The
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The core rendering engine offers a complete user interface which is easy to use, flexible and visually attractive. The UI is made of up of different types of panels such as the Render Options panel, the Camera Options panel, the Multilight panel etc. All the panels are dockable so it is easy to customize the interface.new image of 2.6 UI needed - showing rendering a cool image. Image should have arrows/areas showing the main areas of the UI: top menu, render area, Panels etc
Image courtesy of Dan Abrams
Re-arranging the layout
- Click and drag on a panel title to place it in another part of the UI. The other panels will automatically adapt to fit the new panel placement
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Top menu options
File
Menu item | What it does |
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Open MXS | Open a MXS file generated from the plug-ins or from Studio. You can then set the render and output options from the Render Options panel and click the Render button to start rendering. |
Open MXI | Open a MXI file which you can then adjust using Multilight, or add Simulens effects to it, change ISO/Shutter Speed to alter the exposure. |
Save MXI as | This menu option can be used to convert a bitmap to the MXI format for use as an Image emitter in your scenes. For more details, see the Load Image menu option. |
Merge MXI | Select several MXI files that were rendered on different computers and merge them together to obtain a higher Sampling Level. This is normally done automatically when using network rendering, but this option can be useful in case you are using computers for rendering which are not connected in network. |
Merge MXI Sequence | In certain situations you may have several MXI files (i.e. several frames in an animation sequence) rendered by multiple computers, each with the complete sequence of MXI frames. In this case you may want to merge each frame with the same frame in the other computers to obtain the final sequence. This option allows you to specify all the folders to merge (with its "Add Folder" “Add Folder” tool), and each frame will be merged with the same frame in the other folders, obtaining a single, complete sequence. |
MXI Batch Processing | This tool allows you to edit a group of MXI files, applying the same modifications to all of them. You can change the ISO, Shutter, Tone Mapping, SimuLens, and Multilight settings. You can also extract the render images and the channels from the MXI files, export the emitters as separated images, and make changes in the emitters intensity (overwriting original files, or not). Simply select the input folder where the MXI files are located, and specify an output folder. You can use the "File “File Name Filter" Filter” to filter the file selection, and use the "View “View affected files" files” option to review the MXI files that will be processed. |
Resume MXI | Select a MXI file to resume rendering. After specifying a MXI file, the corresponding MXS file will be loaded in Maxwell Render and rendering will resume automatically from where it left off. Please note that the resume render will not work if you have made any changes in the MXS or if the location of the MXS has changed. Please see ?Resume Render the How to resume a render page for more info. |
Load Image | Convert Load an image in any of the supported image formats. It can be useful for changing an image file from one format to another. You can convert a bitmap into a an MXI which can then be used as an Image emitter in your scenes. After loading the image you can use the Intensity settings from the Edit panel (MXI section) to change the brightness of the MXI emitter. Brighter settings will make the MXI emit more light. Use the "Save MXI as" menu option to save the image in the MXI format. See the Textured emission (HDR emitter) page for more info. Please note that if your bitmaps are in HDR or EXR format they do not need to be converted to the MXI format ; - you can use these formats directly as Image Textured Emitters. INFO TO BE REVISED |
Save Image | Save a bitmap of the currently displayed render channel (Render, Alpha channel, Shadow etc). After clicking Save in the dialog, a second menu will appear, allowing you to choose the bit depth. Depending on the format you have chosen in the Save Dialog, you can save in 8, 16 or 32 bit output. Please see the ?Render Options Output formats page for more info about the capabilities of each image format. |
Preferences | Opens the preferences dialog. Please see the Preferences section further down on this page for more info. |
Recent MXS/ Recent MXI | Display a list of the recently opened MXS/ MXI files |
Quit | Close Maxwell Render. |
View
Menu item | What it does |
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Select/Pan | Remove "Select" from menu option? Pan: Click & drag on the render to pan through the render. Select: Revert to the normal cursor behaviour. |
Zoom/Rotate | Allows you to zoom and/or rotate the render. Please note that zooming also works with the mouse wheel. |
Full size | Makes Maxwell fullscreen, and hides all panels. Keyboard shortcut: F |
Show/Hide panels | Hides/unhides all panels. Keyboard shortcut: H |
Display Render Why is this option here anyway?? Remove it? | Enable/disable the continuous refresh of the render on the display. When disabled, the latest refinements won't be displayed on screen nor saved to disk, interesting when you need to save that image reconstruction time. |
Clear Console | Clears all messages in the Console panel. |
Channels | Sets the display of a particular channel (Render, Alpha, Fresnel etc). Please note you can also switch the display of channels by hovering your mouse over any of the channel buttons in the main render area. |
Render
Menu item | What it does |
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Start/Stop | Starts or stops the render process. If you start a render that has already been run once and Maxwell finds the render MXI file, it will ask if you want to re-start or resume the render. |
Render via network | Launches a Monitor (or uses the existing Monitor if there is one running on the same machine), and opens the Job Wizard automatically, lining up a new job with the current scene. Of course there must be one Manager and at least one Rendernode running to be able to render in network. Please see ? Network Rendering chapter for more information. |
Scripting
Menu item | What it does |
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Load script | Load and run a script file to automate the rendering process. Please see the ?Scripting chapter for more information about Scripting. |
Scripts | Shows a list of the scripts available in the "scripts" “scripts” folder in the Maxwell installation folder. For quick access to scripts you should save any scripts you use regularly in this folder. |
Tools
Menu item | What it does |
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Render Calculator | Provides a very useful calculator to obtain an accurate estimation of the time needed to finish a render at certain resolution. It also can output the Sampling Level reached after a given render time. It can work both from a previously rendered MXI, or from a given MXS scene file. |
Run Benchwell | Runs Benchwell, the Maxwell official benchmarking test that allows you to check your computer performance and compare your render power with other hardware configurations. It first automatically downloads the Benchwell scene from the Next Limit server (the next time you run the test, the system will detect if the scene is already present in your computer, and will skip this download). Then it automatically runs the Benchwell test, rendering the provided scene under circumstances, and outputting a benchmark value that represents the rendering power of your computer. You can publish your performance value together with your system configuration to the Benchwell webpage, which represents a valuable hardware comparison chart. For more information, see this page about the Benchwell test. |
Window
Open or close the different panels available (Render Options, Edit, Preview, Console, Script, Multilight)
Help
Menu item | What it does |
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Help | Opens your default web browser to support.nextlimit.com |
What's this? | Allows you to click a parameter and get a small pop-up text explaining what the parameter does |
License Info | Opens the License Info window where you can see all your current licenses and also add/remove licenses. Please see ? Licensing section for more info |
Visit Home page | Opens your default web browser to www.maxwellrender.com |
Resources | Opens your default web browser to support.nextlimit.com/display/resources/Resources+home where you can find different Maxwell Render resources (tools, scenes, models, scripts etc). |
MXM Gallery | Opens your default web browser to resources.maxwellrender.com where you can browse and download over 3500 4000 free Maxwell Render materials. |
Check for updates | Checks if any new updates are available (internet connection required). |
About Maxwell Render | Switches Maxwell Render to "turbo" mode providing a 50x speed increase. Just kidding. Displays the About message including version number. |
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- Allows you to set up to 4 different alternative texture paths, where Maxwell Render will look for missing textures. This is useful to minimize the "missing textures" error when Maxwell Render can't find a texture used in the scene and will not render. Will it look in subfolders to those paths? Can the paths be network paths?
Appearance
- Choose if scrollbars should be displayed in the UI or not, and which color scheme the UI should have. "Maxwell classic look" is the default dark grey color scheme.
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Keyboard shortcuts
You can download the Maxwell Render Suite keyboard reference chart here: Maxwell_shortcuts.pdf