pylon

Hi All, In case I was not clear before: the decision to not support a formZ plugin for Maxwell 5 was made solely by Next Limit- not by me. I am troubled by this development as well. I have been an active part of this community for many years, and don't want any bad feelings headed my way.

Hi All, Unfortunately, I am no longer under a regular contract with Next Limit to develop the Maxwell plugin for formZ. Next Limit made it clear that they were quite happy with my development work; my understanding is that this was simply a business / market decision. I have truly enjoyed working on the plugin over the years. Listening to your feedback and gradually improving it was a satisfying process. As I'm no longer in the loop, so to speak, so for technical help with the plugin, consider contacting Next Limit through their customer portal, or else the Maxwell formZ forum here: https://forum.maxwellrender.com/viewforum.php?f=149 It's been a pleasure seeing all the amazing renderings you've made with the plugin! Ben

I have not received an email from you... Can you remove my email address from your post? Thanks

Hi JL I am touched that you still use Live Section, etc.. I last opened formZ 6 about 5 years ago, so I may not be of much help, but feel free to email me and I can re-send your license info & the formz serial your plugins were authorized for.

Hi palarson, I just tested this and it seems that something has changed somewhere, an the roundover modifier is not currently working as it used to. I will investigate.

Hi, I don't know much about this; it may be something that was written specifically for the 3DSmax environment. It might be worth asking Next Limit to request a general purpose vray material to MXM converter utility app.

Hi Andrew, 4.2.0.3 is the current plugin version.

Hi Andrew, Please see: http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/formZ+|+Plugin+Log

Hi All, Great to see Maxwell is working well for formZ users. As I understand it, there's a lot of ongoing work on the Maxwell core to support multiple GPUs, thus the relative quiet on their site. Maxwell is not going the way of Thea.

It could be something to do with the specific file you are attempting to render. If you try with a new project with a simple cube, do you experience the same issue? If so, it's likely that something is amiss in your default project template file (in which case, you would want to rebuild your template file from the default formZ template.) Hope this helps.

Hi Allan, For test renders, we created the "Scale" control. It enlarges / reduces your specified image size at render time, maintaining proportions. As Des says, set it back to 100% for your final rendering. http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/formZ+%7C+Render+Options+%7C+Image Regarding the crash in Studio, have you checked your plugin log after export for warnings? If there are warnings about the presence of illegal characters in formZ entities, fix those first and see if this resolves the issue.

Hi David, Manual re-linking with the Maxwell Plugin should almost never be necessary. Use the plugin's Resource Manager to specify folders on disk to search for any missing dependencies. http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/formZ+%7C+Resource+Manager

Hi Peter, Glad to hear that opening with the correct app version worked.

Hi, Decals are a feature of the Renderzone plugin; other renderers are not aware of their existence if applied with the renderzone tool. For decals in Maxwell, use stacked layers with layer blending set to "Normal" http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/Stacking+Layers

Hi, 1. That list selector is only used for editing the representation-specific parameters of the selected material. At render time, the representation for the chosen renderer will be used. 2. I recommend re-installing formZ 8.6.0.2 3. What was the problem in InDesign? What did Adobe say to do about it? 4. In your system preferences, do you have the ability to switch between the "Default macOS graphics driver" to "Nvidia Web Driver"? If you switch this, then reboot and regenerate the previews, does it make any difference?

There is definitely something mysterious going on in your Material parameters preview, but there's nothing wrong with the full scene you posted: it's simply overexposed. You have a set up a full daylight scene, including both a physical sky and an extremely intense softbox, and your exposure is set to f4, ss 200, iso 100. Too much light is accumulating on the virtual sensor. If you switch the exposure preset to "Bright Exterior", you'll get this instead: Please see: http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/Camera (The material hints are simply different interpretations of the basic "Shaded" parameters; it's expected that they will look different, otherwise there would be no point in having multiple hints.) If you temporarily remove your formZ preferences, relaunch, and regenerate the preview, does the preview look correct? (e.g., rename /Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/autodessys to autodessysX )

Hi Theo, Your materials appear to be illuminated properly when I regenerate the preview: Are you using formZ 8.6.0.2 and Maxwell 4.2.0.2, or some other versions? Did you try restarting formZ and generating new previews in the exact file that you posted here? Have you tried with a new project, and used the "add-to-project" option to add in these materials? If you make a brand new project, and make a realistic match material, do the previews appear illuminated correctly?

Can you please send a simple formZ project file that contains a couple of these materials? (I am unable to reproduce this, but perhaps your file will help.) Does this happen with materials other than Realistic Match? The thumbnail scene is embedded in formZ; there's no way for the user to change it.

Hi Craig, The Maxwell plugin itself doesn't store any textures, so my guess would be that formZ embedded the textures for the Shaded representation of each material. Maybe make sure the 'embed' preferences are set correctly, make a small change the the project, and save again?

Hi All, This issue (unresponsive Maxwell buttons on Windows) has been resolved in formZ 8.6.0.2. Please make sure to update your formZ installation.

February 1, 2018 We have become aware that certain Maxwell UI elements are unresponsive on Windows version of formZ 8.6. (The macOS version is not affected.) We're currently working with AutoDesSys to resolve this issue as soon as possible. If you are on Windows, please use formZ 8.5.7 with the Maxwell plugin until this is issue is resolved. (If you uninstalled formZ 8.5.7, you'll need to uninstall formZ 8.6 prior to re-installing formZ 8.5.7. After that, you can re-install 8.6 if you need both versions.)

Hi All, This issue (unresponsive Maxwell buttons on Windows) has been resolved in formZ 8.6.0.2. If you experience this issue, make sure you've updated your formZ installation.

Hi Theo, Thanks for sending your file. It appears that there is an issue with hidden emitters when Multilight is enabled AND the Denoiser "Accurate" setting is in use. If you set the Denoiser Autoconfiguration to "Fast" instead, the problem should disappear. (Side note: you will get faster renderings with Multilight disabled, and your Threads parameter set to 0 )

Hi Theo-- right, that's what I meant. I clarified my post above.

If you mean that the Maxwell render application crashes when saving an image from an MXI: Next Limit has fixed this internally. A new version will be released very soon.