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v5.2 Next Limit Maxwell | Studio

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Next Limit Maxwell | Studio
   

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Download demos and trial versions, product documentation, free presets and more.

Next Limit Maxwell Render

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Independent scene editor with a full 3D environment

Maxwell Studio is a sophisticated independent scene editor with a full 3D environment, offering an alternative workflow for those Maxwell Render users that work with 3D or CAD applications for which there are no Maxwell plugins.

Maxwell is all about quality. Period. This has been our sacred mantra for almost 15 years of development. Our secret sauce is a physically-correct unbiased spectral engine, which produces not only beautiful images but also lighting-accurate simulations. In fact, many consider Maxwell the ground-truth in rendering and CGI production. We strive to inspire others, and you inspire us when you use Maxwell.

What is Maxwell Render?

Maxwell Render™, a rendering engine based on the mathematical equations governing light transport. Next Limit derived all elements, such as emitters, materials and cameras, from physically accurate models. And, it’s unbiased. In other words, no trickery behind calculating the lighting solution in every pixel of a scene. The result will always be a correct solution, as it would be in the real world. Maxwell Render can fully capture all light interactions between all elements in a scene. In addition, all lighting calculations are performed using spectral information and high dynamic range data.

Due to its very nature, Maxwell Render enables users to create accurate and extremely realistic images. Maxwell Render is a recognized standard in architectural visualization, product design, jewelry, film production, scientific research, and other high-end rendering markets, and the leader in render quality.

Maxwell Render is a rendering engine that accepts models and scenes created in 3D or CAD applications. In fact, Maxwell plug-ins directly support several of these applications. Others can be used in conjunction with Maxwell Render by importing the geometry into Maxwell Studio, a component of the software.

next limit maxwell gpu

MULTI-GPU SPEED

If you have ever heard that Maxwell is slow…well, yes, it was. Our commitment to developing the most accurate render engine on the market isn’t negotiable. The story has changed in Maxwell 5. A fully rewritten multi-GPU core now delivers final results in minutes and accurate previews in seconds, keeping physical accuracy intact. With multiple GPUs working in parallel you’ll get an unprecedented Maxwell experience. With Maxwell 5, time is now in your hands.

next limit maxwell cloud speed

CLOUD SPEED

The new Cloud Render service allows you to access the most powerful machines available in the cloud (up to 96 cores) speeding up the render process and thus improving your productivity. Cloud render jobs can be easily dispatched from Maxwell Studio and the plugins, freeing the local computer from high CPU loads. Cloud Render helps you optimize your time and resources more efficiently.

next limit maxwell integrations

INTEGRATIONS

Maxwell 5 is seamlessly integrated into most of the major 3D/CAD software solutions such as Rhino, SketchUp, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, ArchiCAD, and Cinema 4D. As an alternative, the standalone Maxwell Studio offers an independent production/rendering environment to create, edit and render Maxwell scenes. Render nodes and network tools for advanced deployments are included. Maxwell is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.  Learn More

 

SUPPORTED GEOMETRY IMPORT FORMATS

OBJ, STL, LWO, PLY, XC2, DXF, 3DS, XML, NFF, FBX, Collada (DAE), DEM, SDTS

BASIC WORKFLOW

The Studio workflow is mostly recommended to people working with 3D/ CAD applications that do not have a plug-in to directly connect them to Maxwell Render. Even if there is a plug-in available for your application, you can still make use of Studio by importing an MXS scene or geometry and making further adjustments to your materials/cameras/lights. Or you can merge different .MXS files together into one scene.

There’s also another possible workflow using Studio which involves synchronizing many common 3D formats through the Asset Reference, allowing for simultaneous work on geometry in your 3d modeling application of choice and materials, lighting, and rendering in Studio.

  • Maxwell Studio does not have any modeling tools so you have to first model your scene in another 3D application, then export it to any of the above formats.
  • Import that geometry into Maxwell Studio where you can create, edit and apply materials, set up lights and cameras, and then finally send the scene to render.
  • Additionally, you can also open and edit existing MXS files, either created by Maxwell Studio or any Maxwell plugin.

New Features in Maxwell 5

New Multi-GPU Engine

Fully rewritten MULTI-GPU engine provides more than 50x speed-up compared with a high-end CPU, preserving the Maxwell quality and delivering results in minutes or even seconds.

Cloud Render Service. Always ready for you.

Fully rewritten MULTI-GPU engine provides more than 50x speed-up compared with a high-end CPU, preserving the Maxwell quality and delivering results in minutes or even seconds.

Additive Materials in GPU

Materials with additive layers are now GPU-ready, increasing compatibility with the majority of Maxwell materials.

V-Ray Scene Import

Import native V-Ray scenes and convert them to Maxwell automatically. Only supported in Maxwell Studio. Plugin integrations coming soon.

Improved Interactivity and Stability

FIRE (Fast Interactive Render) is now faster and optimized to update instantly and reflect the changes in the scene, providing a great interactive workflow.

Procedural Textures

Add more variability and realism to your scene by randomizing texture properties automatically across multiple objects or tiled surfaces.

Light Groups (Multilight)

Lights can now be grouped and controlled like single emitters in the Multilight ’emixer’. Useful to keep MXI files more compact, reduce memory footprint and decrease complexity in scenes with lots of emitters.

Support for High Resolution (4K) Screens in both Render and Studio

Now Studio and Maxwell Render interface are able to accommodate to high resolution displays like 4K or higher.

Improved Workflow

Nested references allow for better management of large scenes with deep hierarchies, optimizing file sizes. Dependencies are now searched in several subfolder levels, streamlining assets management.


Maxwell Essentials

next limit maxwell realismUnsurpassed Realism

Unbiased spectral ray-tracing designed to simulate light and materials exactly as it behaves in the real world. No tricks. Just accurate real-world physics.

next limit maxwell interactiveInteractive

Maxwell’s interactive engine gives you immediate feedback for adjustments to lighting, materials and camera settings.

next limit maxwell materialsThousands of Materials

Hundreds of online materials in our community based library. Materials are based on real optical properties, creating unrivalled realism. A Material assistant will help you create perfectly optimized materials in just seconds!

next limit maxwell denoiserDenoiser

The Denoiser feature provides faster results (2x to 6x), obtaining higher quality at lower sampling level.

Multilight

Light intensities can be changed during and after rendering, saving out as many images as needed – all from just a single render.

next limit maxwell cameraRealistic Camera Model

Set optical properties such as f-stop, focal length, shutter speed, ISO, film size, etc. Get DOF, bokeh, scattering and exposure effects to boost realism.

next limit maxwell motion blurAccurate 3D Motion Blur

Accurate 3D motion blur can handle unlimited sub-steps, and can be set for both a still camera to mimic long exposure effects such as trails of light, or a film camera to show the motion blur effect of fast moving objects.

next limit maxwell physical skyPhysical Sky

Wide range of real-life, physically-correct variables to control the look of the sky and lighting, including Earth location, time, sun’s aspect, and atmosphere.

next limit maxwell volumetricsVolumetrics

Create large atmospheric haze effects or thick fog, compatible with particles files in several formats including RealFlow .bin, OpenVDB and density fields/voxels directly from Maya and Houdini.

next limit maxwell seaMaxwell Sea

Create realistic ocean surfaces and waves controlling water depth and surface dimensions. From swimming pools to open ocean.

next limit maxwell hairHair

Photoreal hair rendering, compatible with Maya Shave and a Haircut, Maya hair, 3ds Max hair, Cinema 4D hair, and Ornatrix. Any Maxwell material can be applied.

next limit maxwell grassGrass and Fur

Create photoreal grass or fur on a selected piece of geometry. Designed to offer maximum control and impeccable detail.

Advanced Features

Realflow Import

Render your RealFlow™ particles directly with Maxwell Render, meshing the point cloud at render time.

Pixar Open Subdiv

The Pixar Open Subdiv feature subdivides object surfaces only at render time – saving space and data transfer.

Network Rendering

Render one image using all of your computers, or set each computer to render one animation frame. Complete control and flexibility.

Memory Saving Instances

Instances are a great way to save memory when rendering. They are great for creating vegetation, bricks, furniture or any other extensively repeated geometry in your scene.

Channels

Alpha, Z-buffer, Shadow, Material-Id, Object-Id, Motion Vector, Roughness, Fresnel, Normals, etc. Create unlimited ‘layers’ of custom alphas and add any object(s) to those layers to isolate them.

Extra Sampling

Define a specific area of your image to be rendered to a higher sampling level than the rest – dedicating all render power to the areas where it is most needed.

Deep Compositing

Deep image format stores color as well as depth information per pixel, making it much easier to composite rendered objects together as well as eliminating troublesome edge artefacts. Export to EXR or DTEX formats, in rgba or alpha.

Python Scripting

The Python SDK allows you to write custom tools such as extracting certain channels from an MXI sequence, creating materials on the fly, network render management and much more.

Alembic

The Alembic file format allows for very efficient storage of geometry and other scene data, which can now be referenced directly in Maxwell. Support for Alembic includes static and animated geometry as well as particles. It also works with the Exocortex CRATE suite of Alembic plugins.

The minimum system requirements for Maxwell Render V5 are as follows:

Windows

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 7, 8, 8.1, Windows Server 2012 or Windows 10
  • 2 GHz Intel® Core2 processor, AMD Athlon 64 or better
  • 1GB RAM minimum. 16 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended
  • 1.7 GB available hard disk space for installation
  • Accelerated OpenGL drivers
  • 3 button mouse recommended

Mac

  • MacOS 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.12 (Sierra), 10.13 (High Sierra), 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina).
  • 1 GB RAM minimum. 16 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended
  • 1.7 GB available hard disk space for installation
  • 3 button mouse recommended

Linux 64

  • x86_64 distribution with a 2.6 Kernel and glibc 2.5
  • Tested on Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy), Fedora Core release 6 (Zod), CentOS release 6.5 (Final), Ubuntu precise (12.04.2 LTS)
  • 2 GHz Intel® Core®2, AMD Athlon 64 or better
  • 1 GB RAM minimum. 16 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended
  • 1.7 GB available hard disk space for installation
  • 3 button mouse recommended

GPU engine

  • Graphics cards that support CUDA platform (Nvidia), running on Windows. No AMD or Intel will work, sorry.
  • The drivers should be up to date.
  • Maxwell, Pascal, Volta and Turing architectures are supported (for reference you can check this table); it could work on Kepler architecture but it could be unstable and the experience won’t be good.

Denoiser

  • Denoiser is capable of running on CPU or GPU, with NvidiaAMD and Intel graphics cards; it works with CUDA (Nvidia) and also can work using OpenCL either in GPU (Nvidia, AMD or Intel) or CPU.
  • When using GPU, we recommend having a graphics card with at least 2.5GB. This number is actually dependent on frame size, 2.5GB is for 2k pixels square imagery.
  • When using Nvidia CUDA, the drivers should support at least CUDA 7.0
  • When using AMD, the Catalyst driver should be up to date.
  • In the case you get an error message when using CPU about OpenCL ICDs, it will probably be solved by installing one of these packages depending on your OS:
  • The Denoiser will first try to use CUDA, if it doesn’t find a compatible card, it will fallback to OpenCL GPU (usually with AMD and Intel cards). If the image doesn’t fit in the graphics card memory, you can then use OpenCL with CPU (which will use RAM memory).

 

Maxwell v5.2.0.45 Updates

Maxwell

Improvements

  • Denoiser’s new approach. Better integration in the render engine. One-pass render, multi-layered MXI, the Denoiser image is treated as another channel and is included in the MXI file, so its information does not get lost; better memory management because of tiling options and new fine-tuning options to control the Denoiser strength.
  • Denoiser parameters exposed:
    • Tiling.
    • Maximum Tile Size.
    • Color Influence (kc1).
    • Color Influence (kc2).
    • Feature Influence (kf).
    • Final Pass Strength (kc4).
    • Filter Radius.
    • Firefly Remover.
  • A new modal panel shows up while the render is being re-denoised.
  • New “refresh” controls in the render viewport to refresh the render, the denoiser channel or both.
  • New option for Channel controls positions in Preferences > Appearance (Bottom-Left and Bottom-Right). Shortcuts on Windows: Ctrl + Alt + NumPad 1 and 2. Shortcuts on MacOS: Option + Command + NumPad 1 and 2.
  • New option for Refresh controls positions in Preferences > Appearance (Top-Left, Top-Right, Bottom-Left and Bottom-Right). Shortcuts on Windows: Ctrl + Alt + NumPad 4, 5, 7 and 8. Shortcuts on MacOS: Option + Command + NumPad 4, 5, 7 and 8.

Changes

  • Command line parameter -denoise removed. To activate the denoiser through the command line the user must enable the denoiser channel. Example: -channel:denoiser,on,8,png
  • The Denoiser image output path field has been removed from the panel as now it’s treated as any other channel; thus, the denoised image will be saved next to the main render and with the same name plus _denoiser.
  • Denoiser auto-configuration now sets Position channel in world coordinates, and Normals channel in camera coordinates by default. If the user enabled any of those channels, denoiser auto-configuration will respect the channels’ configuration set by the user.
  • The Denoiser will be applied in “preview quality” for intermediate SLs until SL 12. For SL 12 and beyond the denoiser runs in “final quality”, as well as for the last denoiser update when the render ends, no matter the final SL.
  • Default Priority set to “Below Normal”.
  • The mximerge application -coopdenoiser command-line flag has been removed.
  • The Draft engine disables extra-sampling and continues instead of failing when extra-samping is enabled.
  • Process Priority becomes an application setting, still overridable by command-line parameter -p or -priority.
  • Deprecated command line parameter -channels removed.

Fixes

  • Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression on Linux and Windows platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
  • Maxwell Render never ended in nogui mode if the denoiser was active, and a forbidden denoiser parameters combination was set by mistake in the MXS: auto-configure:fast + shadow-denoiser:on.
  • BSDF blending proportions of materials could not be accurate when the material was applied to an object with object opacity different than 100%.
  • Intensity correction was not correct for some additive materials.
  • Crash with reflectance channel + material with reflectance textures with no tiling.
  • The License Activator on Mac was copying the floating licenses in the wrong folder.
  • (MacOS only) Quicklook had a memory leak.
  • In FIRE CPU (CPU Draft engine) Spot Lights in projector mode were not working.

Known Issues

  • MaxwellScatter extension removes MaxwellScatter extension from the scattered objects (if they have).
  • Benchwell stops sometimes before the benchmark test has finished. We don’t allow uploading the results in that case.

Maxwell GPU

New Features

  • NVIDIA Ampere graphics cards support.
  • Multilight is now supported by the GPU engine.
  • Multi-GPU dynamic balance. Fewer samples are expected from cards that had less performance in past rendering passes.
  • Emitter + BSDF now works in GPU. It is restricted to one emitter per material.
  • Samples rebalance: Threads of one pixel can help other pixels if they need to. This helps that the image sampling level is more homogeneous. This can make that, in some scenes, Maxwell will require more time to reach the same SL, but more complicated parts of the image will have less noise at the same SL. Also, less computing power will be invested in easy parts, like the sky. In general, the computing power will be used more efficiently.

Improvements

  • Speed improvement in multi-gpu.
  • Improved the way in how certain calculations are done within the GPU engine that should help minimize certain precision issues regarding two surfaces being too close to each other and far away from the camera. (i.e. putting an emitter too close behind an AGS could make the rays skip the emitter if they are far from the center of the scene).
  • Render Region and Blow-up Region are not supported in the GPU engine, now the region is reset to Full Frame before the render starts.

Changes

  • Upgrade to CUDA 11.1. Minimum NVIDIA drivers required:
    • Windows: 456.38.
    • Linux: 455.23.
  • CUDA 11 drops support for the following operating systems:
    • Windows 7.
    • Windows 8.
    • Windows Server 2012 R2.
  • CUDA 11 drops support for Kepler 3.0 and 3.2 graphics cards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA):
    • GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GT 740, GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 880M, GeForce GTX 780M, GeForce GTX 770M, GeForce GTX 765M, GeForce GTX 760M, GeForce GTX 680MX, GeForce GTX 680M, GeForce GTX 675MX, GeForce GTX 670MX, GeForce GTX 660M, GeForce GT 750M, GeForce GT 650M, GeForce GT 745M, GeForce GT 645M, GeForce GT 740M, GeForce GT 730M, GeForce GT 640M, GeForce GT 640M LE, GeForce GT 735M, GeForce GT 730M, Quadro K5000, Quadro K4200, Quadro K4000, Quadro K2000, Quadro K2000D, Quadro K600, Quadro K420,Quadro K500M, Quadro K510M, Quadro K610M, Quadro K1000M, Quadro K2000M, Quadro K1100M, Quadro K2100M, Quadro K3000M, Quadro K3100M, Quadro K4000M, Quadro K5000M, Quadro K4100M, Quadro K5100M, NVS 510, Quadro 410, Tesla K10, GRID K340, GRID K520, GRID K2.
  • In order to keep compatibility for the GPU engine with Windows 7/8/Server 2012 R2, for Maxwell Render 5.2.0 and future Maxwell 5 versions, Maxwell Render, Maxwell Studio and the plug-ins will be available in two flavors for Windows:
    • Windows 7 installer. CUDA 10 based, which supports the following NVIDIA architectures:
      • Maxwell.
      • Pascal.
      • Volta.
      • Turing.
    • Windows 10 installer. CUDA 11 based, which supports the following NVIDIA architectures:
      • Maxwell.
      • Pascal.
      • Volta.
      • Turing.
      • Ampere.

Fixes

  • GPU statistics did not show correct render progress.
  • GPU stopped at a much higher SL than requested.
  • GPU crashed when having more than one emitter per material.
  • GPU ghost bsdf (Transmittance white + Nd = 1 + K = 0) was rendering as opaque if the material had more than one bsdf and the attenuation was set to 1 nm.
  • BSDF blending proportions of materials might not be accurate when the material was applied to an object with object opacity different than 100%.
  • Intensity correction was not correct for some additive materials.
  • MXI files generated by the GPU engine could not be merged.
  • Tiling X or Y with global map did not work properly in the GPU engine.
  • Maxwell froze with instances to nulls with emitter materials.
  • The GPU engine couldn’t find some textures on some pack & go conditions.
  • The GPU engine could crash using multi-gpu with IBL on consecutive renders with different resolutions.

Maxwell Studio

New Features

Added the new Denoiser options to the Attributes panel > Render Options > Scene tab > Denoiser section.

  • Tiling and Max Tile Size
  • Fine-tuning options: Color Influence 1 and 2, Feature Influence, Final Pass, Filter Radius and Firefly Remover.

Improvements

  • Improved the readability of the text fields when editing them.
  • When activating the material preview auto-update, the preview is refreshed (FIRE will be stopped to avoid conflicts).UI minor improvements.

Changes

  • FIRE default parameters changed to Quality 4 and SL 12.
  • Default Priority set to “Below Normal”.

Fixes

  • Crash with random uvs extension and displacement.
  • The Global map did not show properly in the viewport.
  • The Lat-Long Stereo camera creation triggered an error: “separation_map.png” not found.
  • The Fish Stereo camera creation triggered several errors: “separation_map.png/turn_map.png” not found.
  • FIRE did not update properly on Lat-Long/Fish Stereo parameters change.
  • Studio installer was not able to detect and uninstall a previous Maxwell Render installation.
  • Channels Output Mode “Separate/Embedded” option was not being written to the MXS file.
  • Random crash starting Studio on macOS.

Known Issues

  • Resources Browser makes Studio crash on widget resize in some rare cases.
  • Studio won’t work on a remote desktop (Linux host).

MXED

New Features

  • New Substance Designer assistant. It allows loading .sbsar files and editing their parameters directly from Maxwell. The material is automatically translated internally to a Maxwell material or you can permanently convert it to a Custom Maxwell material.

Network

Improvements

  • The Cloud jobs now show in the Name field how many renders it has.
  • Cloud jobs rows with one render show the current/target SL data of the render.
  • The Maxwell Cloud ignores Search Paths in the MXS to improve dependency search time.
  • Cloud job wizard now allows the user to set channels in the render parameters panel.
  • The Network Monitor shows a “New Version” message on Maxwell Cloud updates when the user logs in.

Changes

  • The “forgot password” link wasn’t working properly, now it opens portal.nextlimit.com/login/remember directly in the default internet browser.

Fixes

  • Cloud job resolucion with locked pixel aspect was not taking into account the original output resolution of the scene and used 4:3 always instead.
  • Linux: Wrong file type filter on missing dependencies dialog when sending a cloud job.
  • There were some missing render parameters in the network job wizard UI: Render Engine, Motion Blur, Displacement and Dispersion.
  • The user couldn’t log-in in Maxwell Cloud through Network Monitor if the password contained the character “%”.

SDK

Changes

  • Cmaxwell::getRenderParameter/setRenderParameter new signature. The old one remains for backward compatibility.
  • New maxwellcommon.h header.

Maxwell 5.1.1.33

Date: 16 July, 2020

Changes

  • Benchwell charts sorted by benchmark.
  • Command-line parameter -extrasamplingsl accepts value “0” now to prevent some errors.
  • The UI colors of the License Activator didn’t allow seeing the different fields.
  • Denoiser process could lock Maxwell Render in “-nogui” mode when the output images are in TIF format.
  • Crash in scenes with one-light light groups and Color Multilight.
  • Re-Denoise function disregarded light changes in Multilight for Shadow denoise.
  • Maxwell on macOS got out of full-screen mode leaving a window on top.
  • Activate License… option on macOS did not launch the License Activator.
  • Maxwell didn’t close if the render failed and the denoiser was activated in “-nogui” mode.

Known Issues

  • Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression on Linux platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
  • MaxwellScatter extension removes MaxwellScatter extension from the scattered objects (if they have).
  • Benchwell stops sometimes before the benchmark test has finished. We don’t now allow uploading the results in that case.

Maxwell GPU

Improvements

  • GPU materials have been improved to better match CPU’s ones. This affects mainly materials with transmittance and glossy ones.

Fixes

  • Extra-sampling + custom alpha stopped the render at the early stages.
  • The illumination differed too much from the CPU engine in some scenes.
  • The roughness of dielectric materials did not match the CPU result.
  • Direct lightning on dielectric materials did not work as expected.
  • Anisotropy was not working for Roughness 0 materials.
  • Firefly cleanup was not working correctly.
  • Z-clip was not working on GPU.
  • The default value for the “No Tiling” option for opacity values did not match CPU one.
  • GPU engine could crash with empty scenes.
  • Little discrepancies in channel values.
  • Crashes could occur on fire when moving the camera during the preprocess.

Maxwell Studio

Improvements

  • Some icons have been renewed (different object types and extension icons).

Fixes

  • Crashes could occur when changing material properties while FIRE was running.

Known Issues

  • Resources Browser widget resizing may crash Studio in some cases.
  • Studio won’t work on a remote desktop (Linux host).

MXED

Improvements

  • New buttons were added at the bottom of the layer structure of the material to ease the creation of layers, BSDFs, emitters, displacement and coatings. Also, added a button to delete components. Please, check here for more information.
  • Two new buttons were added to create a new additive shiny layer and a ghost BSDF (this one can help to create invisible emitters or to easily mask the whole material under it. Check here for more information.

Changes

  • The default preview scene changed; the previous “defaultpreview” was renamed to “checkered”, “stage1” to “defaultpreview”, and “stage2” to “ribbed”.
  • The different preview sizes changed from 25%, 50%, 100% and 150% to S, M, L and XL.
  • The Auto-update toggle button changed to something more informative and better looking.

Network

Improvements

  • Maxwell Cloud: a new button was added to force-stop the cloud render by killing the cloud machine (if the render has already stored any file to the server, it will be kept); this gives the user a tool to immediately stop consuming cloud time.
  • Maxwell Cloud: a new button was added that allows the user to easily copy the render IDs in case they need to report issues with a render in the cloud to the Support team.
  • Maxwell Cloud: the job wizard fills the Render Options panel from the MXS data. In case there is more than one MXS to be rendered, it will use the first one of the list.
  • Maxwell Cloud: message text improved on file overwrite when the user downloads the render results.

Changes

  • Removed the confusing message that appears when the user stops a Maxwell Cloud render that hasn’t reached an SL greater than 0.

Fixes

  • Random crash sending jobs to Maxwell Cloud with multiple renders on it.

Python Editor

Fixes

  • Crash running Pymaxwell Editor on macOS.

SDK

Fixes

  • Maxwell 5 macOS plugins could end up loading Maxwell 4 if it was installed.

What’s New in v5.1.29 (May 13th, 2020)

New features

  • New search boxes to filter the content of the object, camera, and material lists. This helps to find particular items by name in these potentially long lists.
  • New button next to the object search box to restrict the viewport selection only to the items that match the search. The rest of the objects won’t be selectable until the search is cleared or the button unpressed.
  • New Substance Painter assistant; now you can easily create a Maxwell material from the textures generated by Substance Painter.

Improvements

  • Now, when pressing the Maxwell Cloud button, Studio checks which is the active camera so that’s the one rendered.

Known Issues

  • The Resources Browser can potentially make Studio crash on widget resize.
  • Studio won’t work on a remote desktop (Linux host).

Improvements

Fixes

  • The CPU priority was not loaded properly from the MXS file.
  • Cloned objects that had blocked emitters broke the blocked emitters’ behavior (the emitters could not be unblocked).
  • Adding or removing blocked emitters to an object was not refreshing FIRE.
  • Random crash starting Maxwell Studio.
  • When you created a new MaxwellGrass modifier, the existing ones were reset to default values.
  • The Studio animation tool should add padding to the output files too (image name and MXI name).
  • Studio move/rotate/scale gizmos didn’t highlight the active axis on mouse hover.
  • The hidden camera and locked camera icons were wrong.
  • Projection properties in the texture picker were not showing in the preview anymore.
  • In some cases, it was not possible to change the Field Type of the MaxwellVolumetric.
  • Studio could crash opening a scene when the current scene has a camera selected.
  • Wrong FIRE update when moving the UV set.

MXED

New features

  • New Substance Painter assistant; now you can easily create a Maxwell material from the textures generated by Substance Painter.

Network

Changes

  • Some warning messages changed in MacOS for clarity’s sake.

Fixes

  • Getting dependencies of a MXM reference failed if the MXM was not found.
  • The “request preview” button in mxnetwork local mode didn’t work.
  • When sending a job from a Mac to a PC the job showed on the node as received but nothing else happened.
  • Maxwell Cloud spent too much time saving intermediate results in some heavy renders.

Improvements

  • Now the users can override Extra-sampling and Denoiser parameters before sending a job to Maxwell Cloud.
  • The login dialogue had a dark background that made it hard to locate the different fields; now it is improved.
  • Now the users can set Maxwell Cloud to save outputs only at the end, saving render time.

SDK

Improvements

  • The following C++ SDK methods clamp input RGB values to a valid range:
    • Cmaxwell::Cmaterial::setColorID
    • Cmaxwell::CmaterialEmitter::setPair
    • Cmaxwell::Creflectance::setAttribute
    • Cmaxwell::Cobject::setColorID
    • Cmaxwell::Cenvironment::setSunProperties
    • Cmaxwell::Cenvironment::setSkyConstant

Changes

  • Python module pymaxwell5 returns MXparamListRef instead of MXparamList objects in the following methods:
    • CmaxwellCamera.getCameraLensExtensionParams
    • CmaxwellMaterial.getMaterialModifierExtensionParams
    • CmaxwellObject.getGeometryLoaderExtensionParams
    • CmaxwellObject.getGeometryProceduralExtensionParams
    • CmaxwellObject.getGeometryModifierExtensionParamsAtIndex
    • CmaxwellObject.getCustomDataChunkByName
    • CmaxwellObject.getCustomDataChunkAtIndex
  • New MXparamListRef class has the same functionality as MXparamList, plus getCopy(), which returns a MXparamList copy of the MXparamListRef object.
  • MXparamlist create/set methods’ input parameters updated to const.
  • Python module pymaxwell5 callback mwcallback now is mwcallback_cb

What’s new in version 5.0.2.21?

Maxwell Render

Changes

  • License files are now saved into a “v5” folder to avoid license conflicts with previous major versions of Maxwell Render and demo or expired licenses (
  • Update license: append by default.
  • Updated RLM server to 13.0BL2.

Improvements

  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved. You’ll notice crispy text and icons and other general improvements.
  • Console warnings for bad material map configuration created by plug-ins.

Known Issues

  • Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression in Linux platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
  • MaxwellScatter extension ignores the MaxwellScatter modifier applied to the scattered objects (if they have) to avoid infinite loops.

Fixes

  • Maxwell and Studio do not evaluate referenced MXM textures correctly.
  • Triangle ID channel was not saved in embed channels mode if the format does not allow for layers.
  • Crash in OSX rendering meshes with the subdivision modifier.
  • Infinite loop using MaxwellScatter extension with an object that also uses MaxwellScatter (now the second level of scattering is ignored).
  • Maxwell Render took a long time to start rendering.
  • LDR images used in IBL looked washed or with wrong colors.
  • Reference loader loaded instances from the main scene instead of referenced scene when there were original objects with the same name in the main and the referenced scene.
  • Linux installer distributed .so files that could conflict with user system libraries.
  • FIRE crashed (CPU and GPU) changing displacement from Flat to Catmull/loop.
  • Crash in OSX in multithreaded voxelization.
  • Crash rendering Light Groups + Color Multilight. Now it changes to Intensity Multilight mode if there are Multilight groups involved.

Maxwell GPU

Fixes

  • Some channels (alpha, material, object, position, z-buffer) could show artifacts.
  • Procedural textures could crash on GPU and produce wrong material assignments.
  • Texture properties (Brightness, contrast, saturation, hue) did not work as intended in GPU.
  • Crash rendering scenes with unsupported procedural geometry extensions (grass, volumetrics, particles).

Improvements

  • Object transformation changes with FIRE GPU don’t re-voxelize the whole scene, making FIRE GPU more responsive to scene edition.

Known Issues

  • Dielectrics materials don’t behave as intended in some scenes.

Maxwell Studio

Improvements

  • No need to save the current scene to disk before sending it to Maxwell Cloud/Network (it now exports to a temporal mxs file).
  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved. You’ll notice crispy text and icons and other general improvements.

Known Issues

  • Resources Browser may crash Studio on widget resize.

Fixes

  • FIRE window saved a corrupt image to disk.
  • Studio didn’t save a thumbnail (for the MXS saved file) when the user launches GPU FIRE.
  • Studio crashed after the quality of FIRE was risen by the user.
  • The MXS files were generated with a corrupted preview image.
  • Studio crashed when saving the file after FIRE has been launched with quality 7 or higher.
  • The viewport selection, drag & drop, focus tool, etc. didn’t work properly with HDPI monitors.
  • Crash moving Studio between HDPI / non-HDPI monitors.
  • Scaling objects could crash Studio.
  • Studio crashed on Mac when right-clicking on an MXS file in Finder > Open with… and choosing Studio.
  • Local browser blocked and force-closed when we chose “outdoor ies” folder in Studio.
  • FIRE GPU vignetting was always “on”.
  • When opening Studio through CMD with -mxs, the viewport got overexposed.
  • Studio didn’t read the defaultlayout_v5.stlay file from the installation folder “layouts”.

MXED

Improvements

  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.
  • Added two new material preview scenes: attenuation (specifically for testing the attenuation distance of the transparent materials) and drapery 2 (intended to test fabrics).
  • Resources Browser makes Studio crash on widget resize.

Network

Changes

  • Cloud job/render IDs are now shown in the jobs list in the same column. The cloud job name is shown in its own column.

Fixes

  • The Network Manager could not find the mximerge tool in OSX.
  • The preview showed a white overlay in OSX

Improvements

  • The “Buy cloud time” link points to the Maxwell Cloud area of the webshop, instead of the global webshop page.
  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.
  • User panel close button added

Python Editor

improvements

  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.

What’s new in version 5?

Maxwell Render

New Features
  • Nested references.
  • New procedural texture: Random Color.
  • New procedural texture: Random Uvs.
  • Emitter groups for multilight.
Changes
  • Searching paths include 3 levels of subfolders.
  • Multilight intensity override decimal precision at Mxi Batch Processing tool.
Improvements
  • Normals channel now shows normal and bump mapping.
  • UI for hi-dpi screens (4k and on).
Known Issues
  • Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression in Linux platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
Fixes
  • Using emixer files at MXI Batch Processing tool makes other changes to be ignored.
  • Noise procedural texture doesn’t use the seed.
  • If a texture is blended with a procedural texture and tiling is used, procedural texture uses squared tiling.
  • Selecting a folder on UI sets the path without final slash.Dropping a file on a path UI sets the file path wrong.
  • Crash when closing app if any field has focus.
  • Bad illumination patterns with high values of blur in spotlights.
  • Random crash using denoiser.
  • Switching between GPU and CPU engines at render time can make some emitters to stop working.
  • Slow render using custom alpha channel on 2 socket machines.

Maxwell GPU

New Features
  • Additive materials.
  • Multi-GPU rendering.
  • High resolution renders supported.
Improvements
  • Graphics Card driver version detection.
Known Issues
  • Crash when consecutive renders with different resolutions are done with multi-gpu.
  • Dielectrics materials don’t behave as intended on some scenes.
  • Some channels (alpha, material, object, position, z-buffer) may show artifacts.
Fixes
  • If an instance of an object has a material but the original object uses the default one, both of them use the default material.
  • Deleting BSDFs with FIRE-GPU “on”, makes other objects to change their material.
  • Object opacity clipmaps fails on some scenarios.
  • Ghost BSDF in combination with other BSDFs doesn’t behave as expected.
  • Some scenes have noisy caustics where draft CPU engine doesn’t.
  • Some monochrome images (i.e. TIF format) do not work properly in monochromatic maps (i.e. opacity).
  • “No tiling” feature on textures does not work.
  • Render Booleans are not interacting properly with indirect lighting rays.
  • Black emitter + BSDF makes FIRE to crash at stop.
  • FIRE-GPU can crash at material change.
  • Monochrome textures not being sampled properly.
  • Textures for opacity layers not working in emitters.
  • Re-enable a disabled material layer with FIRE running may crash.
  • Moving an emitter with FIRE running may crash.
  • Materials with roughness between 90 and 100 may not behave as intended.
  • Repeated textures are repeated on GPU memory too.
  • CPU memory peak on GPU copy.
  • Moving instances on FIRE-GPU may crash.
  • Changing resolution between renders may make GPU render to crash.
  • Multistep motion blur may have triangles disappearing.

Maxwell Studio

New Features
  • Render via Maxwell Cloud.
  • Render animations (from the Export animation tool) via Maxwell Cloud/Network.
  • Auto-save.
  • Open/Import V-Ray scenes (.vrscene files).
  • Added Linked Camera button in Fire window to connect/disconnect the Fire view to the camera movement.
  • Double click on a material on Resources Browser imports it to the scene.
  • Active view (rendering view) indicator in the 3D viewport.
Changes
  • Searching paths include 3 levels of subfolders.
  • Render and Fire CPU/GPU dropdown menus were replaced with a one-click selector.
  • Fire buttons were moved to the interactive preview window.
  • Fire Options dropmenu was replaced with settings and save buttons (right-click menu is still there).
Improvements
  • UI for hi-dpi screens (4k and so).
  • SL indicator on FIRE.​
  • Improved fonts and look of the informative text in the viewports and Fire windows.
Fixes
  • Some scenes crash saving MXS after render FIRE at high quality.
  • MXM alternative folder option is disabled at loading.
  • If a number with more decimals than the field precision is entered, the value changes to 1.0.
  • New UV channel have index 255 by default.
  • Maxwell Scatter: Scatter modifier guides are now pointing in the right direction (previously they were leaning towards Y=0).
  • FIRE crashes changing quality.
  • Moving instances on FIRE makes multiple objects on the way.
  • Changing camera aspect ratio with FIRE-GPU “on”, corrupts image.
  • FIRE forces re-voxelization on object transform edit.

Network

New Features
  • Maxwell Cloud.
Fixes
  • Network always render with production engine.
  • If denoiser is activated on scene, network denoiser options doesn’t override it.

SDK

New Features
  • MXS and MXI files have metadata.
Fixes
  • Crash editing MXI files with Simulens “on”.
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