Maxwell Render

Maxwell Render

Changes

  • Benchwell charts sorted by benchmark.
  • Command-line parameter -extrasamplingsl accepts value “0” now to prevent some errors.

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.

Fixes

  • 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.

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).

Known Issues

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

Fixes

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

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.

New features

  • 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

Changes

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

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.

Fixes

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

SDK

Fixes

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

Maxwell Render

New features

  • New Benchwell tools for CPU and GPU benchmarking with online live charts. You can access them from the Tools menu from Maxwell Render.

Improvements

  • Asset Reference extension object: assimp library upgraded to 5.0.0 so it gives better support for all the file formats.
  • Upgraded Xrite SDK to 1.7.1 so it gives better support for the latest materials.

Known Issues

  • Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression in Linux platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
  • MaxwellScatter extension removes MaxwellScatter extension from the scattered objects (if they have).
  • On Mac, Xrite AxF materials make Maxwell close if they are used in the scene.

Fixes

  • The bump map and the normal map were being affected by geometry’s transformations in some situations.
  • Crash computing denoised image in intermediate steps during render.
  • Launching a render with CPU, stopping, changing to GPU and restarting produced an error when starting the voxelization.
  • The RLM could not be installed on MacOS Catalina.
  • The Random Color procedural texture always returned the same color if the object ID color saturation was 255.
  • The command line parameter -mintime was not only setting a minimum time between each time Maxwell saved output images to disk but was forcing a maximum time too.
  • Maxwell CPU failed to render correctly texture channels higher than 0 if channel 0 was not used.

Maxwell GPU

New features

  • Benchwell tool.
  • Coatings are now supported in the GPU engine.

Improvements

  • The maximum number of ray bounces is now set to the same as the CPU production value.
  • Much better support for transparent materials:
    • The attenuation color and behavior now matches the CPU engine result.
    • The transparent materials now produce caustics.
    • The transparent materials now do not produce incorrect white fireflies.
  • Improvements in memory management.

Known Issues

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

Fixes

  • Wrong textures could be accessed on materials in different circumstances.
  • Several fixes in dielectric (transparent) materials.
  • Bad interactions between emitters and clipmaps who could make light rays turn black (with all emitters) or generate extremely intense fireflies (IES).
  • The bump map and the normal map were being affected by geometry’s transformations in some situations.
  • Some scenes with hidden emitters rendered to black in FIRE GPU and could eventually crash. In general, this affected the scenes with hidden objects.
  • The GPU engine rendered black if no channels were selected (including the Render channel). This has been forced to behave as in the CPU engine and render the Render channel anyway.
  • The MXI file was saved twice after the render ended.
  • The time between SL updates eventually became extremely short.
  • The scenes with procedural geometry (grass, sea, etc.) did not render, even if they were hidden.
  • The command line option “-removegpus” didn’t work as intended.
  • No tiling texture option still produced tiling in the negative direction of the UV axis.
  • Non-coherent shading on 2 BSDFs on the same additive layer.
  • Maxwell crashed if Fire GPU was active when we apply a material with a coating.
  • A spotlight rendered with GPU could show a black hexagon in the light direction.

Maxwell Studio

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).

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.

Improvements

  • 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.

Fixes

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

SDK

Improvememnts

  • 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.

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 (for more information)
  • 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

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.

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).

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).

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.

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

Fixes

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

Python Editor

Improvememnts

  • Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.

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”.