MAX Plugins.de News Archive

Archived Plugin News  –  December 2015
 

Site News: Wishing everyone Happy Holidays!

I'd like to wish all visitors to the site from around the world all the best for the holiday season, and a wonderful New Year! May all your wishes come true in 2016.

Things have been very busy here the past few weeks, as you can tell from the frequency of the updates, but after I've recovered a bit this coming week, I'll be back up to speed in the New Year, I promise :o)

Dave


Plugin Update: MCG

Changes for v1.08 are:
- Adds a Surface mode for cloning splines onto a surface
- Adds translation and rotation offset settings
- Adds random rotation and scale settings
- Adds an option to generate the splines as separate objects


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v3.2.1.0 are:
- Improvements in voxelization performance
- Fixes more details in the Onshape connection
- Default value for parallax distance in Lat-Long Stereo lens is now 360
- The pymaxwell editor has been improved to indent/unindent blocks of text
- Fixes some procedural textures displaying in the Studio GUI when they should not
- Fixes a bug when opening single 'Y' channel EXR files
- Fixes random problems with missing paths in the Brick procedural texture
- Fixes using procedural textures inside the map parameters of the brick procedural

Maxwell Render is available for Max 2011 to 2016 and costs €595. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v0.25 are:
- Add support for exporting range, color animation and blur


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v0.1.7 are:
- Adds support for Max 2016


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v2.0 are:
- General improvements and many more V-Ray features added
- V-Ray 3.00 and V-Ray 3.20 supported in Max and new V-Ray for C4D
- Adds V-Ray FastPrev Tool to for fast test renders of V-Ray scenes
- Adds support for V-Ray Lights, Sun, Sky and IES lights
- Adds support for procedural maps, blend materials, composite, car paint, matte, etc
- Adds support for more procedural shaders
- You can now choose to transfer the whole scene or selected objects
- Lightmanager plugin updated with V-Ray lights support and conversion option
- Detection and fixing of wrong characters in texture filenames/objects/materials
- You can now choose a temporary save path
- Turbosmooth / Meshmooth are now converted to a subdivision generator
- Future 2.xx version updates will be free for 2.0 customers

MaxToC4D is available for Max 2015 to 2016 and normally costs $39. For a limited time you can get a license for $12.


Plugin Update: Atmospherics

Changes for v2.2 are:
- Updated for V-Ray 3.2 for Max
- Adds support for Max 2016

Phoenix FD is available for Max 9 to 2016 and costs €700. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v3.30 are:
- General speed improvements
- V-Ray has a new adaptive sampling algorithm for better detection and clean-up of image noise
- Adds a V-Ray option for automatic subdivs calculations for materials and lights
- Better V-Ray GI distribution for interior scenes
- Experimental V-Ray support for machines with more than 64 logical cores
- Better V-Ray sub-pixel filtering for the progressive sampler
- Adds a dynamic noise threshold to the V-Ray progressive sampler for more even noise distribution
- The V-Ray internal spectral color space has been switched from CIE RGB to sRGB
- Adds a 'Generate render elements' option to the V-Ray object properties
- Adds a vrayGetStampVariable() MAXScript function to return the value of any VFB stamp variable
- Adds a new aerial perspective atmospheric effect
- Adds VRayTriplanarTex, a new texture that implements blended box mapping
- Adds a new stochastic flakes material for car-paint like materials
- Adds a new sky model (Hosek et al) for VRaySun/VRaySky
- Adds a ground color parameter to VRaySun/VRaySky
- VRayClipper can now clip against arbitrary meshes
- Implements raytraced rounded corners in VRayEdgesTex when used as bump map
- Adds the ability to compare the V-Ray settings recorded with the VFB history images
- Adds the ability to export the VFB color corrections settings as single LUT (.cube) file
- Adds the ability to load color corrections from the VFB history
- Adds the ability to remember the VFB window position since the last Max session
- You can now specify the VRayProxy preview faces as percentage of the original faces
- Implements VRayProxy options for hair curling
- VRayInstancer/VRayMetaball now has the ability to pick individual PFlow events
- Adds an 'Additional bump map' slot to VRayNormalMap
- Adds support for importing VDB caches from FumeFX 4 to VRayVolumeGrid
- Adds options for probabilistic volume sampling in the VRayVolumeGrid atmospheric effect
- V-Ray and VRayMtl now have updated default settings
- GLSL shaders are now compiled to binary code through LLVM for increased render speed
- V-Ray RT now has an in-process RT engine (no separate command-line opens up)
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for lights include/exclude
- Adds better support for AMD hardware to V-Ray RT GPU
- Adds initial V-Ray RT GPU support for GLSL texture shaders
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for hair and particles from VRayProxy objects
- Adds initial V-Ray RT GPU support for VRayMultiSubTex
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for Max procedural textures in environment slot
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for VRayFur
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for MultiTexture
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for mapped IOR of VRayMtl
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for the physical camera bitmap aperture
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for the 'cast shadows' option of the V-Ray lights
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for VRayPlane
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for VRayUserColor and VRayUserScalar
- Adds V-Ray RT GPU support for texture-mapped 'radius' parameter in VRayDirt
- Adds initial V-Ray RT GPU support for rounded corners on the GPU
- Adds initial V-Ray RT GPU support for the MultiTexture plugin from CGSource
- V-Ray RT GPU OpenCL now supports VRayDirt
- V-Ray now automatically disables the bitmap pager
- V-Ray now supports distributed calculations of the light cache with distributed rendering
- Further V-Ray speed improvements for proxies and instances
- Improves V-Ray CPU utilization for the progressive sampler when using noise threshold
- V-Ray speed improvements when rendering displacement/subdivision surfaces
- Adds progressive sampling buffer memory usage info to the V-Ray rendering messages log
- Optimizes V-Ray Mitchell-Netravali filter performance on Intel Xeon CPUs
- Adds V-Ray warnings about compatibility issues with Blend, Shellac and Composite materials
- V-Ray now includes the name of the material causing 'invalid bump normal' warnings
- Removes the V-Ray PowerShader banner from all it's appearances
- Improves V-Ray light cache quality for small render regions
- Removes the 'Adaptive tracing' option for the light cache in V-Ray as it didn't work reliably
- Faster VFB activation of the mouse tracking with the progressive sampler and V-Ray RT
- Adds a tooltip with the image comment to the images in the VFB history
- Adding/removing render elements no longer deletes the contents of the frame buffer
- Adjusts default settings of dome lights
- VRayLight now takes into account scene exposure when calculating the number of samples
- VRayLight now uses a resolution of at least 2048 for dome lights
- Improves the 'Optimizing Atmospherics' phase in VRayVolumeGrid
- Adds automatic preview detail reduction to VRayVolumeGrid
- VRayVolumeGrid render diagrams/gradients can now be resized by MAXScript
- Adds VRayHDRI tiling support and Real World Mapping in the Material Editor and viewport previews
- Adds VRayHDRI tiled textures caching optimizations
- General speed improvements to VRayHDRI
- Adds VRayHDRI support for UDIM tiles greater than 1999
- Enables adding of multiple lights in the Environment Fog field through 'Select by name' dialog
- The VRayEnvironmentFog 'per gizmo fadeout enable' option is now disabled by default
- Renamed the VRayEnvironmentFog per-gizmo 'fadeout' parameter to 'falloff'
- In newly created VRayDirt textures the subdivs are no longer influenced by antialiasing settings
- Adds toggle controls to VRayBlendMtl for the coat materials
- Adds VRayGLSLMtl/VRayGLSLTex support for Hair, Cook-Torrance and GGX BRDFs
- Adds user tags support to VRayBlendMtl for textures connected to a GLSL/OSL texture or material
- Fixes incorrect results in VRayOSLTex when the 'Mirror' and 'Tile' options are switched off
- Moves the VRayMtl 'Use interpolation' options for reflect/refract to the relevant rollout
- New VRaySamplerInfo modes extract specific node user attribute as integer or floating-point
- Adds V-Ray scene converter support for the Output rollout and crop/placement values
- The V-Ray vrmat converter now supports VRayHDRI and VRayNormalMap
- Enables assignment of existing trace sets to nodes with the vrayAddTraceSets MAXScript function
- The V-Ray RT .vrscene exporter now supports VrayScannedMtl
- Adds a 'Show log' button in the V-Ray RT System rollout when set as production renderer
- Avoid burning the V-Ray RT statistics into the final saved images
- V-Ray RT plugins can be loaded from multiple paths set in an environment variable
- Moves the 'Ignore in RT Engine' option from Object Properties to V-Ray Properties
- Improves V-Ray RT GPU light cache with support for motion blurred hairs
- Optimizes the V-Ray RT GPU 'Compiling geometry...' phase on scenes with many nodes
- V-Ray RT GPU now prints a warning for unsupported textures
- Increases the V-Ray RT GPU GI bounces when retracing the light cache
- Prevents V-Ray RT GPU CUDA kernel recompilations during ActiveShade
- The installer now auto-runs the license server if it was running prior the installation
- The V-Ray scene converter adds support for Corona 1.2.1
- vrayspawner now accepts '-numthreads' option to limit the number of threads when not using NUMA
- In ply2vrmesh, instancing is enabled by default when converting Alembic files

V-Ray is available for Max 9 to 2016 and costs $1040. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: MCG

Changes for v1.04.00 are:
- Adds support for multiple curves in a single spline
- Adds a rotation control curve for cloning
- Adds fake movement to utilise scale/rotation curves in PathConstraint mode


Plugin News: 60% discount on LaserShow Converter Max

From now until January 15th 2016, Pangolin Laser Systems, Inc. are offering a 60% discount on their LaserShow Converter Max plugin, taking the price from $1295 down to $518. More information can be found here (PDF).


New Plugin: MCG

This MCG is intended for beginners to study. It makes a basic bottle form which can then be fine-tuned with an Edit Poly to add detail modelling. The MCG will still work below.


Plugin Update: Particles / Animation

Changes for v9.1.1.0186 are:
- Implements the removeParticlesFromDyversoDomain function (Dyverso, C++, Python)
- Implements the applyForceToDyversoDomain function (C++, Python, scripted daemons)
- Adds a new SetMistDensity graph node to modify Mist node density field values
- Adds a SetRealField graph node to set the Mist density field
- Adds ColorGradient value type support for graphs
- Maxwell integration now has a variable radius for rendered particles
- Maxwell can now render Mist nodes
- You can now display node selections in the viewport as an outline instead of a green wireframe
- And much more... Full details can be found here

RealFlow is available for Max 2013 to 2016 and costs €1995. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v1.0 are:
- The price for a private individual license has been dropped from €469 to €249.

AutoModeller Pro is available for Max 2010 to 2016 and costs €249 (individual license) / $euro;799 (small studio license). A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v3.2 are:
- Easy Peel now allows you to choose to which map channel to unwrap
- Adds a Threshold spinner to the Vert Stitcher

miauu's Script Pack Volume 2 is available for Max 2009 to 2016 and costs &eur;17.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v4.74 are:
- Reduces the number of error messages when loading a ParaFlow file
- The L-system controller now works with parametric shapes and meshes
- The Order transformation dialog now opens when a container node is selected from the para display
- Curve controller now supports variable spacing in fixed length mode
- Fixes a bug in the curve controller (pass curve by controller)
- Fixes a bug in the pattern controller (reading open external files)
- Fixes a bug in the weld functionality of parametric shapes

Parametric Array is available for Max 2011 to 2016 and costs $150. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Animation

Changes for v3.7 are:
- Adds perfect shattering of holed concave shapes such as 3D letters
- 20% speed up of hi-poly mesh shattering
- Improves behaviour of fracture bodies option 'Break Upon Impact', especially with force fields
- 'Force convex shapes' is now the default for fracture bodies creation
- Fixes rigid body masses being overridden after resetting the scene
- Fixes jagginess not being applied to fragments with multi UV's
- Fixes a shatter crash when non-convex faces are present
- Fixes seed 0 not generating a different point cloud each time
- Fixes radial shatter generating aligned points on the borders
- Fixes fragments sliding weirdly on the grid plane
- Fixes a Max crash when applying jagginess to concave faces
- Fixes a Max crash after doing Scene->New and resetting the simulation
- Fixes a Max crash after shattering an object with modifiers applied
- Fixes weird displacement of the shatter preview point cloud with eccentric objects
- Fixes fracture bodies attach nearby fragments to each other regardless of the threshold
- Fixes fracture bodies ignoring breakable by frame clusters when fragments are sleeping

Pull Down It Pro is available for Max 2012 to 2016 and costs €395. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: MCG

Changes for v1.06 are:
- Adds a random scatter function
- Adds stock/cookie cutter functionality
- Fixes a minor bug where the first instance didn't get offset at all


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v0.4.1 are:
- Updates the plugin to IndigoSDK 3.8.26
- Adds an initial version of the Indigo camera
- Adds support for Max 2016
- Fixes a dependency load issue which manifested in a Wrappers.dll warning


New Plugin: Modelling

AutoModeller Pro is a multi-threaded plugin for Max that allows you to apply or paint a group of meshes onto your existing scene geometry. Depending on the setting the objects will automatically be sliced, soft-sliced, scaled or deformed at the borders and can also be deformed to smoothly wrap around the curvature of the target object.

To maximize performance AutoModeller Pro fully supports instances and also comes with a multi-threaded Attach-Mode which allows you to quickly convert any generated mesh into a proxy object which you can then use as a painting object to create an even bigger scene.

AutoModeller Pro is available for Max 2010 to 2016 and costs €469 (individual license) / $euro;799 (small studio license). A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v0.1.1 alpha are:
- Adds RapidJSON 1.0.2
- Adds a 'Check for updates' button
- Makes update checks asynchronous


Plugin Update: Utilities

Changes for v2.0 are:
- Adds support for Max 2015 and 2016
- Adds support for UI color matching


New Plugin: MCG

This MCG allows you to clone splines, open or closed. There are various offsets such as scale and translation, as well as controls for progressive/random rotation and random scale.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v12.2 are:
- Fixes some memory consumption issues with importing multiple files
- Fixes a mesh conversion issue when converting to Editable Mesh/Poly
- Fixes a few translation regressions based on user feedback
- Eliminates the problem of having failed imports when importing after a reset

Power NURBS / Solids / Translators are available for Max 2013 to 2016 and prices range from $395 to $2995. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v1.03 are:
- Adds a 'No Cutout' mode so your mesh remains whole but with different MatIDs
- Relax now accepts negative values
- Adds more patterns and samples

MCG 32BitPatternMaker is available for Max 2016 and costs $10.


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v1.5.04.141.1413 are:
- Trilinear filtering is now available for normal mapping, displacement, vector displacement
- Trilinear filtering is now available for non-UV projection
- Adds a fix for sun intersection artifacts
- Fixes Presto substrate weighting in the presence of stacks
- Fixes switching from IR to Production not updating device selections
- Fixes a misleading check on Geometry for smoothing status
- Fixes a Presto displacement issue with offset/scaling on model level and tight bounds off
- Fixes TR1/TR2 weird shading with section cuts
- Improves transfer speed for network rendering
- Fixes a network crash on Linux clients
- Small overall core stability improvements
- Improves support for masks in iToo Forest instanced meshes

Thea for 3dsMax is available for Max 2009 to 2016 and costs €395. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Particles / Animation

Changes for v4.0.1 are:
- Sharpening at render time is now faster
- The mental ray shader is now faster
- Rendering pre-computations are now faster
- Motion blur updates and fixes
- Fixes a bug with OpenVDB to/from Maya and Houdini
- Fixes a PRT_PDC Loader crash
- Fixes a black-body shader bug and optimizes rendering speed
- Adds a new black-body shader Lin-Pow bias parameter
- Adds MAXScript access to the Oxygen channel
- Fixes an nVidia TitanX GPU PW bug
- Fixes being unable to change output folder unless the current one does not exist

FumeFX is available for Max 2012 to 2016 and costs $845.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v1.45 are:
- Adds the ability to select Normals based on face Smoothing Groups and Material IDs
- Adds buttons to select normals based on being Explicit or Not
- Adds a new Stitch threshhold setting in the Stitch tools

Normal Tools is available for Max 9 to 2016 and costs $7.95.


Plugin Update: Texturing

Changes for v1.2 are:
- Adds support for Corona Renderer

miauu's Texture Dropper Pro is available for Max 2009 to 2016 and costs €11.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v1.11 are:
- Adds support for Max 2008 and Max 2016

Alles Im Fluss is available for Max 2008 to 2016 and costs €10. A demo version is available here.


New Plugin: Renderers

This is a Max port of the appleseed renderer, an open source physically-based rendering engine currently in development.


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v2.24.2-2.13 are:
- Fixes an issue with Octane viewport motion blur autorefresh

OctaneRender for 3ds Max is available for Max 2012 to 2016 and costs €459. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v2.50 are:
- Adds support for Max 2016 and Maya 2016