Added support for Maya 2023 and 2024.
Updated the library file libeay32.dll in Maxwell Render installation.
Built for Maxwell Render 5.2.1.49.
Added support for Maya 2022.
Dropped support for Maya 2016 and 2017.
Due to a change in the installer, it’s mandatory to previously uninstall any older version of the plugin for it to work. Please, do not overwrite an existing installation of the plugin. This doesn’t affect the Maxwell Render installation, only the plugin. |
New "Denoiser" channel.
New Substance Painter Assistant.
New Substance Designer Assistant.
Added support for XGen interactive groom hair (the changes are still not interactive in Fire). Hair types by groomable splines, controlled by expressions or placed manually by guides can be rendered with Maxwell using the option in the Generate menu > Convert to Interactive Groom…
The plugin now uses the new Maxwell Render 5.2 Denoiser implementation:
Only one render pass is needed
The Denoiser information is now included in the MXI file
The Denoiser channel can be recalculated after opening the MXI.
The renders with Denoiser can now be easily resumed.
The Denoiser can be calculated in tiles so its memory consumption is very much limited.
New fine tunning options control the Denoiser effect.
The Denoiser tab in the Render Settings panel now includes new options.
MXS export and Studio export now takes Simulens and other Render parameters into account.
Maxwell’s "Select Material" dialog now shows Maxwell Assistant and Referenced materials too.
The Denoiser "Start with SL" default value has been changed from 4 to 8.
The Denoiser "Start with SL" value can now be set from 3 to 50.
Maxwell Volumetrics "Field Density" parameter default value is now 1.0.
The "Create a Maxwell Volumetric Object" button creates the new volumetric object with a base transform scale of x100.
Maxwell Hair "Render Type" values have been renamed from "Cones", "Blades", "Curves" to "Cylinder", "Flat", "Curve".
The default Maxwell hair type was changed to "Flat".
In some cases, the transform values of the exported element were wrong in multi-level groups.
Could not find the license if the license file contained non-ascii characters.
It was not possible to assign a material to the Volumetric objects.
Transformations with negative scale caused wrong item transformation values in Maxwell Studio.
Maxwell Material Assistant: drop-down types were not exported correctly.
In the case Maxwell Material editor is visible inside more than one panel, the Material preview was shown in one panel only.
Many Hair assistant preset values were wrong.
The plugin set texture channel value 1 for all the textures connected to the Color channel of any Assistant, but only the hair assistant should behave like this.
The Hair Assistant presets didn’t set the preset color textures.
The custom alpha assignment had some inconsistencies.
Built for Maxwell Render 5.1.1.33.
Built for Maxwell Render 5.1.0.29.
Built for Maxwell Render version 5.0.2.21.
Added support for Maya 2020.
Added support for MacOS operating system.
Added an option to activate or deactivate the Grass, Scatter or Subdivision extensions per node. You will find a new dropdown at the top part of their parameters panel.
Now the Maya’s File Path Editor tool also takes into account referenced mxs and mxm files so the user can now repath some or all of them to a different folder (this doesn't affect the paths of the textures or referenced inside those mxm or mxs files). This was already working for the textures used in the scene.
The exporter to Studio only exported what was selected; now, if there are objects selected, only the selected objects will be exported and, if there is nothing selected, everything will be exported.
When exporting to Studio, no camera was included; now, if there are objects selected, only the selected cameras will be exported and, if nothing is selected, all of them will be exported; in both cases, the active camera will be exported. When launching a render, only the active camera is sent.
Export to Studio, Pack and Go, File > Export and File > Export Selection now is exporting the group hierarchy to the mxs file. The mxs file generated when rendering will still be flat (so it exports the smallest file possible).
Export to Studio, Pack and Go, File > Export and File > Export Selection now is exporting the hidden geometry and their materials.
When exporting to Studio now the environment settings are also exported.
If no path was specified for storing the mxs file, the export to Studio, Network or Maxwell Cloud commands failed; now an untitled.mxs will be saved in one of these folders depending on the operating system:
Windows: C:\Users\<username>Documents\maya\projects\default\scenes\maxwell\
MacOS: ~/Documents/maya/projects/default/scenes/maxwell/
The viewport preview of the sky was projected onto a too-small sphere so when the camera clips were active the preview of the sky could disappear. Now the sphere is bigger and will work better in most of the scenes.
The naming and icons of the Maxwell nodes now are more specific; these have been improved: Grass, Scatter, Maxwell Reference, Sea, Sky Preview, Bin Object, RFRK Object and RFRK Particles.
The “Update from File” button in a referenced material made the corresponding faces disappear in Fire.
Fire was not stopped when a normal render was launched.
The Pack and Go tool was not exporting the .mxs file or the Maya scene file in the selected location.
The plugin could generate Maxwell materials with the texture slot active but without a texture inside; this could make the GPU engine fail.
Maxwell Sea was not exported when using the export selection method.
Maxwell Scatter typo: Length Map should say Scale Map
Fixed obsolete code.
On Mac, mxs references, proxies and extensions (grass, scatter, sea,...) may not display correctly in the viewport and may produce some instability.
Built for Maxwell Render version 5.0.1.16
Added Multilight Group box at the emitter component of the materials to allow light grouping.
Added new button to set MultiGPU preferences in Render Settings > Maxwell Render tab > General settings > next to the Engine dropdown.
Added button to open Render Settings panel.
Added button to launch the render to Maxwell.
Added button to send the scene to Studio.
Added button to launch the render to the Network System.
Added button to send the render to Maxwell Cloud.
Renewed the toolbar icons to adapt to Maxwell 5 look
Built with Maxwell Render 5.0.0.14 SDK
Added support for Maya 2019.
Added support for Maxwell material representation in Viewport 2.0 (Core Profile) for Maya 2017 and newer; in the case of Maya 2016 Legacy Default Viewport has to be used but the features regarding viewport shaders will be the same as in previous versions.
Added support for showing in viewport the color or texture of Reflectance 0º and 90º.
Added support for showing in viewport the transformations of textures loaded in Reflectance 0º and 90º (Invert, UV Rotation, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue from “Maxwell Image Controls” and Repeat UV and Offset from “place2dTexture”)
Added support for showing in viewport the textures loaded in Layer Masks and BSDFs Weight Texture with support for Invert and UV Rotation from “Maxwell Image Controls” and Repeat UV and Offset from “place2dTexture”
Added support for showing in viewport any texture using “Enable Viewport Override” with support for Invert, UV Rotation, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue from “Maxwell Image Controls” and Repeat UV and Offset from “place2dTexture”
Added support for showing in viewport an approximation of the transparency set in Transmittance as well as textures with support for Invert and UV Rotation from “Maxwell Image Controls” and Repeat UV and Offset from “place2dTexture”
Added support for showing in viewport an approximation of the blending between Reflectance 0º and 90º (colors or textures) affected by roughness value.
Added support for showing in viewport an approximation of the blending of multiple BSDFs as well as multiple layers (limited to 32 elements, that is BSDFs or layers) taking into account Normal or Additive blending modes.
Added support for showing the main color and texture of the assistant materials in the viewport.
Added support for showing any other texture of the assistants through “Enable Viewport Override” with support for Invert, UV Rotation, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue from “Maxwell Image Controls” and Repeat UV and Offset from “place2dTexture”.
Added support for showing environment viewport preview for Windows and Linux (in Mac it’s not working as it is based on OpenGL 2.0 and in Mac it’s only supported from version 3.2 and up. We’ll try to add support for this in future updates).
New Maxwell Material Preview area in Attribute Editor; bigger, more useful, collapsible and detachable).
Added a bigger material preview area that can be set to three different sizes.
Added engine selection options for the material preview (drop-down and right-click menus).
Added controls for Sampling Level (SL) and Time limits as well as the number of threads for the Material Preview.
Added a drop-down menu to be able to select the preview scene from the ones available at the Maxwell installation preview folder.
Added a text box where to store custom information about the material.
Added a toggle button to change from On Demand preview update mode to Automatic.
Added a button to edit the material in Maxwell Material Editor (MXED).
Added buttons to detach the material preview to a floating window.
Added update preview button.
Added new buttons to create embedded, referenced and assistant materials (new).
In the case of MXS references, we added new object ID options, so you can choose between Container (it will show the one of the MXS reference itself, so it will be one single color), Content (it will show the object ID of the individual objects inside the reference, so it will show several colors) or Recolor (this will generate new random colors for the objects inside the reference which will be persistent between renders).
Reorganized assistant materials’ options and default values so they match the ones in MXED; also added some missing texture chips and fixed some problems using textures.
Added Hair assistant material.
Added an alternative custom saving folder for the Online Gallery downloads in Preferences.
Launching a region render crashed Maya when the image was returned to the image frame buffer.
When using “Export selected” from File menu with Pack and Go, all the materials of the scene and related files were exported, instead of only the ones related to the selected objects.
The plugin was ignoring Maya lights and MXS references when exporting under certain circumstances.
Maya crashed if the plugin could not find the right version of Maxwell. It now informs of the problem and disables the plugin.
MXS references were not displaying correctly in the viewport in the case of grouped geometry that had transformations applied to the group (although they rendered fine).
Some of the fields were showing a light grey background while Maya default color is dark grey.
Instances with negative scales exported from Maya were not opened in the right place in Studio (although they rendered correctly).
Maya was crashing when trying to open another file after saving one.
When Maxwell was set as default renderer, Render Settings panel showed empty.
Dropped support from Maya 2012 to 2015 (included) as some of the new features were not able to work on the old versions.
Update to Maxwell 4.2.0.3.
Built with Maxwell SDK 4.2.0.2.
Added channel "Triangle ID".
Added support for Maya 2018
In Maya 2018 the Legacy Viewport Renderer, upon Maxwell relied on to display textures in the viewport, was deprecated. Thus, until we create a new shader for Viewport 2.0, the textures can only be previewed using Fire.
Added Maxwell SDK 4.1.1.1
Some default options have been changed.
Added Windows installer options.
OSX installer has been modified.
Maxwell's Batch Render didn't work properly.
Batch render saved only the last denoised image.
Syntax errors have been fixed.
Added Maxwell SDK 4.1.0.4
Added Maxwell SDK 4.1.0.3
Plugin now uses central Maxwell installation.
Added Denoiser options to Maxwell render settings
Added Xrite AXF Material extensions
Added Table BRDF Material extension
Added Maxwell Light Panel
Added FIRE engine menu to Maxwell render settings
CPU Threads can have negative values.
Maya 2016.5 and 2017 doesn't show Maxwell extensions in viewport 2.0
Integrates the 4.0.0.12 render engine.
Added support for Maya 2016.5
Integrates the 4.0.0.11 render engine.
Integrates the 4.0.0.8 render engine.
Increased the range of the Parallax Distance camera parameter.
Set the default value for the stereo separation camera parameter to 6.5.
When creating a stereo camera rig, the center camera also shows the Maxwell Render roll-up in the attribute editor.
Updated the plug-in API to allow other plug-ins to export Maxwell's hair.
Fixed: wrong output image name when using the <Scene> macro and running an interactive batch render.
Fixed: the RF BIN mesh loader object did not update in the viewport when changing the current time.
Fixed: the output image format was reset to PNG when saving a scene that was using EXR.
Fixed: slow voxelization in FIRE.
Fixed: adding a new customa alpha channel and selecting "no" when prompted to add the selection to it assigned all the objects in the scene to that channel.
Fixed: environment preview did not work in Viewport 2.0.
Fixed: objects with semitransparent Maxwell materials did not appear correctly or at all in Viewport 2.0.
Fixed: area lights did not appear in the "Block Emitter" dialog.
fixed: FIRE was still running in the background after closing its window
fixed: the render resolution for FIRE was capped at 720 pixels horizontally the first time it was started during a Maya session due to misbehaving licensing code
added support for Maya 2016
fixed: MEL error about setParent when loading the plug-in
added the *.prt extension mask to the Maxwell Particles file dialogs
converted materials use the name of the original material, but with an added "Conv" suffix
fixed: layered materials converted automatically from legacy materials did not show up in Hypershade
fixed: the plug-in was not able to obtain a license on Linux if Shave&Haircut; was also installed (or any other plug-in which uses RLM)
added the *.exr file mask in the browser dialog for RFRK mesher displacement files
the volumetric object no longer adds a frame number in the exported particle file path if one isn't present in the file selected by the user. Also improved the detection of the frame padding in case a frame number has to be inserted.
fixed: "no layer selected" error when clicking the Blocked Emitters button in the AE for a mesh
fixed: wrong viewport preview for the sea object when Maya was in z-up mode
fixed: wrong positions for exported particles when Maya was set in z-up mode
fixed: native lights were not included in the list of blockable emitters
fixed: no VDB file mask in the volumetric object file open dialog
fixed the translation from legacy materials to layered was broken
added support for mapping magnitudes to UV channels in the RFRK mesher
fixed: instances produced by the MASH plug-in (and other 3rd party instancers) were not rendered
added support for UDIM textures
added settings for extra sampling in the render options dialog
fixed: volumetric objects did not work
fixed: crash when changing the state of the color management setting (Maya 2015 Extension 1)
added support for a new hair primitive: curves
added support for per-material alpha channels
added back support for custom light geometry (MXS references)
fixed: volumetric objects could not be exported on Windows 8
fixed: wrong rotation for spot lights in FIRE
fixed: floating shadows and reflections were not visible when rendering in Draft mode
fixed: when launching Maxwell on Linux, an intermediary process was created, instead of parenting Maxwell directly under the main Maya process
fixed: minor licensing issue
non-absolute MXS and MXI paths are considered relative to the project path
fixed: wrong viewport preview for boolean objects when Maya is in Z up mode
fixed: region rendering only worked when using the camera set as renderable in the scene settings
removed obsolete parameters from the UI of the scatter node
fixed: possible crash when displaying a scatter node in the viewport
fixed: MXS references were not inheriting render flags and were ignoring custom alpha assignments
fixed: exporting a MXS during pack'n'go ignored render settings
Changes
added support for Maya 2015
creating a new custom alpha channel adds the currently selected objects to the channel
added a shelf button which allows custom alpha channel mappings to be edited on several objects at once
added missing Maxwell scatter parameters
when a custom alpha channel is renamed, its name is updated in all the scene nodes which were using it
pack'n'go now copies texture files used by referenced MXM materials, files used by RFRK nodes and file sequences used by animated textures and MXS references
Fixes
Maxwell scatter density, scale and rotation maps weren't exported
wrong defaults and ranges for scatter variation and rotation parameters
correlated color emitters were exported as XYZ and vice-versa
the time input of the sea node was replaced with the default value when loading a scene
wrong unit for the time of the sea node (frames were passed as seconds)
incorrect scale and density range exported for Maya fluids
incorrect displacement presets for RealFlow and Modo
the plug-in was incorrectly adding the frame number to ABC files used by the RFRK particle node
realflow BIN meshes were displayed incorrectly in the viewport
bogus values in the displacement-related dropdowns in the material attribute editor
incorrect camera target (and therefore DOF) if the linear unit was set to something other than centimeters when the camera was created
incorrect lighting and normal mapping for objects with Maxwell materials in Viewport 2.0
MXM import ignored emitter projection textures
added a setting to control if FIRE takes isolation mode into account
upgraded Shave SDK to version 7
the plug-in displays an error when exporting a material or rendering if a layered material has displacement, but no layers
the plug-in detects when multiple projected textures with identical parameters are assigned to the same material and creates a single UV set
increased maximum number of projection channels per material to 16
changes to the isolation list didn't always reflect in FIRE
crash when trying to read preview images for materials with very long names
particle instancers didn't render
FIRE could not be started if an object was parented to the active camera
added support for Maya 2014
added a Match Render Resolution command in the Viewport menu of the FIRE window
merged the start and stop FIRE menu commands into a single toggle item
materials for PaintFX can be specified at the brush level. If a material is also specified on the stroke, the stroke material takes precedence.
added a menu command in the FIRE window to send the image to the render view
added focus to and start/stop buttons in the FIRE window
added exposure controls at the top of the FIRE window
the object ID color is taken from the deepest level of the hierarchy where it is set, so that shapes can override the colors set in the transforms
added an image preview window
when importing MXS files, objects and triangles without materials use the default Maya material
added sl, width, height, shutter, iso and fstop keywords to the render view overlay text
hair vertex colors are converted to linear space
improved export times in scenes with deeply nested hierarchies
numeric render options were not working in the render view overlay text
objects with a single material which was assigned to each face, instead of at object level, were imported without a material from MXS
the material ID color wasn't imported from MXM files
the IES point cloud was not oriented correctly when Maya was set in Z up mode
incorrect UV coordinates when a material with projected textures is assigned per face
adding a new layer to a material re-enabled all the disabled layers
full reexport in FIRE when a single object is changed
Maya instances were exported multiple times
the color correction attributes were not imported from MXM files in Maya 2012 and up
improved export times when there are many hidden objects
added the option to disable camera movement export for motion blur
FIRE supports isolation mode
added settings for drawing MXS references and Maxwell instances as meshes instead of point clouds
added a "solo" setting for material layers
added a Maxwell category in the create new material dialog
the HUD (resolution gate, film gate etc.) can be turned off in the FIRE window
fixed: pack'n'go didn't work when used from the File/Export menu
fixed: crash in Maya 2013.5 when emitters were used
fixed: when multiple Maxwell objects were selected, only the first one was highlighted in the viewport
fixed: wrong framing in FIRE when the aspect ratio of the FIRE window didn't match the render aspect ratio
fixed: wrong framing in some cases when vertical film offset was used
fixed: Python API: SetAttribute() for material components didn't work if the attribute was a color
added support for Maya 2013.5
added the -l flag for command line rendering which selects the active render layer
pack'n'go can export the scene to MXS
added the ability to control the viewport display color for all the Maxwell objects (MXS reference, instancer, RFRK objects etc.)
fixed: the viewport did not update after removing a sequence from a RFRK mesher
fixed: pack'n'go no longer overwrites the current scene if "Save Maya Scene" is enabled
fixed: the OSX installer did not contain the MXI image format plug-in
fixed: the OSX installer copied all files, for all Maya versions, regardless of which versions are actually installed
fixed: the Maya 2013 build did not work on some Linux distributions
the Maxwell-specific attributes are always present in Maya 2012 and above, so they can be manipulated directly with setAttr and they show up in the spreadsheet editor
the UI controls for the Maxwell-specific attributes behave just like the controls for the built-in attributes in Maya 2013 and above, so there's no need to use the Extra Attributes rollup anymore
render flags can be set on transform nodes, overriding the settings for all the children of the transform
FBX import and export supports Maxwell materials
geometry and materials can be imported from MXS files
fixed: the hide to secondary rays, GI and z-clip flags were not working on MXS references
fixed: a Maxwell viewport was created every time the settings window was closed
no new features in this version.
fixed: the extensions (grass, hair etc.) were broken in the previous plug-in build (2.7.5)
added support for image sequences in the image-based environment
the Maxwell root directory can be specified through the MAXWELL2_ROOT environment variable and maxwell2Root option var on all platforms
fixed: the library and gallery browsers didn't work
fixed: revoxelization in FIRE after any kind of scene change
fixed: wrong maximum value for grass bend angle
fixed: wrong face-shader mappings for subdivided meshes under certain circumstances
fixed: the "focus to" shelf button didn't work if the object was part of a group
fixed: FIRE didn't refresh when a camera parameter was changed through an expression
Maya 2013 is supported
added Maxwell grass
updated the command line render flags for pre- and post- MEL scripts to match the built-in renderer
projecting UVs works when no placement object is present
added support for cubic and spherical texture projections
increased maximum f/stop value to match Studio
added anamorphic bokeh settings in the Maxwell camera attributes panel
added render flags for the MXS reference objects
bump maps are exported as disabled when bump mapping is off, instead of being completely ignored
PaintFX hair can generate root UVs
added a new entry in the list of displacement types: "3D RealFlow"
particle mass, age, color and UV are exported to the MaxwellParticles extension when present
PXY files can be used with the MaxwellParticles extension
added back the region rendering controls on the camera attribute editor; the Maya region settings take precedence when using region rendering
the rendered region is applied on top of the existing Render View image
smoothed meshes with per-face material assignments are supported
fixed: FIRE was not refreshed when moving a MXS reference object
added "off" to the display mode list of the BIN mesh loader, which prevents the BIN files from being accessed for viewport preview
setting the LOD to 0 in the particle objects and MXS reference prevents the plug-in from reading anything from disk
added shelf buttons for creating and assigning Maxwell materials
added help and about buttons on the shelf
added an API which can be used to customize the export process
the transparency of the native materials is used as layer weight instead of transmittance color in the Maxwell approximation
the IOR parameter of Blinn and Phong shaders is taken into account by the translator
fixed: crash when trying to run Maya with non-accelerated OpenGL drivers (e.g. under Remote Desktop in Windows, or with Mesa on Linux
fixed: errors on Mac OS and Linux when the RealFlow plug-in was also loaded
fixed: some AE controls did not work correctly on Mac when a material had multiple layersadded Maxwell render flags for hair nodes, particle systems and instancers
added a motion blur factor control for particle systems
added Maxwell render flags for hair nodes, particle systems and instancers
the format and depth of the extra render channels are forced to the same values as the color channel when embedding is on
added an attenuation unit control for the BSDF
added support for multi-step camera motion blur
the referenced material supports viewport 2.0
added support for silent installs on Windows (pass /S on the installer command line)
the FIRE scene state can be frozen using the Viewport menu in the popup panel
added the -restartFire and -freezeFireState flags to the maxwell command which apply to all running FIRE instances
Maxwell is started with -node when running a batch render, so that it uses a node license, not a GUI license
the search paths configured in the plug-in preferences are saved in the exported MXS files
integrated region rendering with Maya's render view and removed the Maxwell-specific region attributes from the camera
removed the "Default to High Quality" plug-in preference
added a render option which disables the export of built-in Maya lights
fixed: slow export for particle instancers
fixed: native light intensities were not read back correctly from ML if the intensity multiplier was left at its default value
fixed: possible crash when loading the plug-in
fixed: the Maxwell material didn't respect the viewport backface culling setting (culling was always on)
fixed: render layer overrides could not be applied on material checkboxes
fixed: wrong state for the save image, start and stop menu items in the FIRE panel
fixed: global displacement scale shouldn't be applied to relative displacement heights
fixed: the global displacement scale wasn't applied to 3D displacement height
fixed: the "merge materials" window didn't have a title
fixed: a "0" was displayed in the override temp directory control when the value was not set
fixed: bad text alignment in the preferences window
fixed: if a Maya or Shave hair object fails to produce lines, the export is no longer canceled
fixed: texture UV channel indexes were not imported from MXM files
fixed: exporting with "Will use sequence rendering" enabled resulted in an error about invalid file extension
fixed: the meaning of the "embed in MXS" flag on the referenced material was reversed
This build is incompatible with Maxwell 2.6.0, and the previous builds are incompatible with the newly released Maxwell 2.6.10. Due to some changes in the extensions (hair, particles etc.) mixing incompatible plug-in and Maxwell versions will cause Maya to crash on startup. Please make sure you upgrade both the plug-in and Maxwell to the latest version. |