuke bug and instances bug (quirk)
-Removed confirmation dialog after saving MXS files. Now the status bar displays info on progress.
-Fixed paths in C4Dr10
-Nasty bug fixed: when having a maxwell classic tag with an associated c4d tag which didn't have texture or procedural set, Cinemaxwell made C4D crash.
-Added two new commands: Render Active View (Render AV) and Render Selected View as Render View (Render SV).
-Fixed duplicate material bug.
-Motion blur propagation.
-OSX UB version has command line options enabled.
-Camera motion is exported in .mxs sequences.
-Fixed :/ bug in paths in OSX.

Default materials
=================
By default, any object or triangle without material explicitly assigned, gets a default diffuse material.

New Date/Time control in Physical Sky
=====================================
This is a native DATETIME control which can be linked to the date/time control of a Sun tag.

Everything is a command now
===========================
Now there are four commands under Plugins->Maxwell:
-Render scene.
-Save MXS.
-Open default settings.
-Add Render Settings object.
You can put these commands wherever you want in your customized layout.

Render Settings Object
======================
It was suggested that adding a "Render" and "Write MXS" buttons to this object A.M.
wouldn't hurt, so here they are....

Multiple tags of the same type
==============================
Multiple maxwell material tags of the same type can be added to a single object.

Native Cinema4D Materials
=========================
CineMaxwell now supports, up to a certain basic level, native Cinema4D
Materials.
The channels supported are:
-Color Channel: mapped to Reflectance 0º. Uses textures and/or simple colors.
-Luminance Channel: maps into an emitter. Uses only simple colors. The
intensity is controlled with the Brightness slider from 0 to 10000 lux.
If you want to get mxi textures to drive an emitter, use a maxwell emitter tag
instead with a mxi texture.
-Diffusion channel: maps to Roughness in maxwell. Uses textures and real
values ( from the Brightness slider ).
-Transparency channel: maps to transmittance color of the bsdf. Uses
textures and simple colors. The Refraction parameter maps to Nd. Abbe is set to
160. If no diffusion channel is used with this channel, Roughness is set to 0.
-Bump channel: maps to bump. Uses textures scaled with Strength value.
-Alpha channel: used to drive the weightmap of the Basic material layer.
Uses only textures.

Maxwell SkyMap tag
==================
This tag has been modified. Now, it only controls the intensity of the sky
environment map, which must be an mxi file. This mxi texture file is assigned to a
Cinema4D material tag which is applied to the Sky object and linked to the Skymap
tag in its Texture Tag field. The mapping of channels of this tag to maxwell is as
follows:
-Color channel: background
-Luminance channel: illumination
-Transparency channel: refraction
-Reflection channel: reflection
There can be up to four Skymap tags each with a texture in a different channel, so
each has different intensity.

Support of procedural textures of Cinema4D
==========================================
When using native C4D materials, there is a basic support of procedural
textures which can be mixed with the channel's color. This mix is saved to a file
as a bitmap and applied like a normal texture to the resulting maxwell material
in the desired channel. This works for MaxwellClassic tags and when using native
Cinema4D materials alone. The resulting bitmaps have a customizable size, which
can be found in the Engine tab of the Cinemaxwell dialog. Some procedurals "behave"
better than others, that is, the saved texture looks more like to what is shown in
the Cinema4D viewport than to what would be shown in a Cinema4D render. Obviously,
the sampling size has also its effect on the quality of the result. Beware of umlauts,
accents carets and other similar characters in object names, they don't translate
into good texture names and can cause procedural textures not to work ( cause they're
not saved).

MXM Preview
===========
Now there is a preview of mxm materials in attributes manager of mxm tags.
If the mxm material file has a preview bitmap embedded, it will be shown in the A.M.
of the mxm tag.

Render settings object
======================
There is a new object designed to hold the scene render settings permanently.
When first created, it copies its default settings from the maxwell render dialog.
There can be more than one render settings object, but only the first one in the
hierarchy that has its deformation/generator tick set to active will be used.

Assigning Materials
===================
If there is only one material assigned to an object, whether it is a MaxwellClassic
tag or a MXM tag with a Cinema4D material tag, there is no need to assign the C4D texture
tag to the Texture Tag slot of the Maxwell tag. It is assumed automatically that
the texture tag belongs to the Maxwell tag.
The order in which tags appear in the tag list is important. If there are two
global materials applied to an object, the second material is discarded ( the opposite
to Cinema4D, which discards the first ).
If an object has only a global material, an object hanging from it will inherit
that material. If there is also a partial material, this won't be passed to the child.

anybody having any luck with it yet? - still can't see it in the intel based apps 9 or 10... but can see it in 9.6.PPC but crashes when writing mxs file or render view... must be doing something VERY wrong - anyone?
(Mac OS 10.4. Quad 2.66 Mac Pro 3GB Ram

OK I can see it now - you must un-zip the two files within the Maxwell plugin folder called - maxwell.r9.6.dylib.zip and maxwell.r10.dylib.zip - but I'm still getting an application error every time I render active view or write mxs file.... hmmm the plot thickens

overall nice after first test, but
the other plugs-maya and max has the possibilty to make materials direct with the app, without the need to start the external material editor.

in cinema i dont find this??? am i blind or do we not have this feature in c4dplug? i really hoped for this...

cheers
stefan

the crashes stop once you edit the Maxwell default options and change the scene file name... seems to be working ok now - Thanks all

Hi,

if you have C4D r10 UB, you just have to unzip maxwell.r10.dylib.zip. The same goes for r9.6 UB. If you have r9.5 or 8.5, use maxwell.xdl.

M.

hi miguel, nice new features, also workflow seems improved-thanks!

i hoped that we get maxwell materials like max or maya, where you can directlty create and edit them in the attribute manager. will this be in updates? somehow the cinemaplugin is still behind the other 2 main apps.

the other thing i urgently miss is the support for shift lense. so you can have a value for x and y to offset the "film". the cinema camera supports this.

cheers
stefan

hi

I just installed it on my MacPro. Using OS X and C4D 10

Everytime i render something, I get an Orange Sky

I have Physical Sky and sun on.

just a cube and a plane to render

anybody got the same??

Did you set the time ok? I mean, isn´t it sunset or dawn?

Maxwell SkyMap tag
==================

This tag has been modified. Now, it only controls the intensity of the sky
environment map, which must be an mxi file. This mxi texture file is assigned to a
Cinema4D material tag which is applied to the Sky object and linked to the Skymap
tag in its Texture Tag field. The mapping of channels of this tag to maxwell is as
follows:
-Color channel: background
-Luminance channel: illumination
-Transparency channel: refraction
-Reflection channel: reflection
There can be up to four Skymap tags each with a texture in a different channel, so
each has different intensity.

WTF does this mean, maybe we need a native english speaker to provide these posts Just give a us simple example or are we going to have to wait another 6 months before we can work out how to use it

Matt

for me it's working extremely well. i'm really happy about the fact textures are easily transferred to max, as this, for me, was a major prob on studio. handling textures there is annoying since the parameters are really difficult to get tweaked and not really intuitive...
thanks a lot for the new plug, it's real fun!!!
go next limit!

Really a great improvement! Thanks NL!
continue the work.