WHAT’S NEW IN MAXWELL 4.1
DENOISER
Maxwell now easily integrates a powerful denoiser (by Innobright’s Altus), while preserving texture and geometry details, effectively saving a lot of time. You can obtain your images around two to six times faster, depending on the scene for a similar amount of detail. Instead of having to render your images to a high sampling level, you can keep it low and let the denoiser do the job. Read documentation here or watch a tutorial here.
GPU – OPTIMIZED HANDLING MEMORY
Paving the way for MultiGPU (soon available) some optimizations have been done; you will notice the GPU engine is now better at handling memory, so you will now be able to render much bigger images and load bigger scenes for the same amount of GPU memory.
The new engine requires a CUDA® capable NVIDIA® graphics card to use all the power that GPUs provide to accelerate the render process. All the technology under the hood is identical to the classic CPU engine – which means your images are exactly the same, unbeatable Maxwell quality.
MAXWELL MULTILIGHT™ 2 APP
No more re-rendering. Save infinite lighting variations and images all from ONE single render for FREE.
Benefits:
- NEW! Create light animations from your MXI files.
- NEW! Tone Mapping and Camera Response features so you can fine tune the look of your images.
- Limitless lighting setups in real time.
- Work smarter and faster by editing lights before and after the render finishes.
- Create a lighting catalog for your client.
- Automatically update your catalog with different lighting positions or geometry.
NEW MATERIALS
MERL DATABASE MATERIALS
In this version there is the possibility to load MERL materials. This is a public collection of 100 lab measured materials expressed as BRDF (Table BRDF materials). You can find out more about them here: https://www.merl.com/brdf/. Read documentation here.
X-Rite AxF MATERIALS
Now you can load X-rite’s Appearance Exchange Format (AxF) files to get a great looking conversion to Maxwell materials, so you get a consistent look of your materials across platforms. Read documentation here.
REAL-IES FILES INCLUDED
A new addition to Maxwell’s catalog of ies files included in the installation; kindly provided by PlaySys exclusively for Maxwell Render.
LIGHTS PANEL
The new Lights panel in Studio allows to play with the intensity of the lights in the scene as if you were using Multilight sliders. This way you can work with emitters in a more interactive way, all in one place while viewing the result in FIRE. It also allows to quickly select the corresponding material to modify the rest of its properties. It is available in Maya, FormZ and Revit,… others will follow. Read documentation here.
ILLUMINATION ASSETS IN LIBRARY PANEL
New useful assets added in the Library panel so you can drag and drop lights in scene without having to waste time setting them up. Fill lights, spots, IES, projectors, negative fills, invisible lights, ring lights, ready to make your life easier. Read documentation here.
RHINO FOR MAC SUPPORT
Maxwell | Rhino Mac offers a brand new integration for Rhino for Mac, allowing you to work within the Rhino interface via a Maxwell toolbar. Also included with this integration is Maxwell Studio – our sophisticated standalone scene editor. This provides an additional workflow based on our Asset Reference feature, which allows live-linking to assets (.obj, etc) created in Rhino from within Maxwell Studio.
The plugin + Studio workflow is bundled together in one easy installation package, and includes the entire suite of Maxwell tools – for integrated features see the list below. For the full Studio features click here.
REVIT INTEGRATION
Maxwell 4 includes a complete overhaul of the Revit integration, with significant improvements including the addition of FIRE – our interactive preview engine, as well as a re-designed and reorganised toolbar.
NETWORK MANAGER
The Network Manager provides a new easy and reliable way of distributing your renders across your computers. The new web-based monitor can be opened from any browser in your network and can handle jobs in cloud environments like Azure or Amazon EC2.
