Image courtesy of Hervé Steff- Meindbender
Highlights
Grass
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Maxwell
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MXS/MXI compression
We have introduced a transparent, loss-less compression system for MXS and MXI files. Compression ratios are excellent when rendering additional channels such as alpha, shadows or ID's. With all channels activated, the MXI file can be 4x smaller. The compression system does not affect save performance more than 1-2%.
Anamorphic Bokeh
This new option allows you to get a non-uniform bokeh shape, typical when you use an anamorphic lens on a real camera. You can specify the bokeh ratio and angle. Please see the Anamorphic Bokeh page for more information.
Left: normal bokeh. Right: bokeh ratio changed producing an anamorphic bokeh effect
New Benchwell Test
A new Benchwell test, the official Maxwell Render benchmarking test, has been released, to allow the user test his/her computer's performance under controlled conditions, so that anyone can compare his/her rendering power with other hardware configurations. Now the Benchwell test will be launched directly from the Maxwell menu bar (in the Tools>Run Benchwell menu), and the results could be automatically uploaded to the official Benchwell page, to compare different hardware performances. A new beautiful Benchwell scene has been created by Hervé Steff and Atilla Akin (Tom). For more information, see the Benchwell Test page.
The new Benchwell scene, courtesy of Hervé Steff and Atilla Akin (Tom)
Fluids blend material
When you load more than one particle sequence into the same MaxwellMesher object (to be meshed together), you can now give each fluid a distinct look, by using just one multi-layered material. These distinct fluid material layers can even be blended in the transition between two fluids. See the Maxwell Mesher page ("Blend material" section) for more info.
Two fluid sequences loaded with the same MaxwellMesher and using a blend material
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Maxwell
Improvements / New features
- Grass generator and primitives added
- Support for grass flat primitive in 3rd party hair systems
- Anamorphic bokeh added
- MXS/MXI file compression
- New 3D vector displacement type for RealFlow displacement
- Support for non-bin particles vastly extended
- Added support for the environment variable "MAXWELL2_LICENSE_PATH" pointing to the folder where the license.txt file is located through an environment variable
- Support for blending materials for Maxwell Mesher fluid simulations
Bugfixes
- Multilight sliders went to zero when setting a numeric value higher than the current range
- Bad transformations in MXS references when there were repeated references with hierarchies
- Some issues in particle rendering
- Merge with Multilight enabled could generate noise
- SSS with Layer opacity
- Emitters with motion blur could fail
- Channels saved in HDR format were read as PNG 16
- Batch MXI process was not applying diffraction properly
- Disabling caustics was not working in some cases
- Extension was not kept when dropping an MXI path over the image path GUI field
- Issue refreshing Multilight sliders
- IBL files in screen mapping mode looked incorrect in blow up renders
- Blow up renderer size was saved incorrectly
Network
Improvements / New features
- "Send dependencies" option can be unchecked now in Batch mode
- Added a preference to choose the behavior of the application when closing the window (minimize to tray/exit)
- Now the application prevents the system to enter automatically in sleep mode. It is not recommended to manually put the computer in sleep mode while networking, as this can break the communication between the network components
Bugfixes
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Improvements
- It is now possible to render using more than 64 threads
Bugfixes
Fixed pretessellated displacement with multimaterial meshes
Fixed potential crash with color Multilight if an emitter slider is set to zero
Fixed bug with grass distribution applied to mesh with many polygons
Fixed bug with flipping normal map and motion blur
Maxwell Studio / MXED
Improvements / New Features
- Support for grass modifiers
- Improvements in display performance and stability
- Support for custom anamorphic bokeh in the cameras parameter
- Support for overriding visibility flags in references
- Improved routines to find missing dependencies
- Startup faster
- When launching MXED in MXMGallery mode, if the login fails it shows the preferences dialog to enter user/password
Bugfixes
- Textures of a material were not properly displayed in viewport after creating the material using a wizard
- Editing displacement values with FIRE running
- Moving objects with motion blur
- Crash copy pasting coatings inside bsdfs which already had coatings
- Issue copy pasting displacement layers from one material to a different one
- Problem reading sky files
- Enable/disable autoGMT in the sky params was not working when moving the earth globe
- Now attenuation distance is not disabled in the GUI when the extinction coefficient (K) is greater than zero
- Fixed azimuth and zenith ranges
- Fixed some memory leaks
- Fixed other small GUI issuesLoading large MXS files with deep hierarchies is much faster now
Bugfixes
- Fixed loading dxf files with invalid triangles
- Cancelling "export selection to MXS" was not working