Complete Feature List
Courtesy of Wonder Vision. www.wonder-vision.com
Components
Maxwell Render
THE CORE RENDER application. Maxwell Render can also be launched from the command line, without displaying the Maxwell GUI. This can be useful for automating certain render tasks, although the scripting capabilities in Maxwell Render offer much greater control and functions to automate jobs. Please see the in-depth Command Line description on the Command Line page.
Network Rendering
The Maxwell Renderâ„¢ Network system allows jobs to be sent individually to each machine on the net, rendering animations or single frames. It is also possible to let all machines render the same frame and merge the images that have been created at the end of the rendering process. Other useful functions include grouping nodes for exclusive assignment or displaying an image that is being rendered by a specific node.
Plug-ins
Currently there are 14 plug-ins, connecting Maxwell Render to the most popular 3D / CAD and post-production applications (post-production plugins are free of charge). For a complete overview, see Plug-ins
MXED
The Maxwell Render Material editor. A versatile Material Editor with powerful, physically based materials.
Maxwell Studio
A sophisticated scene editor with a full 3D environment, offering an alternative workflow to work with 3D applications that do not have a Maxwell plug-in.
General features
PHYSICALLY CORRECT
UNBIASED
MAXWELL FIRE
- Fast Interactive Rendering
- Preview scene changes in seconds
- Improved FIRE voxelization
- Integrated in plug-ins and Maxwell Studio
MULTILIGHTâ„¢
- Fast GPU-driven Multilight
- Adjust in real time the emitter intensity and color, Sky and HDRIs.
- Keyframe animated intensities and colors
- Adjustments can be made during or/and after the render is finished.
ADVANCED PHYSICAL SKY SYSTEM
- Customizable Sun Radius
- Aerosols
- Presets
- Real-life parameters
- Sky to HDRI conversion
MultiLightâ„¢ controllable
HDRI/MXI ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM
- Multi-channel control
- Multilightâ„¢ controllable
ADVANCED ILLUMINATION SYSTEM
- Color + Luminance emitters
- Temperature emitters (Kelvin)
- HDR/ MXI emitters
- Luminary presets
- Real-life units (watts/efficacy, lumens, candelas)
- IES and EULUMDAT support
- Image projectors
- Blockable emitters
Multilightâ„¢ controllable
INSTANCING
REAL 3D MOTION BLUR
ON-THE-FLY BOOLEANS
RESUME RENDER
PROGRESSIVE RENDERING
- Start the compositing while the render is in progress
- Start the compositing while the render is in progress
RENDER CHANNELS
- Alpha, Z-buffer, Shadows, Object ID, Material ID, Roughness, Fresnel, Motion Vector, Normals, Position, UV
- Custom Alpha channel per object
- Deep compositing support
COLOR SPACES
- sRGB, Adobe98, Apple, PAL, NTSC
- sRGB, Adobe98, Apple, PAL, NTSC
RENDER LAYERS
- 8/16/32 BITS OUTPUT
- PNG, TGA, JPG, TIFF, JPG2000, MXI, HDR,
EXR, BMP
MAXWELL EXTENSIONS
- Maxwell Volumetric
- Constant, Noise and Particle-driven fields
- Pixar Open SubDivision
- Maxwell Grass
- Maxwell Sea
- Maxwell Scatter
- Particle Mesher
- Hair/Fur
- Maxwell Volumetric
ALEMBIC SUPPORT
MXS REFERENCED OBJECTS
TIGHT COMPATIBILITY WITH REALFLOW
Material features
- Simplified material assistants
- Stacked layers
- Create extremely complex materials
- BSDF blending
- Weight mapping
- Subsurface scattering
- Thin sss
- Fresnel simulation
- Spectral dispersion
- Advanced absorption and transmittance with attenuation distance
- Procedural textures
- Advanced anisotropy
- Matte material
- Bump and normal mapping
- Complex ior files
- Coating layers
- Thin film interference/ iridescence
- Thickness mapping
- Emission layers
- Composite emitters
- Displacement
- Double-sided materials
Camera features
Lenses
- Thin film
- Pin hole
- Orthographic
- Spherical and Cylindrical
Simulensâ„¢
- Diffraction
- Lens Scattering
- Devignetting
- AA Sharpness setting
- Shift lens
- Polygonal/ circular diaphragm
- Shutter speed
- Focal length
- Fstop
- Depth of field (dof)
- Auto exposure
- Z-clip planes
Network Rendering features
- Hybrid network support
- Windows 32, windows 64, mac osx and linux 64
- Full monitoring
- Auto-detect rendernodes
- Cooperative/ animation/ single job modes
- Batch rendering/ render queue
- Progressive rendering
- Auto update the image at desired sampling level steps
- Priority control
- Scripting
Plug-ins
All available plug-ins are compatible with the latest version of Maxwell Render. The plug-ins have their own specific user guides, available on this site.
3d/cad plug-ins supported by next limit technologies
- 3ds Max, ArchiCAD, Cinema4D, Form·Z, Maya, Modo, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, SolidWorks.
Post processing plug-ins supported by next limit technologies
- After Effects, Nuke, Photoshop
- Plug-ins supported by third parties
- Allplan, SolidThinking, Blender
For a detailed list of available plugins and host versions, see Plug-ins
For all other applications (AutoCAD, Houdini, Lightwave, etc.) it is possible to bring geometry in one of the supported file formats into Maxwell Studio.
Maxwell Studio
Flexible scene editor as an alternative workflow option.
- Import objects
- Supported file formats: MXS, OBJ, STL, PLY, LWO, XC2, 3DS, DXF, FBX, DAE.
- Set up cameras
- Apply materials
- Set up sky and lights
- Send to render
Hierarchy support.
Flexible and customizable UI
Realtime OpenGL previews
- Sky/ Sky Dome
- Environment
- DOF indicator
Maxwell Fire - Fast Interactive Rendering integrated
- Preview instantly any changes in your scene
- Real time compass/ sun position
- Material editor
- Material wizards
- Material browser
- Mxm gallery integration
- Orthographic rendering
- Uv mapping tools
- Googleâ„¢ earth kml markup support
- Export obj option
Additional content
The following additional contents are included with the purchase of a Standard license of Maxwell Render.
Vip access to the official maxwell render forum
A free pack of HDR maps
 A free pack of erco ies lights
 Access to maxwell render resources website
Access to all content in the maxwell render support site
Free maintenance and basic technical support for 12 months from the first purchase
The Maxwell Render SDK