After switching the renderer to Maxwell from Render>Render>Scene options, you can access the render options of Maxwell Render as usual from Render>Render>Renderer options.

This documentation will cover render options that are specific to the SI plug-in, for more information on the other parameters please see the regular Maxwell Render documentation.

Globals

Render Time/Sampling level

See the Render Options page in the Maxwell documentation.

Number of threads

See the Render Options page (CPU threads) in the Maxwell documentation.

Global scale factor

Since the SI unit is a generic unit, the Global Scale setting in Maxwells render options lets you specify what you want a generic SI unit to represent. If Global Scale is 1 it means 1 SI unit = 1 meter. For example set the global scale to 0.01 and each SI unit will represent 1cm (100th of a meter). 0.1 will be 1 SI unit = 1dm. 0.0254 means 1 SI unit = 1 inch (since 1 inch is 2.54cm).

If you want to make sure the MXS file has been exported at the correct scale, you can open the MXS in Maxwell Studio and use the procedure described on this page.

It is crucial that you export your models at the correct scale - or your lighting will not look as intended and the depth of field of the camera will also be incorrect.

Global attenuation factor

This parameter acts as a multiplier for the attenuation distance parameter of all the transparent materials in the scene. Modifying the global scale factor parameter (see above) changes the size/thickness of the objects when exported, so transparent objects will change appearance because light has to travel through more, or less distance. To avoid this, you can alter the global attenuation factor to keep the look the same, but the recommended workflow is to set realistic attenuation distances in your transparent materials, and leave this parameter at 1.

Motion blur type/Motion blur steps

Maxwell Render supports both transform motion blur and vertex deformation blur - the transformation motion blur has unlimited sub steps while the vertex deformation blur is limited to two sub steps. If your scene only has transform motion blur, set this to Motion, if both transform and vertex deformation blur should be taken into account, set it to Motion+Deformation. The motion blur steps control the number of steps that should be taken into account for the motion blur. If the motion blur doesn't looks smooth, increase the number of steps. For more information on using Motion Blur see the Motion Blur page.

The amount of motion blur is controlled by the Shutter Speed or the Rotary shutter option in the Maxwell Camera custom parameter set.

Maxwell Render supports both transform motion blur and vertex deformation blur - the transformation motion blur has unlimited sub steps while the vertex deformation blur is limited to two sub steps. If your scene only has transform motion blur, set this to Motion, if both transform and vertex deformation blur should be taken into account, set it to Motion+Deformation. The motion blur steps control the number of steps that should be taken into account for the motion blur. If the motion blur doesn't looks smooth, increase the number of steps. For more information on using Motion Blur see the Motion Blur page.

The amount of motion blur is controlled by the Shutter Speed or the Rotary shutter option in the Maxwell Camera custom parameter set (Softimage - Camera settings). If you want to mimick a photo camera you can use the Shutter speed to set the length of the exposure, even several seconds long. To mimick a film camera, use the Rotary shutter setting (more info in the Motion Blur page).

Save lights in files

This setting allows you to save each emitters influence in a separate output, if you have enabled Multilight. For example if you have two materials with emitter components applied to some geometry, the render will output two image files in the formats you have specified in the output settings (Render>Pass options) . This option can be useful for compositing, to individually control the opacity and other filters applied to each emitters influence. Another option you have though is to enable Multilight and then simply import the resulting MXI file in one of the supported compositing applications which have a Maxwell render plugin (Nuke, After Effects, Photoshop). The MXI already contains separate light channels and so can be easier to manage, instead of having several files per frame (one file per emitter material in the scene).

Enable Displacement

Globally enable/disable displacement.

Enable dispersion

Globally enable/disable dispersion

Multilight

Enable Multilight and set the mode of Multilight - Intensity or Color+Intensity mode.

Read back Multilight

After you sent the scene to Maxwell Render and you had Multilight turned on, you can adjust the individual sliders of the emitters inside Maxwell and when you stop the render and close Maxwell, you will get a pop-up which allows you to import your updated ML settings and apply them to your camera and/or emitter materials. This option can be very useful to save time transferring the new emitter settings from Maxwell to SI, especially if you have many separate emitter materials. You can click on each line to select/deselect it, or also select/deselect all.

Import Multilight settings dialog

Use Low priority

This option is useful if you plan to continue working on your computer while Maxwell is rendering. It doesn't mean the render will use less CPU resources - when you aren't doing anything at the computer it will use all the available CPU resources. It simply gives Maxwell a lower priority to let you work smoothly on other tasks while it's rendering.

Save MXS / MXS Path

Allows you to save the MXS at the specified location, when the SI plugin converts the SI scene to an MXS before sending it to Maxwell Render to start the render. If it is off, the plugin will export an MXS to a temp location which it will use for rendering. This option can be useful to make sure the MXS is saved at the specified location, which you can then open in Maxwell Studio, or add it to a network rendering job.

Besides this option, you can also directly export your scene to the MXS format from File>Export>Maxwell Scene

Protect geometry

Turning on this option will prevent any geometry to be extracted from the MXS using Maxwell Studio (which has the ability to export selected objects in the MXS as an OBJ).

Extra options

You can enter command line options in this field which will override any relevant setting you have set in the Render options. For a list of available flags, see the Command Line page.

Override material

This option lets you override all materials in your scene (except emitter materials) with an MXM of your choice. It can be very useful to quickly make "clay" renders to get an idea of the lighting in the scene.

Tonemapping

See the Camera panel page for information about these tone mapping parameters. Note that these parameters can also be changed during or after the render is finished.

Layers

The render calculations can be split up in different "layers" in which case certain calculations will be ignored. This can produce faster renders if for example Indirect reflective caustics are not needed. It can also be used to split up different lighting "types" into different layers for compositing purposes.

Direct: All light that falls directly on an object, without having been bounced off another surface first

Indirect: All light that has bounced off another surface at least once

Direct Reflective Caustics: caustics caused by direct lighting hitting an opaque reflective surface

Indirect Reflective Caustics: caustics caused by indirect lighting hitting an opaque reflective surface

Direct Refractive caustics: caustics caused by direct light passing through a transparent refractive material

Indirect Refractive caustics: caustics caused by indirect light passing through a transparent refractive material

Channels

This section allows you to set different extra channels to be rendered such as Alpha, Z-depth, Position, Motionvector etc. You can choose the bit depth and format and also if they should be embedded or not in the output image file (for file formats that support extra channels such as TIFF, EXR). For more information on the different channels available, see the Channels section.

Render type

You can choose to render both Diffuse and Reflections in the same render (the default) or choose to split up diffuse lighting and reflective lighting. Please note that it is not possible to a get diffuse only, and reflection only render in the same pass, you would have to render the scene twice to get these two separate channels. It is also worth noting that Maxwell Render doesn't have a typical approach to what it considers "diffuse" vs "reflected" (or specular) light because in the real world ALL light is really reflected light. This setting mimicks the behavior of biased renderers but will not totally separate the light into "diffuse" and "reflected", especially for medium roughness materials where the light is neither diffuse or specular.

Embed channels

This option will embed any extra channels in the output image format. File formats that support extra channels are EXR, TIFF, TGA, PNG.

Sky

Set the Physical Sky / Skydome lighting options. For more info see the Environment Lighting section.

Environment

Set the image based lighting options. For more info see the Image Based Lighting page.

Maxwell Render can use different HDR maps for each of the 4 available Environment lighting channels (.hdr or.exr formats supported):

Background: doesn't influence the lighting in the scene, merely used to show up in the background
Reflection: This map will be visible in reflections
Refraction: This map will be visible through refractive transparent materials
Illumination: This map will be used to provide illumination in the scene

Each of the channels can be turned On/Off, or set to use the current settings of the Physical Sky. So for example you could use an HDR map only for reflections/refractions but use the Physical Sky for illumination.

The Intensity parameter controls the exposure of the HDR/EXR map and so a higher intensity will provide more brighter lighting/reflections/refractions

IBL maps must be in the lat/long format.

Simulens

Simulens can mimick certain behaviors of real camera lenses such as bloom and diffraction. For more information see the SimuLens section.

The Diffraction and Scattering Simulens effects can take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes to calculate, depending on the resolution of the render. These calculations will happen at each SL "step" update during rendering. It is therefore recommended to leave them off in the Render Options and instead turn them on inside Maxwell Render after the rendering has finished. Or you can stop the render, turn on diffraction / scattering inside Maxwell Render to see what effect it has, turn them off again, and resume the render.

The Devignetting parameter has no impact on calculation time and can be turned on before the render.

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