2.6.0 release notes

Owned by Mihai Iliuta (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 09 Sept, 2013
7 min read

Hair rendered with Maxwell. Image courtesy of Mihai Illuta

Highlights

Maxwell Render Extensions

A new framework in 2.6 which allows the creation of "plug-ins", or extensions, for Maxwell in many areas of the render process. The first products of this framework are the hair-fur, particles and fluid mesh extensions. Other plug-ins will be provided in the future. See the Extensions page for more details.

Hair and fur

Introducing a new procedural primitive extension for rendering hair/fur/fibers - compatible with the most popular hair systems. The fibers can be created by a number of supported hair editing tools, currently:

  • Shave&Haircut for Maya (by Joe Alter)

  • Maya Fur from Maya

  • Ornatrix for 3DSMax (by Ephere)

  • Hairtrix for 3DSMax (by Ephere)

  • Hair and Fur from 3DSMax

  • Cinema Hair from Cinema4D

The fibers are created at render time which means the rendering is much more efficient without needing to convert anything to polygons. Each fiber is not just a flat ribbon but has a real volume allowing you to assign also transparent/translucent materials to the fibers for very realistic effects. Any Maxwell material can be applied to the hair object. See the Hair and Fur page for more details.

Particle rendering

You can now render particles in Maxwell Render using the procedural primitive for particles. This procedural geometry is compatible with the most popular particle systems (RealFlow particles, Maya particles, 3dsMax). Any Maxwell material can be applied to the particles. See the Maxwell Particles page for more details.

MXS References

Support for referenced MXS files has been added - now it's possible to dramatically reduce scene export time because all references are brought in to Maxwell at render time. This is especially useful when rendering animations in Network Rendering.

  • each frame MXS file size dramatically reduced as it only contains references to MXS files used in the scene.

  • an MXS reference is copied only once to all networked machines, no matter how many frames it is used in.

  • allows users to build efficient asset scenes - change the original MXS once and it updates in all the scenes where it is used as a reference.

  • support for MXS references has been added to most plug-ins allowing you to load a reference directly in the scene of your host application.

See the Referenced MXS files page for more details.

Pretesselated displacement method

A new, much faster displacement method which pretesselates the geometry before rendering has been added. See the Displacement component page for more details.

Vector displacement

With the addition of the pretesselated displacement method it is now also possible to render vector displacement maps. See the Displacement component page for more details.

Much faster motion blur

The motion blur has been vastly improved both in terms of speed and capabilities. It is now possible to render virtually unlimited motion blur steps to create effects such as long exposure, light trails etc. The new motion blur is also MUCH faster than in previous versions. See the Motion Blur page for more details.

Scripting

Maxwell Render SDK now includes a standalone python editor and scripting examples.

Image processing

Improvements in image processing, filtering and aliasing: Enhances overall quality of the render, aliasing, sharpness, chromatic noise, dithering, etc and faster image generation routines. A new interactive parameter, Sharpness, interactively controls the anti aliasing sharpness.

Advanced integration with RealFlow

A new smart workflow which allows you to handle RealFlow output and generate both meshes and particles in render time, saving precious disk space and greatly reducing export times. The following extensions have been added:

  • Maxwell particles: A particle loader that converts .bin particles generated in RealFlow to Procedural spheres in render

  • Maxwell mesher: Particle loader and Mesh loader which converts .bin particles and .bin meshes produced by RealFlow to a triangle mesh to render

  • Maxwell cloner: An instancer that uses .BIN particles and an object in the scene to place instances of the object on each point of the BIN cloud

  • RF_meshes: A geometry loader that loads .BIN mesh generated in RealFlow to render

  • RW_meshes: A geometry loader that loads an SD produced by RealWave to render

See the RealFlow integration page for more details.

Other new features and improvements

  • New "Normal Vectors" and "Position" render channels
  • Added support for new IES multiplicator parameter
  • New checkbox in the render options panel to select whether the MXI and the image are saved to disk
  • New color space added (HDTV (Rec.709))
  • Separated MultiLight controls for sun and sky
  • MultiLight which now also work with real units for sky- as it does for emitters:
    • For normal emitters the slider represents its emission in real units
    • For IES the slider represents the IES factor
    • For HDR emitters the slider represents the intensity parameter
    • When there is constant sky, it shows the intensity (in cd/m2)
    • When there is constant sky plus sun, the MultiLight panel shows 2 parameters, one represents the dome intensity and the other the sun power parameter
    • When there is physical sky the slider represents the sun power parameter (as this controls also the dome emission in this case)
    • When there is physical sky plus sun the MultiLight panel shows 2 parameters, one represents the dome intensity and the other the sun power parameter.
    • When there is HDR the slider represents the IBL global intensity factor (a new IBL parameter)

  • Displacement + Instances is now possible
  • Displacement + motion blur is now possible
  • Instances + motion blur is now possible
  • Improvements in multithreading routines
  • When opening an MXI file, if the MXS used to render it is found, it is loaded into the render options panel and the scene is prepared for resuming
  • Improved error handling when opening invalid MXS files
  • New command line option to get a small proxy of the image output. It is especially useful in animations with a lot of large frames, when this option is enabled Maxwell saves a scaled preview (in 8 bits) of the image output. proxypath:"D:\proxy.png" -proxyres:320x240 (If resolution Y = 0 the aspect ratio is preserved)
  • The macro %scene% has been deprecated for clarity's sake, use %scenename% and %scenepath% instead
  • New command line option -removemxs to remove the mxs file after the render finishes.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed: sun + emitter caustics failures
  • Fixed: limitation of instances of objects with emitter material applied
  • Fixed: bug in bump when tiling was not 1
  • Fixed: "Open MXI" menu option that would make Maxwell crash when opening MXI's generated from images (not MXI generated on render)
  • Fixed: memory leak with some texture formats
  • Fixed: handling of padding channels output paths when padding was not separated with a dot or "_"
  • Fixed: overridematerial:off command line option was not properly parsed
  • Fixed: now the "Recent MXI files" menu shows the latest MXIs generated in render properly
  • Fixed: 32 bit outputs (TIFF32, HDR, EXR) do not match MXI
  • Fixed: name of multi-emitter materials was not properly displayed in Multilight
  • Fixed: pure black pixels were not storing 0,0,0 in some image formats but there was a precision error that could change it to 1E-6 instead of zero.
  • Fixed: Some TGA files crashed with compression
  • Fixed: metadata was not properly saved in multilayered exr's and tiff's

Network

  • Improvements in error handling when the render process fails
  • Improvements in stability and general robustness
  • Improvements in performance, especially when rendering animation sequences with a lot of frames
  • Option added for resuming jobs that are already finished
  • Full support for MXS references in animations
  • New "search in console" option, accessible through the menu or the shortcut Ctrl+F. With F3 it goes to the next entry found
  • New command line argument -nocheckversion to disable the version checking (by default the network checks the version of both mxnetwork and Maxwell is the same in all the nodes)
  • New command line argument "-maxwell:path" to specify a path to maxwell different to the one set in the environment variable MAXWELL2_ROOT
  • Support added for new v2.6 render channels 
  • Now the monitor displays the percent of mxi sent from nodes to manager
  • Hidden command line argument -keeptempfiles for keeping temp mxi files after merging
  • Improved algorithms for transferring dependencies
  • Fixed: render time parameter was ignored in batch jobs when "Use scene settings" option was checked
  • Fixed: render channels in batch render
  • Fixed: dependencies of override material are sent if it is enabled
  • Fixed support for several cameras. Now when the active camera is changed in the job wizard, the resolution is properly updated
  • Fixed: image depth and embed channels flags were not properly read when loading a scene in the job wizard
  • Fixed: channels depth in the add job wizard were always set to 16b, even if the MXS has them set to something else

Studio/MXED

  • Support added for referenced materials. Now a material can be embedded in the scene or pointing to an external MXM path
  • External references are not directly editable but they have to be embedded into the scene (and also the referenced MXM file can be edited in MXED)
  • New option in File menu "Import MultiLight settings", that imports MultiLight settings from an MXS file back into the scene
  • Checkbox added to save MXI/Image
  • New preference added to set a default command line string
  • Support added for setting sun position not only through latitude/longitude but also through angles or direction
  • Support added for geometry proxies and new 2.6 primitives
  • IES intensity multiplicator parameter added
  • An IBL global intensity control added that affects the 4 IBL channels. It matches the number shown in the IBL slider of the MultiLight panel
  • LWO importer now accepts not only triangles but quads
  • Improvements in OpenGL shading
  • Improvements in display in viewport routines
  • Added GUI controls for the new channels (normals/position)
  • Displacement "Gain" has been renamed to "Subdivision"
  • Improved GUI of IBL panel to have a better control over every HDR channel
  • Environment panel rebuilt. Now it is more usable, parameters are more accessible and redundancies have been removed
  • New shortcuts in material editor to switch the preview scene more quickly. Now it can be done with Up and Down arrow keys
  • Fixed: bit depth in Render options not retained between sessions
  • Fixed: embed channels flag was not retained between sessions
  • Fixed: studio ignores the default material set in preferences
  • Fixed: Studio adds "_tmp" to macros in Render Options
  • Fixed: Fire updates when changing any render option, even the ones that should not trigger an update
  • Fixed: normal mapping flip flags were not properly transferred in drag'n dropping operations
  • Fixed: Fire "isolate selection" option
  • Fixed: if only a group (not its children) was selected and "export selection to mxs" was called, the materials of its children objects were not saved
  • Fixed some minor GUI issues
  • Fixed: Shift+Enter shortcut was not working in color picker control (this shortcut is used to introduce a numeric value in all the fields at the same time)
  • Fixed: Refresh problem in Fire with the interactive engine