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

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:

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.

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.

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