Maya - Version history

Version 2.7.18 - June 3rd, 2013

Changes

• added a setting to control if FIRE takes isolation mode into account
• upgraded Shave SDK to version 7
• the plug-in displays an error when exporting a material or rendering if a layered material has displacement, but no layers
• the plug-in detects when multiple projected textures with identical parameters are assigned to the same material and creates a single UV set
• increased maximum number of projection channels per material to 16

Fixes

• changes to the isolation list didn't always reflect in FIRE
• crash when trying to read preview images for materials with very long names
• particle instancers didn't render
• FIRE could not be started if an object was parented to the active camera

Version 2.7.15 - April 25th, 2013

Changes

• added support for Maya 2014
• added a Match Render Resolution command in the Viewport menu of the FIRE window
• merged the start and stop FIRE menu commands into a single toggle item
• materials for PaintFX can be specified at the brush level. If a material is also specified on the stroke, the stroke material takes precedence.
• added a menu command in the FIRE window to send the image to the render view
• added focus to and start/stop buttons in the FIRE window
• added exposure controls at the top of the FIRE window
• the object ID color is taken from the deepest level of the hierarchy where it is set, so that shapes can override the colors set in the transforms
• added an image preview window
• when importing MXS files, objects and triangles without materials use the default Maya material
• added sl, width, height, shutter, iso and fstop keywords to the render view overlay text
• hair vertex colors are converted to linear space
• improved export times in scenes with deeply nested hierarchies

Fixes

• numeric render options were not working in the render view overlay text
• objects with a single material which was assigned to each face, instead of at object level, were imported without a material from MXS
• the material ID color wasn't imported from MXM files
• the IES point cloud was not oriented correctly when Maya was set in Z up mode
• incorrect UV coordinates when a material with projected textures is assigned per face
• adding a new layer to a material re-enabled all the disabled layers
• full reexport in FIRE when a single object is changed
• Maya instances were exported multiple times
• the color correction attributes were not imported from MXM files in Maya 2012 and up

Version 2.7.12 - March 11th, 2013

• improved export times when there are many hidden objects
• added the option to disable camera movement export for motion blur
• FIRE supports isolation mode
• added settings for drawing MXS references and Maxwell instances as meshes instead of point clouds
• added a "solo" setting for material layers
• added a Maxwell category in the create new material dialog
• the HUD (resolution gate, film gate etc.) can be turned off in the FIRE window
• fixed: pack'n'go didn't work when used from the File/Export menu
• fixed: crash in Maya 2013.5 when emitters were used
• fixed: when multiple Maxwell objects were selected, only the first one was highlighted in the viewport
• fixed: wrong framing in FIRE when the aspect ratio of the FIRE window didn't match the render aspect ratio
• fixed: wrong framing in some cases when vertical film offset was used
• fixed: Python API: SetAttribute() for material components didn't work if the attribute was a color

Version 2.7.11 - December 17th, 2012

• added support for Maya 2013.5
• added the -l flag for command line rendering which selects the active render layer
• pack'n'go can export the scene to MXS
• added the ability to control the viewport display color for all the Maxwell objects (MXS reference, instancer, RFRK objects etc.)
• fixed: the viewport did not update after removing a sequence from a RFRK mesher
• fixed: pack'n'go no longer overwrites the current scene if "Save Maya Scene" is enabled
• fixed: the OSX installer did not contain the MXI image format plug-in
• fixed: the OSX installer copied all files, for all Maya versions, regardless of which versions are actually installed
• fixed: the Maya 2013 build did not work on some Linux distributions

Version 2.7.8 - October 16th, 2012

• the Maxwell-specific attributes are always present in Maya 2012 and above, so they can be manipulated directly with setAttr and they show up in the spreadsheet editor
• the UI controls for the Maxwell-specific attributes behave just like the controls for the built-in attributes in Maya 2013 and above, so there's no need to use the Extra Attributes rollup anymore
• render flags can be set on transform nodes, overriding the settings for all the children of the transform
• FBX import and export supports Maxwell materials
• geometry and materials can be imported from MXS files
• fixed: the hide to secondary rays, GI and z-clip flags were not working on MXS references
• fixed: a Maxwell viewport was created every time the settings window was closed

Version 2.7.6 - July 4th, 2012

• no new features in this version.
• fixed: the extensions (grass, hair etc.) were broken in the previous plug-in build (2.7.5)

Version 2.7.5 - June 28th, 2012

• added support for image sequences in the image-based environment
• the Maxwell root directory can be specified through the MAXWELL2_ROOT environment variable and maxwell2Root option var on all platforms
• fixed: the library and gallery browsers didn't work
• fixed: revoxelization in FIRE after any kind of scene change
• fixed: wrong maximum value for grass bend angle
• fixed: wrong face-shader mappings for subdivided meshes under certain circumstances
• fixed: the "focus to" shelf button didn't work if the object was part of a group
• fixed: FIRE didn't refresh when a camera parameter was changed through an expression

Version 2.7.4 - June 18th, 2012

• Maya 2013 is supported
• added Maxwell grass
• updated the command line render flags for pre- and post- MEL scripts to match the built-in renderer
• projecting UVs works when no placement object is present
• added support for cubic and spherical texture projections
• increased maximum f/stop value to match Studio
• added anamorphic bokeh settings in the Maxwell camera attributes panel
• added render flags for the MXS reference objects
• bump maps are exported as disabled when bump mapping is off, instead of being completely ignored
• PaintFX hair can generate root UVs
• added a new entry in the list of displacement types: "3D RealFlow"
• particle mass, age, color and UV are exported to the MaxwellParticles extension when present
• PXY files can be used with the MaxwellParticles extension
• added back the region rendering controls on the camera attribute editor; the Maya region settings take precedence when using region rendering
• the rendered region is applied on top of the existing Render View image
• smoothed meshes with per-face material assignments are supported
• fixed: FIRE was not refreshed when moving a MXS reference object

Version 2.6.27 - April 2nd, 2012

• added "off" to the display mode list of the BIN mesh loader, which prevents the BIN files from being accessed for viewport preview
• setting the LOD to 0 in the particle objects and MXS reference prevents the plug-in from reading anything from disk
• added shelf buttons for creating and assigning Maxwell materials
• added help and about buttons on the shelf
• added an API which can be used to customize the export process
• the transparency of the native materials is used as layer weight instead of transmittance color in the Maxwell approximation
• the IOR parameter of Blinn and Phong shaders is taken into account by the translator
• fixed: crash when trying to run Maya with non-accelerated OpenGL drivers (e.g. under Remote Desktop in Windows, or with Mesa on Linux
• fixed: errors on Mac OS and Linux when the RealFlow plug-in was also loaded
• fixed: some AE controls did not work correctly on Mac when a material had multiple layersadded Maxwell render flags for hair nodes, particle systems and instancers

Version 2.6.23 - January 30th, 2012

• added a motion blur factor control for particle systems
• added Maxwell render flags for hair nodes, particle systems and instancers
• the format and depth of the extra render channels are forced to the same values as the color channel when embedding is on
• added an attenuation unit control for the BSDF
• added support for multi-step camera motion blur
• the referenced material supports viewport 2.0
• added support for silent installs on Windows (pass /S on the installer command line)
• the FIRE scene state can be frozen using the Viewport menu in the popup panel
• added the -restartFire and -freezeFireState flags to the maxwell command which apply to all running FIRE instances
• Maxwell is started with -node when running a batch render, so that it uses a node license, not a GUI license
• the search paths configured in the plug-in preferences are saved in the exported MXS files
• integrated region rendering with Maya's render view and removed the Maxwell-specific region attributes from the camera
• removed the "Default to High Quality" plug-in preference
• added a render option which disables the export of built-in Maya lights
• fixed: slow export for particle instancers
• fixed: native light intensities were not read back correctly from ML if the intensity multiplier was left at its default value
• fixed: possible crash when loading the plug-in
• fixed: the Maxwell material didn't respect the viewport backface culling setting (culling was always on)
• fixed: render layer overrides could not be applied on material checkboxes
• fixed: wrong state for the save image, start and stop menu items in the FIRE panel
• fixed: global displacement scale shouldn't be applied to relative displacement heights
• fixed: the global displacement scale wasn't applied to 3D displacement height
• fixed: the "merge materials" window didn't have a title
• fixed: a "0" was displayed in the override temp directory control when the value was not set
• fixed: bad text alignment in the preferences window
• fixed: if a Maya or Shave hair object fails to produce lines, the export is no longer canceled
• fixed: texture UV channel indexes were not imported from MXM files
• fixed: exporting with "Will use sequence rendering" enabled resulted in an error about invalid file extension
• fixed: the meaning of the "embed in MXS" flag on the referenced material was reversed