Rhino 6 and newer - Maxwell Extensions

The plugin offers two types of extensions: the extensions that are applied as modifiers of other normal Rhino objects or the extensions that create their own objects.

  • Extensions that are applied as modifiers:

    • Maxwell Grass,

    • Maxwell Scatter,

    • Subdivision Modifier.

  • Extensions that create a new object:

    • Maxwell Sea,

    • Maxwell Volumetrics.

 

Extension Modifiers

You can create the modifier extensions and see their properties from the Maxwell Extensions panel. You can open the panel from the Rhino’s panels list (using the small gear icon at the corner of the panel) or using the Toggle Extensions Editor button from the “Tools” toolbar:

Windows version of the Maxwell Extensions panel
MacOS version of the Maxwell Extensions panel

The Save and Load buttons at the end of the parameters list let you save to disk the list of parameters to keep them as a backup which you can recover later for a different scene. They will create a .preset file that can be modified in a text editor.

The modifier extensions are assigned to the objects from the Maxwell section of the Properties panel. In order to do so, select the object to which you want to apply the modifier and click the + button to the right of the Extensions section. From there, you can create new extensions or assign the existing ones. This way, you can apply the same Grass definition to different objects easily.

The - button will unassign the selected extension definition from the object.

The E button will also open the Maxwell Extensions panel.

The Extensions section in the Properties panel on Windows

 

The Extensions section in the Properties panel on MacOS

 

As a visual help when finetuning the Grass and Scatter modifiers we have added this button to the “Tools” toolbar:

It will toggle some visual aids on and off in the viewport that will display the position and shape of the Grass blades as well as the guide that determines the position and orientation of the Scatter objects:

 

You can find the details about the different parameters on these pages:

 

Extension objects

The Maxwell Sea and Maxwell Volumetric objects can be created from the “Tools” toolbar using these icons:

You can also create them using the command Maxwell_AddObject and then choosing Sea or Volumetrics.

You will find their properties in the Rhino’s Object Properties panel > Maxwell section. If the selected object is a Maxwell Sea or Maxwell Volumetric object you will find a new area at the bottom to show the Extension Parameters:

The parameters of a Maxwell Volumetric object are shown in the Object Properties panel.

You can find more information about the parameters of each extension object here: