MAX Plugins.de News Archive

Archived Plugin News  –  August 2016
 

Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v3.40.03 are:
- Adds channel data interval information to the VRayVolumeGrid cache info
- Create default lights for the VRayVolumeGrid GPU preview if there are none
- Renames 'Analytic' scattering to 'Approximate' in VRayVolumeGrid
- Fixes V-Ray crashing Max when switching focus to it with a radio button active
- Fixes a V-Ray rendering slowdown on the main machine with DR since 3.40.01
- V-Ray can now be run on Windows XP again
- You can no longer add empty server addresses for V-Ray DR
- Fixes V-Ray RT not exporting color mapping 'Affect background'
- Fixes a V-Ray RT crash with Ornatrix hairs placed on top of a VRayDisplacementMod
- Fixes V-Ray RT region rendering with DR being very slow during ActiveShade
- VRay RT GPU can use VRayTriplanarTex for bump again
- Fixes misplaced VRay RT GPU bump map with UDIM tiling
- VRayBumpMtl in VRay RT GPU now works with VRayEdgesTex when the base material also has bump
- The bump effect in VRayColor2Bump is no longer offset
- VRayProxy preview meshes now load when opening scenes with XRef scenes in them
- Fixes a VRayVolumeGrid crash when deleting a light that is excluded in the GPU preview list
- Fixes a VRayVolumeGrid crash when loading a cache while RT is running
- Krakatoa and Stoke MX no longer use the same frame from the velocity field of imported caches
- Fixes differing render results with VRayVolumeGrid when using self-illumination

V-Ray is available for Max 9 to 2017 and costs $1040. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Objects

Changes for v0.976b are:
- Adds support for Max 2017
- Adds support for HIDPI
- Removes the grow-button from the create panel, switch to modify panel for growing
- You can now stop growing by hitting the ESC-key, also when Max is not the active window
- Fixes some minor bugs nobody noticed


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v0.2.5 are:
- Adds a grey material mode
- Improves the update rate for RT
- Rolls back to the old adaptivity measurement which works better
- Fixes a GPU crash when using heavy textures
- Fixes rendering artifacts on old GPUs
- Fixes additional memory consumption with Forest Pack
- Fixes fstorm bitmap crop not affecting the Max viewport


New Plugin: MCG

MCG_Tubo is an MCG shape which allows you generate a smooth spline connected to two objects with a sagging option. You can animate the start and end objects, and Tubo will dynamically try to keep the overall length of spline.


Plugin Update: Animation

Changes for v1.68.01 are:
- Adds RayFire cache support for deformation animation and topology changes
- RayFire cache now has adjustable FPS
- Adds adjustable scale from/to different system units to TayFire cache
- Adds 'Exclude from Sim by Size' to exclude very small objects from simulation

RayFire is available for Max 2013 to 2017 and costs $385. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling / Animation

Changes for v4.5.5.8275 are:
- Hair cluster 'Generate' button generates render cluster cache
- Adds support for Alembic Ogawa export
- Alembic hair export now shows progress and can be cancelled
- When saving / reloading a scene with baked HairFromMeshStrips, strands no longer go missing
- Fixes Alembic export timing issues for non-24fps scenes
- Fixes the Cluster modifier random seed having no effect
- Fixes a crash when adding a Gravity modifier on top of an empty strand object

Ornatrix is available for Max 2009 to 2017 and costs $499. A demo version is available here.


Site News: Back again...

So I'm back again, and finally have some time to try and catch up on all of the updates that happened over the last few weeks. I've certainly got a lot to catch up on...


Site News: Away for a couple of weeks...

I'm out of the office for the next few weeks, so I probably won't be able to update the site much, if at all. I've got a long list of updates and new plugins that need adding to the database, so I'll make a point of finally doing it when I get back.

Cheers, Dave


Plugin Update: Texturing

Changes for v4.0.1 are:
- The installer now finds 3ds Max Design paths
- The installer now includes all required additional plugins
- Fixes map paths on some materials
- Fixes Real-World map size scaling for some materials
- The UNC path resolver can now be enabled/disabled
- Optimizes the user library thumbnails handler a little

V-Ray Material Presets Pro is available for Max 2013 to 2017 and costs €195.


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes for v3.03 are:
- Reworked normal map inputs across all Cycles materials
- The texmap resolution in material preview renders is now capped to 512x512
- Improves bitmap resolution auto-detection for texmap baking
- Renames many of the MAXScript variables exposed through Cycles materials to be consistent
- Resolves an issue that caused all textures to render with incorrect gamma
- Max will no longer crash when an empty Bitmap is connected to a Cycles material


Plugin Update: Utilities

Changes for v8.0.7.3 are:
- The Installer can now 'Set Permissions on Launcher Service to Allow Everyone to Stop/Start/Query'
- Fixes a bug that was causing Deadline Applications to have long startup times
- Fixes a permissions issue when auto-upgrading
- Made the ca-certificate path for Usage Based Licensing on Linux configurable
- Adds a warning message to the Limits Dialog UI regarding V-Ray 3rd party licensing
- Fixes a bug where Cloud Regions could not be properly imported from a Deadline 7 repository
- Fixes a bug where Farm Reports could have empty graphs floating on top of the report
- Fixes a bug where Path Mapping was failing to swap internally
- Fixes a bug where the Proxy Server exception handler was throwing a null reference exception
- Fixes a bug where Slaves were not always Shutting down or Restarting after the last task
- Fixes a bug where Slaves using 3rd party licensing would not always revert back when finished
- Adds support for Iray 3rd party licensing
- Adds support for Mental Ray 3rd party licensing
- Adds support for Redshift 3rd party licensing
- Adds support for Yeti 3rd party licensing
- Adds Max 2017 SP2 DICT entry to the 3dsmax and 3dsCmd plugins
- Adds the missing 'Environment' State Set handler to customize.ms
- Adds a check to not auto create the menu system in Max unless in workstation mode
- Adds support for Maya 2017
- Adds output prefix support for the old Maya token system
- Fixes Frame Padding in the Modo plugin
- Disables stdout buffering in the Python plugin
- Removes the Opt-In option from project management .param files

Deadline is available for Max 2010 to 2017 and costs $185 per node. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Animation

Changes for v1.5.1 are:
- New algorithm without LookAt (for bones) up to 60% faster
- Fixed twist and flip bones
- Fixes shake after bake
- Bake is now up to 75% faster
- Adds a gear move function for objects

Bone on Spline is available for Max 2014 to 2016 and costs $10.


Site News: MAX Plugins.de was 16 years old on July 12th!

On the 12th of July 2000, MAX Plugins.de went online after a month or so of getting everything set up. 2000 seems to have been a good year for Max sites, because both MaxUnderground and ScriptSpot also started in that year. Since then the site has been getting more and more popular, and I hope that it has now reached a stage where it is simply a standard go-to site for plugins (although it doesn't appear in the Max start screen, and ScriptSpot does...).

The database has a total of 9,041 free plugins, 257 mental ray shaders, and 723 commercial plugins. The free plugins total looks high because many of the Max 4 plugins also work in Max 5, so they've been counted twice. The same goes for Max 9 / Max 2008 and Max 2010 / Max 2011, Max 2013 / 2014 and Max 2015 / 2016.

I'd like to say a big thank you to the very few people who have actually helped support this site. You know who you are, and this place might well have disappeared by now if it wasn't for your support. Most people never seem to notice the PayPal button on the left, and over the last year only a handful of people have donated anything at all (a special thanks once again to Marcin!). All donations, no matter how small, help to keep the site going, so if this site has helped you out at all in the past, or if it helps you out in the future, please think about clicking on the PayPal button.

I wonder if this will still be here in another 16 years! All the best, Dave


New Plugin: Renderers

CentiLeo is a GPU renderer (CUDA based) that supports out-of-core caching of geometry and textures, which means that your scene doesn't need to fit in the GPU RAM.

Features include:
- Out-of-core geometry (supports many polygons)
- Out-of-core and out-of-RAM textures
- Adaptive displacement mapping
- Noise aware path tracing
- Specific Metropolis sampler with firefly killer
- Instancing of geometry
- Fast support of dynamic scenes and interactive modelling
- Flexible shader infrastructure
- Powerful Standard CentiLeo Material with 2 reflection lobes and Multi Material container
- Light sources with assignment to different layers of materials
- AOVs/Render passes infrastructure to generate them all in parallel
- Fully interactive Max plugin which reacts to modelling activity while the image is rendered
- Bump mapping can be applied on top of displacement mapping
- Arbitrary output image resolution (as soon as it fits to CPU RAM)


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v2.7.1 beta are:
- Improves behaviour of retain parameters feature with Library and Copy Style operations
- Fixes a random crash in V-Ray when using dynamic geometry and certain types of segments


Plugin Update: Utilities

Changes for v1.1.9.4 are:
- Beta expiration extended to end of August
- Fixes a MAXScript error related to getting maps and materials from SME


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v3.5 are:
- Fixes bugs in several scripts from the pack

miauu's Script Pack Volume 2 is available for Max 2009 to 2017 and costs €17.