• R&D updates: Maxwell Render :: RealFlow4
• Latest News
• Sneak Peek: next version's Maxwell Studio
• Sneak Peek: The new Material Editor
• Maxwell Render for Rhino4 sneak peek 2
• Next Limit meet&greet :: Cristina Morer
• Skill up! :: Maxwell Render tip
• Image of the moment :: Pere Balsach

• The new Maxwell Render plug-in for FormZ 6.1 has been released, offering huge improvements and enhancements in integration, stability, material handling and speed. Some plug-in bugs were discovered and fixed straight away with the release of a FormZ 6.1 patch.


• The Maxwell Render plug-in for SolidWorks 2007 has been released with great improvements implemented. Rewritten from scratch, the plug-in offers better integration, a preview of materials, better material editing, more drag-and-drop functions, a new render settings dialog, and more. Check out the explanatory videos!.
See the videos.

• The plug-in for Rhinoceros4 will be released on March 1, when McNeel will officially announce the release of Rhino4. This plug-in has been acclaimed as the best rendering engine plug-in in Rhino history. Can’t wait any longer? See below for some further sneak peeks.


• The development of the next version of Maxwell Render continues and is running smoothly. Curious? For a quick preview of the Maxwell Studio improvements and the new material editor, see below. More details about new features and changes coming soon

• The RealFlow4 plug-ins for Maya 8.5 for Windows 32 and 64 bit, Linux 32 and 64 bit and Macintosh have been released and are available for download from our usual customer download area.


• The RealFlow4 plug-ins for CINEMA4D versions 8.5, 9.6 and 10 has seen impressive improvements. For example, the imported RealFlow4 particles now become thinking particles in CINEMA4D, taking advantage of all the tools available in the platform to work with the particles. This greatly enhances the FX Render PyroCluster, allowing effects that have never been achieved before, not even in other platforms.


• The XSi plug-ins for versions 5.11 and 6.0 for Windows have been updated and are available for download.

• The Maxwell Render material libraryhttp://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com has seen an unprecedented number of uploads due to a Valentine’s Day promotion and the February “Office” contest. We now have more than 1,000 free materials!! February 14 saw an astounding 74 material uploads in only 24 hours. The Office contest is going strong and already has more than 70 entries, but it is not too late to upload your own entry for a chance to win that Apple 80 Gb iPod! Be sure to do it before the end of February.

Cigarette Break By Rustenberg		Pencil_Shaving By Sabkarim		Paperclip pile By Tim Ellis

• Italian Maxwell Render reseller Maxwell Render dot it (www.maxwellrender.it) has created the very first Maxwell Magazine. The impressive magazine, counting 238 pages, comes in English and Italian and contains numerous interesting tutorials, stunning images, interviews, tips and tricks. It is available for download from http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php?pForm=media.html

• Dosch Design has released three DVDs with models for Maxwell Render. The models are directly provided in .mxs format and can be used in Maxwell Studio. The DVDs, Modern Furniture for Maxwell Render, Cars 2006 for Maxwell Render and Buildings V2 for Maxwell Render are available from www.doschdesign.com.

• Einar Vedvik from design and engineering consulting firm Pavels Design in Norway has won third place in the SolidWorks World Photorealistic Images contest. The image, Liquor Decanter, was rendered with Maxwell Render. Congratulations! To check out all the winners of the SolidWorks World contest, Click here.

• Next Limit Technologies has announced permanent Maxwell Render and RealFlow Bundles. You can now save up to €300 if you buy both products at the same time. If you already own Maxwell Render or RealFlow and would like to purchase the other product, you can also benefit from a €90 discount. For more information, visit www.maxwellrender.com/order_bundle.php.

• SWAY Studio has won the VES award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Music Video for the U2/ Green Day video clip The Saints are Coming, which used RealFlow for its impressive fluid simulation effects.
  
  “The entire team at Next Limit Technologies can celebrate along with us here at SWAY, as it was Next Limit’s RealFlow4 software that played a key role in enabling us to achieve the fluid dynamic effects that contributed in part to our winning the VES award,” said Wayne England, VFX Supervisor at SWAY Studio. “Once again, thank you for your vision and commitment.”
  
  “Next Limit is extremely proud to have played part in this admirable achievement,” commented Next Limit CEO Victor Gonzalez. “We are certain this is only the beginning of a fruitful future for both SWAY Studio and RealFlow. Congratulations!”
  
  For more information, visit the case studie.

• SolidWorks World 2007 Conference report:
  
  Four senior members of Next Limit staff attended the SolidWorks World 2007 Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans in February, with a Maxwell Render exhibition stand in the Partner arena. We were pleased to welcome a lot of visitors, both SW users and resellers, and even SolidWorks CEO John McEleney. We continued to strengthen our Partner relationship with SolidWorks, and spoke to many senior members of the SW technical and commercial teams. Everybody was very impressed with the improvements of the Maxwell Render plug-in for SolidWorks, and with the quality of the images that have been created with SW and Maxwell Render.
  
  CEO Victor Gonzalez and Technical Director Juan Cañada presented an overview of the latest Maxwell Render features and interface with SW in a user break out session at the conference. Business Development Manager Phil Dickson presented a short overview of Maxwell Render to a specially arranged gathering of over 200 SW resellers.
  

• General optimizations:

  - Scene loading times greatly improved
  - Selecting/ deselecting large numbers of objects much faster
  - Many stability issues fixed
  - Memory handling improved
  - Major OpenGL viewport speed increase using vertex buffers. You can get as much as 10 times quicker viewports, especially for Studio in OSX. This feature can be disabled in preferences for systems with compatibility issues.

• Export:

  - Studio now has the option to export selected elements like mxs or obj. Exporting as mxs will also export the material(s) attached to the object(s).

• Complete history:

  - Studio now keeps track of all scene changes and shows them listed in a history panel. Users can scroll through the history list to undo/ redo changes. The history list can also be purged.

• UI:

  - Customizable shortcut keys
  - Added dropdown list for easy switching between saved layouts
  - Individual panels and groups of settings inside a panel can now be collapsed/ expanded
  - Added new graphics and buttons
  - Overall better organization of inputs and settings in the UI

• Workflow:

  - Object panel now displays applied materials to the right of the object name, inside the object list for a faster overview of applied materials
  - Icon size in object list and material list can be switched between small/medium/large
  - Colors and textures can be drag-and-dropped from one color chip to another in the material editor for quicker material editing. By default, drag-and-drop will also copy texture picker values. Holding Shift while drag-and-dropping will only copy the texture file
  - Mxi/ hdr textures can be dropped from one slot to another. Settings for one slot can be quickly copied to all slots
  - A "City" list has been added to Physical sky, which loads a list of cities from a text file. Cities can be added/ removed easily from the list by editing the text file.
  - Automatic GMT – when setting a certain location, Studio automatically sets the correct GMT for that location
  - The panels "Projectors list", "Triangle group list" and "Projector params" have been removed and all settings related to an object’s projectors or triangle groups are now found in the object panel. (Projectors are now called "UVsets" to follow common 3D terminology)
  - Ability to rotate the entire scene, along with the cameras
  - Ability to scale entire scene, along with the cameras
  - Texture paths and searching for missing textures improved
  - Ability to lock objects to prevent accidental movement

For a full sneak peek video of the new Maxwell Render Studio, click here.

• Sneak Peek: the new material editor

  The new material editor that will come with the next version of Maxwell Render includes many new features and improvements:

  Drag & Drop

  The workflow is now a lot of faster thanks to several added drag and drop functions:

  Color: Drag-and-drop colors in between parameters and even in between different BSDF layers and coatings to copy them.

  * Drag & drop color to copy

  Textures: You can click on the layers list and hit Alt+V to show the textures bin (see image below). Then just drag-and-drop textures from an external application into the material editor

  * Assigning a texture by drag and dropping

  You can copy texture assignments or delete them by dragging and dropping in between parameters (even from different BSDF or coatings). All settings will be copied too. If you want to copy the textures without the other parameter adjustments, just hold Shift while copying

  * Copy and remove a texture using drag-and-drop

  
  
  

  Copying: You will be able to copy any of the parameters of any element of your material, like BSDF, coatings, SSS etc.
  

  
  
  For a full sneak peek video of the new Maxwell Render material editor, click here.

• Maxwell Scene Manager: Camera Settings
  
  - Cameras are automatically synchronized with Rhino viewports. Creating or switching to a Rhino Named View creates a new Camera, or activates the Camera associated with that view.
  - Image resolution may be automatically kept in sync with the size of the corresponding viewport, set to Manual mode, or to one of several industry-standard resolutions.
  - Support for the built-in Rhino Animation Tools



• Maxwell Scene Manager: Location Settings
  
  
  
  - The integrated SunView© control provides a convenient method for setting scene location, time, and date.
  - The Earth is depicted from the Sun’s point of view, allowing the user to visualize the Sun’s position.
  - The position of shadows may be shown in real-time in the Rhino viewport.
  - GMT offset is figured automatically by location



• Materials Export Wizard
  
  
  
  - The Material Export Wizard allows users to easily export all Materials contained in the scene to another directory.
  - Materials may either be saved as individual Maxwell mxm files, or they may be consolidated into a single-file Material collection.
  - During export, all referenced Textures may be gathered and copied to the output directory, with paths either re-written, or made relative to, the export directory.

Name.......... Cristina Morer
Age............. 31
From........... Born in Barcelona, Spain

Education: "I have a degree in Fine Arts and Computer Arts.”

Work: “I am a Designer for Next Limit. I take care of the web design and maintenance, advertisements, publicity and merchandise. The Maxwell Render MXM Gallery is one of my realizations”

Best aspect: “To come up with new ideas and projects to improve the Maxwell Render experience for our users – I like it when my ideas work!.”

Worst aspect: “That some projects or ideas are not developed or do not work.”

Funny fact : “I don’t have any funny facts yet – I haven’t been at Next Limit for long. But I always have a good time here with my colleagues.”

Free time: “I like going barefoot, dreaming, silence….”

Hi to: “Hello to everyone who reads there interviews!!.”

Future: “The great thing about Next Limit is that the company reinvents itself continually, so it is hard to imagine the future. One thing is for sure though – Next Limit’s future will surpass all our expectations.”

• Lighting

Improve your Maxwell Render skills with yet another valuable tip, this time on Studio Lighting. The tip focuses specifically on transparent and reflective objects. Please download the PDF file by clicking on the link below and you are sure to learn something new!.

Lighting skill up (PDF) 1,5 Mb
Lighting sets from tutorial (.mxs) 4,50Mb (ZIP)

Image details: "I created the car in 3ds Max and Maxwell Render 1.1 on an Intel dual core processor (3.2 Ghz) with 2 GB of RAM. The modeling process was simple: I started with a poly box and added more geometry to get the right shapes. I created a custom HDRI map to light the scene and then used physical sky to match the light from the HDRI, so that the background image and the light match."

Artist details: "My name is Pere Balsach, I am 30 years old and I am originally from Barcelona, Spain but now living and working in Nottingham, UK. I work in the games industry as an environment artist in an AAA title. I have been doing 3D for about seven years now – it is my work and my passion."

About Maxwell Render: “Maxwell Render is very easy to learn compared to other rendering engines and you can get excellent results in a short period of time. I use Maxwell Render because I don't want to spend lots of time tweaking GI settings and trying to understand parameters. I prefer to spend my time on the artistic side rather than the technical side. With Maxwell, I can spend all my time just improving the shaders and the lighting. Moreover, the Maxwell Render MXM shaders are awesome: very powerful and easy to use.”