Next Limit Technologies - Simulation -- Innovation -- R+D -- Dynamic

Coming soon! Maxwell Render 1.7: New atmosphere system

Maxwell Render 1.7 comes with a completely new atmosphere system with new parameters that enable users to create many different atmospheric conditions accurately, ranging from common Earth values to exaggerated fantasy skies. This new system is designed to closely mimic how gases and aerosols (small particles in the atmosphere) scatter and absorb sunlight to create the look of the sky and resulting illumination. The new atmospheric system is much more accurate and extensive than in previous versions, and it renders slightly faster. Take a look at the images below to get an idea of what the new sky system can do.

By Tom. Click to enlarge.

By KurtS. Click to enlarge.

By Renato Lemus: 20 mins, 1002 instances trees. Total: 260 million polys. Click to enlarge.

Coming soon! Maxwell Render 1.7: Improved Material Editor

With 1.7 there are many new enhancements to MXED:

Improved performance when handling textures. Loading scenes with lots of textures is now faster, and textures are stored in cache so working with them is faster too.

There are new image control options: Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Clamp Min/max. These new controls will allow users to work much more efficiently with textures – there is no need to edit the textures in an external image editing application for making small changes, and the same texture can be used for color, bump, roughness, and weightmap.

The ability to store material 'swatches' or previews. A material state can be stored as a preview and the user can easily browse between the saved previews. This new feature will allow for faster material editing and experimentation.

The usability and look of the Maxwell material editor in general has been greatly improved.

The material preview now shows incremental updates and you can stop the preview rendering at any time by double clicking on the preview.

A new function in MXED, "Fix texture paths", fixes the texture paths of any MXM contained within a folder and its subfolders.

Color chips and texture panels are now non-modal.

A description field has been added for adding notes and comments to your material.

MXED Main Viewport. Click to enlarge.

MXED Image Controls. Click to enlarge.

Plug-in updates

Over the past weeks we have updated several of the Maxwell Render plug-ins: SolidWorks, Cinema4D, Rhino, Houdini and SketchUp. Please visit http://www.maxwellrender.com/news.php and click through to your plug-in to see the latest updates and improvements.

New in SolidWorks: interactive Sun indicator. Click to enlarge.

New in Rhino: Camera “Heads up". Click to enlarge.

Cinema4D plug-in update

A new RealFlow plug-in for Cinema 4D 9.6 and 10 for Windows has been released and is now available from the customer download area. This plug-in has undergone some minor improvements and, most importantly, now runs on Windows 64 bits.

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