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Exporting and rendering of MXS files with the Maxwell for Cinema 4D plugin is always accomplished through the use of a Scene object. A new Scene is created using the 'Scene' item, found in the plugin's main menu:

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The Output tab contains several groups which control how MXS files are written and exported.

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Name

This is the name which will be used to generate the various filenames required to write MXS files. This includes the file name of the MXS file, the image-output file, and the MXI file. This should be specified as a name with no extension; the appropriate extensions will be inserted as necessary by the plugin. The Name should therefore also not contain characters which are illegal for use in file paths. If no name is entered here, the plugin will first try to use the Output Name specified in the Preferences page, or else it will try to use the current document name. The image format (the main RGB output) which will be written may be chosen from the drop-down list

Folder

This is the root folder used for the plugin's output. MXS, image, and MXI files will be written to this location. If procedural textures need to be exported, they will be written into a 'textures' folder located inside the one specified here. If no folder is specified here, the plugin will try to use the Output Folder specified in the Preferences page, or else it will try to use the current document location. If it is unable to determine the current document location (for example, when the document has not yet been saved), it will try to use the current directory, which will likely be either the location of C4D itself, or the location it was started from. To open the current output folder, just click the folder button at the right.

Export Options

This group holds parameters which affect how the exported MXS file will be written.

Parameter

Description

Disable Maxwell Instances

This option simply disables the export of Maxwell Instance objects on a global basis.

Auto-generate instances

This option is not related to the Maxwell Instance Object provided by the plugin. Rather, what it does is to automatically identify objects which are candidates for instancing during export. For example, if there are two cubes in the scene, both with the same name and mesh-topology, then only the first will be exported as a mesh – the second will automatically be exported as an instance in the MXS. This is suitable for use with things like emitters, which generate a great number of similarly-named objects, the topology of which is identical between instances, with the only difference being each object's transformation.

Note that use of this option has the potential for producing confusing results. This can happen when geometry is created by a generator, where that geometry effectively has no local transformation. This could include situations such as those where a spline is swept or extruded, with the resulting polygons simply being created in global space. A quick way to check whether this is going to be a problem is to run Current State to Object on the generator; if the generated polygons have no local transformation, they will not work well with instance auto-generation.
Generally speaking, this option should only be used in versions of Cinema prior to R11.5, before Cinema had true instancing.

Protect MXS

This option determines whether or not Maxwell Studio will allow the meshes in the MXS being written to be exported or not. If this is enabled, the MXS will be 'locked'; that is, third-parties will not be allowed to extract meshes from the MXS via Maxwell Studio, thereby providing a way of providing third-parties with actual MXS files for various purposes while still offering some protection of the intellectual property they contain.

Pack and Go

When this option is activated, the plugin will scan through all files referenced in the scene (i.e. texture, ior, hdr, etc.) and copy them to the output directory during export. The paths contained in the exported mxs will point to the new copies, rather than the original files. This makes it much easier to transport an entire scene to another location.

Strict Mode

When this is enabled, while writing an MXS file, the plugin will enable textures which are not able to be found. This will result in error messages being reported by the render engine. It may be useful if you are moving the scene to a different computer and you know the textures will be available on the other machine.

Check Paths

This button brings up a dialog containing a report which shows all external files referenced by Maxwell materials and objects, indicating which were able to be found, which were not, and which missing files were able to be found using search paths.

Motion Blur & Animation

This group is only shown when the 'Export Animation' option is enabled. When a Scene is exported with Animation enabled, the plugin will cause the C4D document to be animated, exporting a sequentially-named MXS file for each frame. There are a few parameters which control how the animation export is done.

Parameter

Description

Pre-roll Timeline

When this option is enabled, the plugin will animate the document through all frames prior to the one being exported. This can be helpful, as it makes sure that all generators and expressions have been properly run, ensuring a consistent result at the current frame. This is not free (that is, it can take some time to run the document through its frames) so only enable this option when necessary.

Shutter-based Blur

When enabled, the amount that objects and cameras will be moved along the timeline is figured based on the shutter value of the camera being exported. So for example, given FPS (specified in Cinema Render Settings, not the camera) of 24 and a shutter speed of 1/24, each object will appear to move one frames-worth of movement along the Cinema timeline. Given a shutter of 1 second, the object will appear to move 24 frames, with the movement being centered on the frame being exported.

Export Animation

This option determines whether or not the plugin will export in single- or multiple-frame mode. The Animation group is not shown in the Scene user-interface unless this option is enabled.

Camera Motion Blur

Similar to the Object Motion Blur option, this controls whether or not to export Motion Blur information for the camera.

Object Motion Blur

When this is enabled, the plugin will move objects backward and forward along the timeline in order to figure Motion Blur. When Shutter-based blur is enabled, the amount that objects are moved will be dependent on the shutter value of the camera being used. Otherwise, objects will be moved half of a frame forward and backward, in reference to the frame currently being exported.

Motion Blur Steps

This number determines how many times the plugin will sample the exposure range for object positions when calculating object motion blur. If, for example, this value is set to 2, then only the starting and ending positions of objects will be written. More positions will cause the motion blur to more closely follow objects which move arbitrarily during the exposure.

Animation Frame Range

This group is only shown when the 'Export Animation' option is enabled. When a Scene is exported with Animation enabled, the plugin will cause the C4D document to be animated, exporting a sequentially-named MXS file for each frame. There are a few parameters which control how the animation export is done.

Use Render Settings

This determines whether to use the frame-range and step count set in the active C4D Render Settings, or to use a custom range.

Step

This parameter controls how many (if any) frames to skip between MXS exports. If this is set to one, all frames will be exported, whereas if it were set to two, one frame on the timeline would be skipped for each one that was exported. If the animation frame range was ten, and the Step size was also set to ten, then only one frame would be exported.

Render from…to

When the 'Use Cinema Range' option is disabled, these inputs control the range of frames which will be exported. If the 'to' value is less than the 'from' value, the animation will be done in reverse – under these circumstances, Motion Blur will also be figured in reverse, if it is enabled.

Default Exposure

Most of the parameters for the camera which appears in the exported MXS are taken directly from the C4D camera's physical properties, and certain aspects of C4D's Render Settings. Even so, a C4D camera lacks some features which are integral to the way that Maxwell works; for the most part, these are related to exposure. This group contains parameters which will be used to control the exposure when no actual Maxwell Camera Tag is found at export time. For information on these parameters, please see the Camera Tag.

Render Channels

Options in this group control the various different image outputs which may be rendered by Maxwell Render. 'Render' is the main output image. The other channels are used for compositing in a third-party application like Photoshop – see the main Maxwell Render manual for more details on the various channels.

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The Engine tab contains several sub-groups which control parameters used by the Maxwell Render render engine.

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Parameter

Description

Time Limit

This is the maximum time Maxwell Render will render before stopping. As it is possible to stop Maxwell Render at any time, it is generally best to leave this set to a higher number of minutes than will be necessary to obtain a clear image.

Sampling Level

Maxwell Render will stop when it reaches this SL (Sampling Level), or the Render time value, if the specified SL is not reached before the Render time has elapsed.

CPU Threads

This parameter specifies how many threads will be used by the Maxwell Render render process. Setting this to zero will cause Maxwell Render to auto-detect and render using all available CPU resources. You can use negative numbers and it will mean “Use all but 1” (if you are using -1, for instance). This represents a trade-off between rendering speed and machine responsiveness, in case the machine must be used for other purposes while rendering. This way you can free up some of computing power for other purposes.

Command line

The plugin itself is not intended for rendering final images; rather, it is really more an MXS file exporter. To render the MXS files it produces, it uses the Maxwell Render rendering application (don’t worry, it’s automatic). Maxwell Render runs from a command line, and different command-line flags are supplied by the plugin to start it rendering on an exported MXS file. In addition to the flags passed by the plugin, you can also enter any other Maxwell Render command-line flags you wish in this text box, and they will be added to the flags that the plugin gives to Maxwell Render. Here is more information related.

Engine

Determines whether to use Maxwell Render's CPU Production engine, CPU Draft (i.e. the same engine used in Maxwell Fire) engine or the GPU engine. Selecting the GPU engine will make a gear icon show next to the dropdown menu. This will enable you to select which graphics cards you want to use for rendering from the ones available in the system.

Priority

Determines whether or not Maxwell Render will be started as a low-priority process. This is the same as adding –p:low to the command-line. If Maxwell is not putting the processor to work close to its 100% of performance, you might consider raising this up, but it may come with drawback of lowering the responsiveness of other applications during the render.

Multilight

Maxwell's Multilight feature allows you to control the intensity of your lights while you render, or after you have finished rendering. Two modes are provided: Intensity and Color. Note that it takes a great deal more memory to use this feature (especially in Color mode), so do not enable it if you do not intend to use it.

MXI Output

Determines whether Maxwell Render will write a single MXI file, one for each light, or none at all.

Fire Options

Sampling Level and Threads directly control their parameters in the Fire render engine, while the Quality parameter determines the actual size of the image being rendered (the image is interpolated to fit the current size of the Fire window).

Denoiser

Here you can activate the Denoiser so the render is launched with this channel active. You can also tune its different options. For more information, please, check this page about the Denoiser.

If it is enabled here, the Denoiser channel will also be enabled in the Output tab > Render Channels section and the other way around.

Tone Mapping

These parameters correspond to those of the same name as seen in the Maxwell Render user-interface. For technical details on the meaning of these parameters, see the main Maxwell Render manual.


SimuLens

Maxwell Render provides access to the image-enhancing features known as SimuLens.

Parameter

Description

Aperture & Obstacle Maps

These maps are used by the SimuLens Diffraction feature, if they are specified. Several example maps may be found in the 'Simulens maps' folder inside the Maxwell Render installation folder on your machine. The Aperture map is required for the Simulens to work but the Obstacle map is optional.

Diffraction

SimuLens is able to simulate camera lens-diffraction effects. it is not recommended to enable Diffraction from the plugin, since Maxwell Render will apply it at each image update – rather, wait until the image is finished and apply Diffraction using Maxwell Render.

Scattering

This parameter simulates light-scattering caused by the camera's lens. Since this scattering is figured by Maxwell Render at each image update, it is recommended (in the interest of reducing render-time) to leave this disabled, then apply it to the final image via Maxwell Render's user-interface when the image has finished rendering.

Devignetting

By default, Maxwell Render simulates realistic vignetting (i.e. the darkening around edges of images); to disable this, check the Devignetting option and set the reduction value between zero and one-hundred percent to vary the amount of vignetting seen in the final output image.

Materials

Setting the path to an MXM file in the Override material field will cause all non-emitter objects to be rendered using this MXM rather than whatever they may have explicitly assigned. The Default path can be used to set which MXM should be used for objects which have no explicit material assigned. If it is blank, a standard 153,153,153 diffuse MXM will be created under your user folder and the path to it will be given to Maxwell Render to use as default for non-assigned objects.

Globals

Here you can globally enable or disable features like the Motion Blur, Displacement or Dispersion.

Extra Sampling

This feature lets you render parts of the image to a higher sampling level after the main render has reached its final sampling level. This is achieved using custom image, the Alpha channel or a Custom Alpha channel of your choice to select the area you want to be sampled to a higher sampling level. Black pixels won’t be selected, all the rest of the colors will be selected.

Here you can check how this works in detail.

Overlay Text

With these settings you can add line of text to the top or bottom of the render with a background in order to tag it. You can also add some macros that are updated on each SL to display the time, camera name, etc. as explained here.

Render Layers

Though Maxwell naturally calculates all possible light interactions in a scene, it is possible to inhibit certain types of calculation using the toggles found in this section. The specific light interactions which each of these options affect should be fairly self-explanatory, for more details, see the regular Maxwell Render manual.

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The Environment tab controls the environment which will be used in the exported MXS, and contains all of the parameters necessary to control each Environment Type. There are four types of environment available; Sky Dome, Physical Sky, Image Based, and None. The environment for a Scene is set by using the drop-down list contained in the main Environment group.

The Sun may be enabled regardless of which environment type is chosen. When the Sun is enabled, the Sun Indicator group will be shown:

When the Sun Indicator is enabled, the direction of the Sun will be shown in the viewport, using a yellow line and sphere. As date, time, location, or Scene Rotation is changed, the indicator will be updated in real-time, allowing for an intuitive prediction of where shadows will appear in the rendered image:


Use the Sun Indicator's Scale Factor to adjust how far away from the Scene Object's origin the sphere will be drawn. The indicator may be moved to a convenient location by changing the position of the Scene Object; the indicator is drawn relative to this location. Additionally, if a light with a Sun Expression tag is found during export, then the position of the object controlled by the expression (when the expression is enabled) will be used to set the Sun's direction in Maxwell, rather than what is specified in the Scene Object being rendered.

Sky Dome

When Sky Dome is chosen as the Environment Type, the scene will be lit by a sphere of light. The intensity, zenith, and horizon colors are individually controlled using the parameters of the same names. The Mid Point parameter determines the angle from the horizon at which the horizon and zenith colors are evenly mixed. For more information, see here.

Physical Sky

When Physical Sky is chosen as the Environment Type, the scene will be lit by an all-encompassing dome of light generated by Maxwell to simulate the appearance of a natural sky. For more information, see here. The Physical Sky may also be exported to an HDR file.

Clicking 'Export' will export an HDR using the resolution set in C4D's Render Settings, while clicking 'Export Viewport' will export using the active viewport's resolution. Enable the 'Use custom resolution' option to export an HDR using a custom size.

Location & Time

The Location & Time group will be shown whenever it is applicable. The Latitude and Longitude parameters may be set manually, or automatically, by choosing a city from the drop-down list. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) will be figured automatically by the plugin regardless of how the location is specified. The Rotation parameter rotates the environment in a range from 0 to 360 degrees, allowing you to change which direction is North without physically changing the C4D scene. 

The Time parameter lets you set the exact time and date.

Image Based

The Image Based Environment Type allows you to light the scene using HDR images. There are four Image Based Channels provided; each channel may be disabled, or set to reference an HDR image, the Background channel, or it may use the sky type indicated in the Image Based Sky Type drop-down.

There are some global options at the top of the panel:

Parameter

Description

Use Interpolation

This option turns on render-time pixel-interpolation for environment HDR images.

Intensity Multiplier

The Intensity parameter of all image-based channels will be multiplied by this value.

Viewport Display

Determines which channel, if any, to display in the C4D viewport.

Viewport Resolution

Sets the size of bitmap to use for displaying IBL channels in the C4D viewport.

Image Based Sky Type

This drop-down is only shown when necessary; it determines the type of environment to use for channels which are either disabled, or are explicitly set to use the active sky.

When an HDRI file is added to one of the channels, these options will be shown to position the map as you like:

Cinema Tab

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The Cinema tab contains parameters which tell the plugin how to deal with native C4D objects that have no correlation in Maxwell Render itself, and therefore require some sort of translation. 

Parameter

Function

Export Units

The output of the Scene will be scaled using this value. If it is set to 'Cinema Basic Units', objects will be exported at the size they are drawn in Cinema, according to the Basic Units setting in Cinema's Units preference page. There are several other scale presets available as well.
If any of the named presets are chosen, then the document will be exported such that a unit specified in the Cinema UI, no matter what the Cinema Basic Units setting, will be treated as the unit chosen here. So, though the Cinema UI may be showing the width of an object as 200mm, choosing Inch here will result in the object being exported at 200 inches wide. Similarly, if you choose Custom here, a numeric input will be shown:

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In this case, the values specified in the Cinema UI will be interpreted as meters, and will then multiplied by the given value; so as shown above, the exported size of the 200-unit wide object will be 200 meters X 0.01, or two meters.

LIGHTS

Create Physical Lights

Enables or disables the translation of native C4D lights into meshes and emitter materials during export.

Hide from Camera

This determines whether or not the meshes generated will have the Maxwell object-flags of the same names set. This is useful for when you have C4D lights which would be visible to the camera, either directly or indirectly, and you wish them not to be.

Hide from Refl. & Refr.

Omni-light segments

Determines the number of radial segments which will generated omni-light meshes will have. Do not use more detail here than necessary, since Maxwell render-time is adversely affected by emitter-geometry with large numbers of individual mesh-faces.

Omni-light radius

This determines the radius given to the sphere generated for an omni-light.

Round spot-light segments

Similar to the 'Omni-light segments' parameter, this controls how many radial segments will be used when generating spot-lights. Spot-lights are slightly more efficient in this regard than omni-lights, since the plugin can generate a simple disc for the spot-light's emitter mesh, rather than an entire sphere.

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PROCEDURALS

Maxwell always uses textures which are specified as a path to an on-disk image file. As such, the plugin must render any C4D procedural textures out to disk when it performs automatic conversion of C4D materials to Maxwell materials during export. The parameters in this group are used to control how those procedural textures are rendered.

Render to disk

Enables or disables the export of C4D procedural textures. When enabled, procedural textures found in native C4D materials during export will be rendered out and saved to files placed in a 'textures' directory, under the location specified in Scene > Output > Folder.

Render all textures

When enabled, textures which are specified by disk path will be rendered by their shaders, instead of simply passing their disk paths to Maxwell. The purpose of this is to enable animation of parameters for such textures.

Use Interpolation

Enables or disables the Maxwell texture's 'interpolation' option for all generated textures.

Sampling Size/Width/Height

This sets the resolution that native C4D procedurals will be saved to during export. Choose one of the pre-defined sizes from the drop-down, or choose 'Custom' and set the desired size using the Width and Height parameters.