Version 3.2 update of standalone render engine includes new VR-ready stereo lenses, massive speed improvements on Subsurface Scattering, and new channel upgrades and additions.
Maxwell Render, the standalone render engine from Next Limit Technologies for making perfect images, films and animations from 3D models, has announced that announce that Maxwell V3.2 is now available. The version 3.2 update is free to all V3 customers.
New features in Maxwell Render V3.2 include:
- New VR-ready stereo lenses -- Gear up for a camera traveling in virtual reality (VR) systems such as Oculus. V3.2 comes with two new lens types: Lat/Long and Stereo Fish Lens.
- Massive speed improvements on Subsurface Scattering -- Maxwell V3.2 comes with super speed improvements when using subsurface scattering.
- New Reflectance channel -- This new channel shows plain colors without the influence of global illumination, making it very useful for achieving self-illuminated textures when used in combination with custom alpha channels.
- Separated Reflection & Refraction channels -- With V3.2 there are more channel combinations such as “Diffuse,” “Reflections,” “Diffuse + Reflections,” “Refractions,” and “Reflections + Refractions.” Rendering the diffuse and reflective components separately allows for greater flexibility when compositing.
- Nested Dialectrics -- A major improvement for anyone rendering fluids. Interacting dielectrics render much better now in Maxwell V3.2 with its new Nested Priority method. It is now possible to render complex water/glass/ice surface without numerical issues; just simply add a small overlap between geometries.
- New Asset Reference extension -- users can now reference many different file formats as the geometries are no longer pre-converted to MXS. Instead, Maxwell now works with them directly and they are loaded at render time. Some of the supported formats include OBJ, FBX, Blender, Alembic, DAE, STL, LXO, 3DS, LWO and 3D.
- Multilight Editor Improvements -- Alongside a new “Sort by name/type/intensity” function, V3.2 users can now select and edit multiple emitters at the same time.
Other new features in Maxwell Render V3.2 include PSD output support, a new Extensions API, Procedural Emitters and World-Y Grass.
Maxwell Render offers seamless integration with 17 3D/CAD and post production applications, allowing users to work comfortably within their usual platform. Maxwell Render Suite licenses are universally compatible so users can download and use as many plugins as they need with just one license.
Source: Next Limit Technologies
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
