Rhino 6 and newer - Version History
MAXWELL 5
Version 5.2.6.8 - 04 Mar 2025
IMPROVED:
(Applies to Rhino 7 and 8 only) The in-viewport display of Maxwell metallic materials inside the Rhino Rendered mode has been improved (now it should look less plastic-like).
Maxwell Reder Settings > Output panel Camera/Date/Time macros: now the macros are enclosed with underscores (for example %time%), to make sure Maxwell doesn't understand them as frame numbers when adding the channel identifier.
CHANGED:
During export, the plugin adjusts the Rhino channel ID number by -1 to better align with Maxwell channel ID number (which starts counting from 0).
FIXED:
Maxwell Sea couldn’t be rendered if the material assigned to it had a texture (Rhino minimum texture channel ID is 1 while Maxwell needs its texture channel ID to be 0)
Maxwell sent a warning when launching a render: "Name repeated. It has been renamed...". It was because the object contained sub-meshes. In some cases, the render couldn’t be launched because of this issue. Now the plugin adds an extra identifier number to the name of these to make them unique.
After Studio/Maxwell render/Maxwell cloud or Network was started from Rhino, Rhino was not able to overwrite the actual *.3dm file because it was seen as a read-only file.
While exporting scene to Maxwell Studio/Render, the procedural textures were sometimes exported only in their lower resolution version.
(Rhino 8 only) In the case no material is associated with the Maxwell Sea object, the plugin exports it with the default Rhino material not with the default Maxwell Sea material.
(Rhino 8 on MacOS only) The Maxwell Volumetrics extension was previously disabled because of dll (library) conflicts. This is fixed by updating the original Maxwell Installation, but only if it is at the default place: /Applications/Maxwell Render 5/
(Rhino 8 on MacOS only) Maxwell FIRE crashed if there was a Maxwell Grass object in the scene. It rendered fine.
FIRE was not updating upon material changes in some situations.
KNOWN ISSUE:
Moving a volumetric object while Fire is running may cause Rhino to crash. It is recommended to stop Fire before moving it.
Version 5.2.6.7 - 08 Jul 2024
ADDED:
New FIRE Settings parameter “Edit in OpenGL mode” that lets you choose between “Disabled”, “Enabled” (default) and “in GPU mode only”.
Disabled will provide the FIRE behavior we’ve had till now, with a continuous FIRE update while you orbit, pan, zoom or edit, which can sometimes be a bit sluggish.
Enabled will make this feature work in both CPU and GPU modes. When you make changes in FIRE, orbit the camera, pan or zoom, FIRE will, on-the-fly, change to OpenGL display mode (like Rendered mode) providing a more fluent and interactive experience. Upon button release, Fire will quickly kick in again.
In GPU mode only will make this feature only work when FIRE is set to GPU, but not in CPU.
New Fire Settings parameter "Start delay (ms)"; this parameter lets you choose the time required for Fire render to kick in while you still keep the orbiting or editing in the case of the “Edit in OpenGL mode” is active. For example, if you are orbiting the view with the right mouse button pressed, the plugin changes the view style to OpenGL; if you keep pressing the right mouse button and stop orbiting, after this time has passed, Fire will start to render. If you release the mouse button, Fire will start immediately.
IMPROVED:
The plugin now takes into account Rhino clipping planes enabled/disabled states as well as their viewport dependent states.
FIXED:
The Scatter extension did not generate the instances of the objects.
(Rhino 8 only) The name of the exported Maxwell mesh was not correct when the mesh was inside a Rhino block; the previous version showed the name of the mesh with the mesh instance ID.
Maxwell texture tiling was not shown in the viewport correctly when using the “Use override Map” feature. At the bottom of this page you can find more information about this feature.
(Rhino 8 only) The Rhino native Picture material was not exported correctly.
The Maxwell materials coming from a Rhino 5 file were not loaded into Rhino 7 or 8 (on MacOS there’s a known issue described below). Check the command Maxwell_MaterialReplacer at the bottom of this page on this link to learn more about recovering the materials from a Rhino 5 scene.
Maxwell GPU crashed at the second run.
CHANGED:
The plugin was adding the Rhino generated mesh instance ID to the name of the exported Maxwell objects; this is not done anymore as it is not needed.
KNOWN ISSUES:
Volumetrics, Sea and MXS references are not showing in Rhino 8. This will get fixed with a Rhino update (tested as fixed in a beta version of Rhino 8.10) except for Volumetrics on MacOS that are disabled as they can crash Rhino (because of a library conflict).
On MacOS only, for the Rhino 5 files to import the materials and environment into Rhino 7 or 8, it is important that the plugin for Rhino 6 is not installed. If you have it installed, you can temporarily remove de maxwell_rhino folder from this path for this feature to work: /Users/nextlimit/Library/Application Support/McNeel/Rhinoceros/MacPlugins
Deleting, moving or changing the display type of a MXS reference while Fire is running may produce a Rhino crash. If you are performing these types of operations, we suggest turning Fire off before doing so.
Version 5.2.6.6 - 01 Feb 2024
COMPATIBILITY:
Added support for Rhino 8 on Windows and MacOS
ADDED:
Added Maxwell Procedural textures to the Maxwell Texture panel. You can now blend a normal file texture with several procedural textures.
Added the Lat-Long Stereo and Fish Stereo lenses to the plugin set of lenses. Find it in the Properties panel > Maxwell section when nothing is selected in the viewport (so it shows the camera properties).
IMPROVED:
Now the plugin can export Rhino’s clipping planes as Maxwell’s boolean planes, translating their orientation too.
When browsing for Maxwell related images, folders, etc. Maxwell will try to browse from the location of the current path if the folder and file exist.
Maxwell materials show a hint of their roughness in the viewport in “Rendered” mode.
CHANGED:
In Rhino 8 for MacOS we are now using the same icons as in the Windows version, following the Rhino 8 interface change.
FIXED:
If Maxwell Studio was not installed and user clicked on the "Open in Maxwell Studio" button, the plugin could crash.
In FIRE mode, some objects could lose their material and show up grey.
Maxwell Render Simulens parameters: "Aperture Map" and "Obstacle Map" were not exported.
Plugin Search Path settings (Texture Folder 1-5) were not exported to Maxwell, nor used by the plugin.
The embedding action to convert a referenced material into custom did not preserve the Material ID color.
The displayed geometries of the Referenced MXS files were sometimes at wrong world coordinates.
After the user modified a Rhino geometry in a way that changes the number of components of the geometry, FIRE could not display the new modified object correctly until Fire was restarted.
The camera Z-Clip Far value was not saved.
The camera custom Bokeh angle value was not saved correctly.
(OSX Only) Clicking into the Fire view status bar didn’t open the Maxwell settings directly (the user had to select the Maxwell Render option manually).
REMOVED:
The option to save an MXS file was removed from the Rhino Save as… dialogue as it is already available from the Rendering toolbar and caused some technical problems to keep it.
KNOWN ISSUES:
The current version of Rhino 8 (8.3.24009.15001) shows a strange transparency effect on the toolbar icons. It is supposed to be fixed in version 8.4.24016.03002 or newer.
The current version of Rhino 8 (8.3.24009.15001) for MacOS makes Fire image show wrong if the Maxwell camera sensor proportion is set to something different from the viewport proportion and the “Display in Fire” option is set to “Final Render”. This will be fixed in Rhino version 8.5.24031.18002 or newer.
Version 5.2.6.5 - 12 Abr 2023
ADDED:
New integrated MXM Gallery panel where the user can search for and download mxm material assets. It has bigger thumbnails and it’s faster to open and navigate.
A new "Copy from Rhino Sun" button in the Maxwell Environment to copy the current Rhino sun location to the Maxwell Sun location, so you can have different environments with different sun settings. If you use this button, the “Sync with Rhino Sun” is disconnected and the sun shadows seen in the viewport won’t match the render until you activate the “Sync with Rhino Sun” checkbox again.
IMPROVED:
The MXM Gallery panel gives a warning message in case it can not use or find the alternative download path.
CHANGED:
The functionality of the Import Material from Gallery button changed to the Toggle MXM Gallery panel. Now there’s no right-click action.
Maxwell Sun Zenith value range changed from 0-90 to 0-180 (as it fits better to the Rhino sun settings).
FIXED:
FIRE didn’t show the rendered image (it could happen in the case of other Rhino plugins, such as RhinoCAM, had changed the OpenGL state variables).
In case Maxwell Sun Location was in "Angles" mode, the North value affected the result but the North control was not visible.
After importing an Xrite AxF material from the MXM gallery the .axf file path was pointing to the original location instead of the new path where the material had been downloaded.
After importing a material with measured data (.ior file) from the MXM gallery the .ior file path was pointing to the original location instead of the new path where the material had been downloaded.
(OSX only) Settings > Maxwell Render > different folder type controls (mxm alternative folder, texture folders). After the user tried to change the value of a folder with the folder browser, Rhino switched back to its previous value.
INSTALLER:
Plugin installer changes the libeay32.dll of the Maxwell Render install to fix compatibility issues.
Version 5.2.6.4 - 24 Jan 2023
ADDED:
Help item to the Maxwell menu the provides a link to the plugin’s documentation.
New parameter in the Rhino "Document Properties" > "Maxwell Render" section to be able to switch between different UI sizes: Mini (default) or Normal (same text size as Rhino panels).
IMPROVED:
Image Based environment display under Rhino (in Viewport Render mode) shows the HDR Image with applied intensity (currently not working in Rhino 7 due to a Rhino bug).
The Substance Painter material Normal map is now enabled if the texture set includes a normal map.
The Substance Painter material Height map is now enabled if the texture set includes a height map.
The Rhino materials are now exported with a unique Maxwell MaterialID.
FIXED:
Sometimes wrong sun parameters were exported (for example when switching on/off Rhino sun).
Maxwell material "Convert to Advanced" action multiplied the displacement height by 100.
MaxwellSea object could crash in case its bounding box area was 0.
Maxwell Material bump value was not active in the case the bump texture was a Rhino texture (and not a Maxwell Texture).
Loading an extension preset (*.preset) overwrote the name of the extension.
Rhino could crash while trying to display Maxwell’s visuals in the viewport.
(Rhino 7 or above) Some elements were exported with wrong names, which could result in (for example) a wrong linkage between the scattering extension base and the scattered object.
FIRE didn’t always show the COMPLETE status (after it had finished).
CHANGED:
Default render SL limit value is now set to 12.
Maxwell "Toggle Extension Editor" command and button don't close the panel if it is on a tab and it is not the active tab (so it’s not visible); it now makes the panel active and if you click again it is closed.
KNOWN ISSUE:
Rhino may crash on Mac if Fire is running and an emitter component is removed from a material assigned to an object in the scene.
Version 5.2.6.3 - 23 Aug 2022
ADDED:
New general animation parameters in the Document Properties > Maxwell for Rhino page to set the default SL, time and export option.
New option for animations in the Document Properties > Maxwell for Rhino to show/hide the dialog after exporting the frames. This is meant to be able to send the animation to render directly without having to wait for the frames to be exported and then send them to render. It makes sense when sending them directly to Maxwell Render as the renders will start right after they have been exported.
New switch for the extensions assigned to objects to allow you to enable or disable them without having to delete them:
New switch for the global extensions created in the Extensions panel so you can enable or disable them globally for all the objects that have them assigned.
Now the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation parameters in the Maxwell Texture can be controlled with sliders.
Many Extensions and Material Assistants have sliders for their parameters for better comfort.
New helper buttons to add or remove the camera name, and the time and date of the exported render to the output files names of the different images.
IMPROVED:
The installer now offers to install the plugin for Rhino 6, Rhino 7 and Rhino 8 (WIP) separately.
Better interactivity of the spinner controls.
Better interactivity when wheeling inside a Maxwell Parameter control.
Now there are three different macros that can be added to the Scene Output Name: Camera, Date and Time. In the file name you’ll see “_%camera%”, “%_date%” and “%_time%” that will be replaced at render time with the camera name, the date when the render was launched and the time when it was exported.
The IES light has a new parameter called “Diameter (cm)” to control the size of the auto-generated small sphere to which the emitter is applied. In case its geometry is too big and hits any surface it could generate a black area shrinking it could solve the problem.
FIXED:
(MacOS only) Rhino crashed when touching Maxwell materials after updating Rhino to version (7.21.22208.13002).
The extensions assigned to the objects were lost after reloading the same scene file in the same Rhino session.
Copy-pasting geometry with Maxwell Extensions assigned caused the extensions to duplicate too. Now they use the same extension definition as the original geometry instead of a copy.
(Windows only) There were some wrong license error messages when trying to run Fire with the GPU or the CPU Production engines.
Undo/Redo commands were not working correctly for Maxwell Render settings changed by the spinner controls.
The Maxwell Material Editor was not showing correctly its different sections when showing it for the first time.
Sun-Study animation didn’t export the Rhino sun position correctly.
CHANGES:
Changing numeric values with steppers doesn’t an immediate refresh but quickly shows the current value.
Removed the “Append camera name” option of the Maxwell for Rhino > Output tab > name composition area as it has been replaced by the three “Camera”, “Date” and “Time” buttons above.
Version 5.2.6.2 - 8 Mar 2022
ADDED:
Added support to render Bongo animations.
Now sequences of renders can be exported from the Bongo Render Animation panel.
Now Maxwell for Rhino can be selected as “Target renderer” at the Bongo Render Animation panel and the “frames” parameters can affect the result.
When you click the Render Animation button the MXS frames are exported and a new Maxwell-specific panel is shown. It allows opening the output folder, rendering in sequence in Maxwell, the Network or the Cloud. Also, it lets you set some basic render parameters.
Added the new Toggle Visuals for Camera command and button to show the render area in the viewport (HUD).
IMPROVED:
The Maxwell specific controls of native Rhino lights have been greatly improved (check this documentation page for further information: Native-Rhino-Lights) :
Rhino Spotlights can now be set to Maxwell IES light and Maxwell spot and projector light.
Rhino Point lights, Rectangular lights and Linear lights can now be set to Maxwell area light and Maxwell HDRI light.
You can now set the emission color by Kº temperature as well as color picker (not available in the Maxwell HDRI lights type). Any change here will copy the color to the Rhino light so it’s seen in the viewport.
You can now set precise emission units and values in Spot, Projector and Area light types.
The Maxwell spot and projector light type now has Blur and Falloff Type options.
The HDRI light type now has texture rotation and tile X and tyle Y parameters.
The Point light now has Diameter (cm) and Segments parameter to modify the point light look (size and number of polygons). Please, note that a higher number of polygons can make the emitter slower when rendering.
The plugin won’t start parallel FIRE views in GPU mode (which can crash Rhino) -> It will show a warning message at the bottom of the view.
The plugin now exports the objects not only with the parent layer but the whole layer structure (including sub-layers).
The Maxwell Camera panel now shows the "Display in FIRE" options (Match Viewport/Final Render) not just in the case the resolution is not set to Viewport, but also if the shift lens value is not 0.
CHANGES:
The Maxwell specific light parameter "Rotation around dir.(°)" was renamed to "Rotation around axis(°)"
The default value of Maxwell emitter > Power & Efficacy is now set to 7W / 130 lm/W (more common in current LED lights).
The plugin showed the denoiser channel format options not just at the "Channels" tab but also at the Denoiser parameters. The latter is now removed.
FIXED:
After a Rhino 7.1 update FIRE was showing duplicated objects moving them showing both the initial and final position of the movement.
Imported Materials (from the Online Gallery or from MXM files) didn't link the textures correctly in some cases.
The materials downloaded from the Online Gallery were not stored as set in the Document Properties > Maxwell for Rhino > MXM Gallery section in some cases.
In the case there were some layers with the same name, this could cause the plugin to freeze when exporting. As a solution the exported layer names now also contain the ID of the layers to force an unique identification.
When importing a Rhino 5 file, the plugin was changing the type of the existing Maxwell Materials to Referenced type.
When using the Render Region in Maxwell or Render Blow-up in Maxwell, it was not possible to draw the rectangle if the cursor went above the horizon of the scene.
(Rhino 7 only) Maxwell animation export “OK / Cancel” buttons were not visible. (Out of the dialog area).
After exporting the scene with Rhino RecordAnimation command, the normal Rhino Render button also tried to do the render in animation mode.
Maxwell FIRE crashed when the user changed sun position.
Maxwell Render Settings > Post-Process > "Color Space" parameter was incorrectly named as "Depth".
Maxwell_AddObject command had an invalid "Extension" option. It is now removed.
(OSX only) The command Maxwell_ShowToolbars didn't work.
Maxwell didn't save the changes done in its render parameters in case those were changed from the "Tools" menu > "Options..." dialog.
Opening a scene from the plugin for Rhino 5 with Maxwell Camera data could crash Rhino.
Maxwell Rhino 5.2.6.1 - 06 Jul 2021
COMPATIBILITY:
Built for Maxwell Render 5.2.1.49
ADDED:
Added custom Maxwell Extension Objects:
Maxwell Sea; it has a water material assigned by default, with a subtle blueish tint and attenuation effect.
Maxwell Volumetric
Added new buttons to the Maxwell Tools toolbar:
Add Maxwell Sea
Add Maxwell Volumetric
New object modifier accessible from the Maxwell Extensions panel: SubdivisionModifier (it won’t show correctly in FIRE, but will do in render).
Added “Export as .mxm” option to the right-click context menu of the Maxwell materials to export the materials individually to an MXM file. It also gives the option to turn the material as a referenced after it has been stored.
Added a new command "Maxwell_ToggleVisuals" to toggle the display of Maxwell-related visuals aids to locate in the viewport the grass blades and scattered instances.
Added a new button to the Maxwell Tools toolbar: "Toggle Visuals"
Added a new command "Maxwell_ExportMaterials" to export all the Maxwell Materials as MXM into a selected folder.
Added a new button to the Maxwell Materials toolbar: "Export Materials"
Added Referenced MXS "Point Cloud" display mode type.
Added Maxwell_PathFix command and menu item. It’s a semi-automatic tool to replace missing plugin-related files:
Maxwell Textures (file paths)
Maxwell Materials (referenced mxm/emitter IES file paths)
Referenced MXS (file paths)
Light object (IES/projector image paths)
Maxwell Environment (IBL paths)
Maxwell Render Settings (extra sampling / simulens aperture and obstacle paths)
Added a new button in Maxwell Tools toolbar: "Path Fix"
Added a new Maxwell for Rhino Properties parameter in the MXM Gallery section: "To sub-folder". In case it is ON it creates a sub-folder for each downloaded MXM material file.
Added Load/Save buttons for Maxwell extensions and material assistants to easily handle user-made presets.
Added Object parameter: Recalculate normals. It allows overriding the current smoothing of the objects in render time. The numeric field represents the angle of smoothing. If the angle between adjacent polygons is smaller or equal to this angle, the faces will be smoothed.
Added Object parameter: Backface material. Now you can assign a different material to the back faces of an object.
Added the option to also assign custom alpha channels per material. This means:
A new section in the custom alpha panel for the materials
A new custom alpha section in the Global Properties of the materials.
Added an icon for the Maxwell Extensions Panel.
The Substance Designer and Substance Painter assistants now have three new parameters to control the displacement subdivisions, displacement height and the emitter intensity, so you don’t have to convert the material to advanced in order to control those features.
IMPROVED:
Maxwell Grass uses the pre-defined default Maxwell Grass material in case no material was assigned to it. It features a thin subsurface scattering material with a subtle green gradient mapped from root to tip and should work best with the flat blade type (default).
Now the plugin takes into account the transparency of the materials and shows it in the viewport (depending on your display mode settings).
The Referenced MXS now can handle scenes with other referenced MXS files inside (nested references).
Improved the Referenced MXS display performance - in case there are several Referenced MXS objects with the same MXS file, the plugin uses the same cached MXS scene data for all of these objects.
Referenced MXS picking in the viewport in Bounding Box (or Object Bounding Boxes) mode is more precise now.
The plugin starts the PathFix command automatically after opening a file if needed.
Maxwell Texture button tooltip now shows some information about its options:
Maxwell Texture button tooltip now shows the texture type in case the actual channel contains a Rhino texture.
The material preview scene list is now in alphabetical order (it was not so in the MacOS version).
CHANGES:
The default value of the Feature Influence parameter of the Denoiser has been changed to 0.25 so it better preserves the textures features.
The Extensions area in the Object Properties panel is now not visible for Referenced MXS objects as Grass or Scatter extensions cannot be assigned to them.
Changed the "Toggle Extensions Editor" button icon in the Maxwell Tools toolbar.
FIXES:
Rhino animation export to Maxwell was not working correctly.
The Maxwell Referenced MXS placeholder object (shown when the MXS path does not exist) was not selectable.
Maxwell was sending error/warning messages about missing IOR path even if the BSDF was set to custom IOR mode.
The plugin didn't pass the custom command line params to Maxwell.
(Rhino 7 only) Maxwell Object Properties tab was not visible for Subdiv Surfaces.
In the case the Rhino scene was saved with a viewport in Fire mode but the active view was not the FIRE viewport, after reloading the file, the FIRE viewport was using the camera from the active viewport instead of its own camera.
Creating a Maxwell Material by importing it from an MXM or the online gallery (from the Maxwell Material toolbar) crashed Rhino in the case Maxwell Fire was running in GPU mode.
Changing Maxwell Material preset could crash Rhino.
Maxwell Texture button right-click menu (remove / copy / paste) was disabled in the case the actual channel contained a Rhino texture.
Maxwell Texture button tooltip was showing wrong information in the case the actual channel contained a Rhino texture.
KNOWN ISSUES:
In Rhino Render mode, the Maxwell textures don’t show in the material preview.
When a Maxwell Material has a Rhino procedural texture too, when switching between textures, the Rhino viewport doesn't show the change of the material (workaround: we have to move the object a bit, set display mode to something else and back to rendered)
In the Windows version of Rhino 7, you may find that the main material preview only updates with new material settings but not when you get back to the same setting; this only happens when the material editor is docked and only in the main preview; the floating preview and the double-click preview work fine and also if the material editor is shown in a floating window. We believe this to be a Rhino bug.
Maxwell Rhino 5.2.6.0 - 09 Mar 2021
COMPATIBILITY:
Built for Maxwell Render 5.2.0.45
Added support for Rhino 7
IMPROVED:
New Denoiser implementation in Maxwell Render. Only one pass is needed, the denoiser information is now stored in the mxi file as another channel, better memory management for the denoising process, and more consistency in general.
New Denoiser options in the Rendering panel > Maxwell for Rhino > General tab > Denoiser section:
New Tiling option with maximum tile size option.
New fine-tuning options: Color Influence 1 and 2, Feature Influence, Final Pass, Filter Radius and Firefly Remover options. Check this link for more information: denoiser documentation page.
New Denoiser channel added in the Rendering panel > Maxwell for Rhino > Output tab > Channels section as now the Denoiser is treated as another channel. This channel activation is synced with the Denoiser enabler in the General tab.
Material’s texture and color display in the viewport has been greatly enhanced.
You can now select any texture to be displayed in the viewport by single-clicking its texture chip. It will be marked with a blue colored border.
The plugin displays the color of the Maxwell Material additive layers inside Rhino viewport more correctly.
The plugin now shows the color and textures of the different material assistants inside the Rhino viewport.
Added a more detailed tooltip to the texture chip.
The Maxwell materials are now exported with the same active texture to be displayed in the viewport as set in Rhino (Maxwell Studio uses this active texture to decide which texture to show inside the Studio viewport).
The most important component of the Maxwell Material is automatically selected for display in the Maxwell Material UI after the following actions:
Maxwell material assistant: Convert to Advanced
Maxwell Referenced material: Embed
Command: Maxwell_MaterialReplacer
Command: Maxwell_AddMaterial
The scenes with lots of nested block instances are now exported much faster. (up to 10-100 times faster...).
The Embed option of the Referenced MXM files can now also import the Material assistants as such.
Rhino 5 scene import improvement. The plugin now creates dummy materials with the same name as the materials from the V5 scene (the Maxwell material settings are not imported, only the name and the association). This, used in conjunction with the command Maxwell_MaterialReplacer can be used to easily bring all the materials back from older scenes.
The Maxwell Render Settings > Extra Sampling > Custom Alpha “A” button opens the Custom Alpha context menu (with an extra "(open editor...)" menu item) that opens the Custom Alpha editor panel.
ADDED:
New Substance Designer extension. It can be accessed from the Type dropdown menu from any material or right-clicking on the Create Substance Material from the Materials toolbar.
Added support for Maxwell Grass and Maxwell Scatter extensions.
New Maxwell Extensions editor panel.