Render courtesy of Leon Fischer, brick imagemakers
Maxwell
More speed Subsurface Scattering. Improvements are very remarkable here.
Nested Dielectrics
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1HxSWiw19IaMlA2elJYUGp6T2c/view?usp=sharing
and this is how it renders now:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1HxSWiw19IaNVBLT08wRThCck0/view?usp=sharing
There is a new parameter per material in the user interface called “Nested Priority”. By default all the materials have the same priority (0, which is the maximum). When overlapping of dielectrics/sss materials happens, MW will prioritize the one with lower number over the rest. With this method it is possible to render complex water/glass/ice surface without numerical issues, just adding a small overlap between geometries.
WE ALREADY HAVE SOME IMAGES THAT SHOW THIS
This is a critical improvement for any kind of MW user, from Product design to Realflow-MW users. Many people need to render bottles with water or any kind of fluid.
Stereo Lenses
We have implemented two new lens types: Stereo Fish Lens and Lat/Long. These lenses are stereo lenses which means that the user can choose if he renders the left or the right eye and set the intraocular distance. They are very suitable for virtual reality (VR) systems such as Oculus.
ADD IMAGE HERE
This is a very interesting feature for architects now that the VR revolution is about to happen. Typically these lenses are used in camera traveling with Oculus-like stereo systems .
Extensions API
Now it is possible that 3rd part developers develop their own procedural geometries, geometry modifiers, procedural textures, camera lens, etc. Many of the latest improvements in Maxwell (volumetrics, hair, grass, particle rendering, etc) use this API internally. Possibilities are endless. This extension API is included with the main package and it is free for both personal and commercial use.
NO IMAGES TO SHOW HERE BUT MAYBE WE CAN DO A TIME LAPSE VIDEO
This is a feature interesting for developers only but in the future it could help to create an ecosystem of 3rd part plugins.
PSD Output support
Now Maxwell can save the render in PSD format in 8, 16 and 32 bits. It supports multilayered PSD’s so channels and light buffers (when multilight is enabled) can be embedded as separated passes.
NO IMAGES TO SHOW HERE BUT MAYBE WE CAN DO A TIME LAPSE VIDEO
This is a good improvement for any kind of MW user
Procedural Emitters
Now it is possible to apply emitter materials to entities that are not triangle meshes such as hair, particles, etc.
ADD DARIO’S MOUSE
This is a general core improvement that in the future will allow to create new procedural lights that render faster, new kind of analytic lights like improved IES, specific lenses for the scientist sector, etc
Separated Reflection & Refraction channels
Now it is possible to render many more combinations like "Diffuse", "Reflections", "Diffuse + Reflections", "Refractions", and so on. It makes it possible to apply denoisier algorithms to specific passes only.
ADD IMAGES?
This is a good improvement for any kind of MW user. It is typical to render glasses or subsurface scattering in separate passes to apply denoisers only to them without affecting the rest of the render, which helps to get cleaner architecture renders where noisy glasses play an important role
Improvements in Maxwell Scatter
New "remove overlapped" option to avoid collisions between instances generated by the scatter algorithm.
New "uniform scaling" option to avoid undesired deforming when scaling scattered instances.
ADD IMAGE HERE
This is a good improvement for any kind of MW user, specially for architects. You might want to distribute trees over your garden randomly but you do not want they intersect in a way that would not happen in real life.
New "Reflectance" channel
This new channel that just shows plain colors without the influence of global illumination It is very useful for achieving "self illuminated textures" when used in combination with custom alpha channels.
ADD IMAGE HERE
This is a good improvement for any kind of MW user, probably more for Product design and VFX. Sometimes projects require tweaks that are only possible skipping global illumination, such as imposing a certain unaltered color in some objects or using textures as if they look like lights that do not emit.
Improvements in Multilight editor
- Now it is possible to select and edit multiple emitters at the same time
- New "Sort by name/type/intensity functions
This is a good improvement for any kind of MW user, specially for architects
New "Asset Reference" extension
This new extension allows to work with references of many different file formats in the same way Maxwell works with referenced MXS’s so these geometries are not pre-converted to MXS files but Maxwell works with them as references and they are loaded in render time.
Formats supported are many, including OBJ, FBX, Blender, Alembic, DAE, STL, LXO, 3DS, LWO, 3D, etc
This is a great improvement for any kind of MW user. You can have assets in different formats and all you projects will reference them. Namely you could have a huge collection of trees in OBJ format, in the past you had to convert it to MXS but now you can just use this new Asset Reference extension to reference them inside your scenes and Maxwell will convert them to Maxwell geometries in render time.
WE ALSO HAVE THE NEW MW FUNDAMENTALS VIDEOS BUT PROBALY THEY SHOULD NOT BE PROMOTED AS A HIGHLIGHT
BUGS FIXED
- The new "nested dielectrics" feature also fixes artifacts with dielectrics/SSS objects that intersect.
- Fixed artifacts rendering intersecting volumetrics
- Error messaging improved, specially with licensing errors.
- Fixed issues in opaque material type when using textures
- Color space management of input textures improved
- Fixed "hidden from reflections and refractions" was not working properly with coatings.
- Fixed instances of hidden reference were not visible unless they were translated
- Fixed issue with scaled instances of procedural geometries not showing up in the render
- Extra Sampling:
- Fixed Extra Sampling with render region was not stopping at the desired sampling level
- Better support for missing paths for bitmap masks
- Fixed custom alpha channels in referenced MXS
- Fixed other minor bugs
- Fixed potential crash in procedural displacement
- Fix potential crash when using EXR in OSX
- Fixed hang when using deep channel at very high resolutions
- Fixed crash when opening/resuming corrupted MXI files
- Fixed issue in texture interpolation
- On the fly displacement improved.
NETWORK
- The new network system (tp_network) is much more stable now. Many features of the old network system have been added.
- Better support for Extra Sampling in cooperative renders
Studio
- Fixed UI issue when having MXM references (the item shown in the stack properties and the item selected could get out of sync)
- Fixed UI issue that allowed to set IES/Spot emitters with Temperature
- Fixed Animation tool forced longitude/latitude sun position
- Fixed Animation tool forced jpg image output
- Fixed camera roll angle was wrong when entering negative values
- Fixed RealFlow bin meshes loader was failing in some cases
PyMaxwell
- Fixed crash after running getObjectNames() causing scene corruption
- Useless parameter for getNumCustomAlphaChannels() has been removed
- Fixed crash on getPath() when the path is empty