Maxwell 5.2 Released!

[Next Limit]

If you are an existing customer, download Maxwell for formZ at the customer portal. If you'd like to try Maxwell out, please download a copy here.

https://maxwellrender.com/features/

https://maxwellrender.com/products/maxwell-for-formz/

 

Maxwell

Improvements

• Denoiser’s new approach. Better integration in the render engine. One-pass render, multi-layered MXI, the Denoiser image is treated as another channel and is included in the MXI file, so its information does not get lost; better memory management because of tiling options and new fine-tuning options to control the Denoiser strenght.

• Denoiser parameters exposed:

  • Tiling.

  • Maximum Tile Size.

  • Color Influence (kc1).

  • Color Influence (kc2).

  • Feature Influence (kf).

  • Final Pass Strength (kc4).

  • Filter Radius.

  • Firefly Remover.

• A new modal panel shows up while the render is being re-denoised.

• New “refresh” controls in the render viewport to refresh the render, the denoiser channel or both.

• New option for Channel controls positions in Preferences > Appearance (Bottom-Left and Bottom-Right). Shortcuts on Windows: Ctrl + Alt + NumPad 1 and 2. Shortcuts on MacOS: Option + Command + NumPad 1 and 2.

• New option for Refresh controls positions in Preferences > Appearance (Top-Left, Top-Right, Bottom-Left and Bottom-Right). Shortcuts on Windows: Ctrl + Alt + NumPad 4, 5, 7 and 8. Shortcuts on MacOS: Option + Command + NumPad 4, 5, 7 and 8.

Changes

• Command line parameter -denoise removed. To activate the denoiser through the command line the user must enable the denoiser channel. Example: -channel:denoiser,on,8,png

• The Denoiser image output path field has been removed from the panel as now it’s treated as any other channel; thus, the denoised image will be saved next to the main render and with the same name plus _denoiser.

• Denoiser auto-configuration now sets Position channel in world coordinates, and Normals channel in camera coordinates by default. If the user enabled any of those channels, denoiser auto-configuration will respect the channels’ configuration set by the user.

• The Denoiser will be applied in “preview quality” for intermediate SLs until SL 12. For SL 12 and beyond the denoiser runs in “final quality”, as well as for the last denoiser update when the render ends, no matter the final SL.

• Default Priority set to “Below Normal”.

• The mximerge application -coopdenoiser command-line flag has been removed.

• The Draft engine disables extra-sampling and continues instead of failing when extra-samping is enabled.

• Process Priority becomes an application setting, still overridable by command-line parameter -p or -priority.

• Deprecated command line parameter -channels removed.

Fixes

• Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression on Linux and Windows platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).

• Maxwell Render never ended in nogui mode if the denoiser was active, and a forbidden denoiser parameters combination was set by mistake in the MXS: auto-configure:fast + shadow-denoiser:on.

• BSDF blending proportions of materials could not be accurate when the material was applied to an object with object opacity different than 100%.

• Intensity correction was not correct for some additive materials.

• Crash with reflectance channel + material with reflectance textures with no tiling.

• The License Activator on Mac was copying the floating licenses in the wrong folder.

• (MacOS only) Quicklook had a memory leak.

• In FIRE CPU (CPU Draft engine) Spot Lights in projector mode were not working.

Known Issues

• MaxwellScatter extension removes MaxwellScatter extension from the scattered objects (if they have).

• Benchwell stops sometimes before the benchmark test has finished. We don’t allow uploading the results in that case.

 

Maxwell GPU

New Features

• NVIDIA Ampere graphics cards support.

• Multilight is now supported by the GPU engine.

• Multi-GPU dynamic balance. Less samples are expected from cards that had less performance in past rendering passes.

• Emitter + BSDF now works in GPU. It is restricted to one emitter per material.

• Samples rebalance: Threads of one pixel can help other pixels if they need to. This helps that the image sampling level is more homogeneous. This can make that, in some scenes, Maxwell will require more time to reach the same SL, but more complicated parts of the image will have less noise at the same SL. Also, less computing power will be invested in easy parts, like the sky. In general, the computing power will be used more efficiently.

Improvements

• Speed improvement in multi-gpu.

• Improved the way in how certain calculations are done within the GPU engine that should help minimize certain precision issues regarding two surfaces being too close to each other and far away from the camera. (i.e. putting an emitter too close behind an AGS could make the rays skip the emitter if they are far from the center of the scene).

• Render Region and Blow-up Region are not supported in the GPU engine, now the region is reset to Full Frame before the render starts. 

Changes

• Upgrade to CUDA 11.1. Minimum NVIDIA drivers required:

  • Windows: 456.38.

  • Linux: 455.23.

• CUDA 11 drops support for the following operating systems:

  • Windows 7.

  • Windows 8.

  • Windows Server 2012 R2.

• CUDA 11 drops support for Kepler 3.0 and 3.2 graphics cards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA😞

  • GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GT 740, GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 880M, GeForce GTX 780M, GeForce GTX 770M, GeForce GTX 765M, GeForce GTX 760M, GeForce GTX 680MX, GeForce GTX 680M, GeForce GTX 675MX, GeForce GTX 670MX, GeForce GTX 660M, GeForce GT 750M, GeForce GT 650M, GeForce GT 745M, GeForce GT 645M, GeForce GT 740M, GeForce GT 730M, GeForce GT 640M, GeForce GT 640M LE, GeForce GT 735M, GeForce GT 730M, Quadro K5000, Quadro K4200, Quadro K4000, Quadro K2000, Quadro K2000D, Quadro K600, Quadro K420,Quadro K500M, Quadro K510M, Quadro K610M, Quadro K1000M, Quadro K2000M, Quadro K1100M, Quadro K2100M, Quadro K3000M, Quadro K3100M, Quadro K4000M, Quadro K5000M, Quadro K4100M, Quadro K5100M, NVS 510, Quadro 410, Tesla K10, GRID K340, GRID K520, GRID K2.

• In order to keep compatibility for the GPU engine with Windows 7/8/Server 2012 R2, for Maxwell Render 5.2.0 and future Maxwell 5 versions, Maxwell Render, Maxwell Studio and the plug-ins will be available in two flavors for Windows:

  • Windows 7 installer. CUDA 10 based, which supports the following NVIDIA architectures:

    • Maxwell.

    • Pascal.

    • Volta.

    • Turing.

  • Windows 10 installer. CUDA 11 based, which supports the following NVIDIA architectures:

    • Maxwell.

    • Pascal.

    • Volta.

    • Turing.

    • Ampere.

Fixes

• GPU statistics did not show correct render progress. 

• GPU stopped at a much higher SL than requested.

• GPU crashed when having more than one emitter per material. 

• GPU ghost bsdf (Transmittance white + Nd = 1 + K = 0) was rendering as opaque if the material had more than one bsdf and the attenuation was set to 1 nm.

• BSDF blending proportions of materials might not be accurate when the material was applied to an object with object opacity different than 100%.

• Intensity correction was not correct for some additive materials.

• MXI files generated by the GPU engine could not be merged.

• Tiling X or Y with global map did not work properly in the GPU engine.

• Maxwell froze with instances to nulls with emitter materials.

• The GPU engine couldn’t find some textures on some pack & go conditions.

• The GPU engine could crash using multi-gpu with IBL on consecutive renders with different resolutions.

 

Maxwell Studio

New Features

• Added the new Denoiser options to the Attributes panel > Render Options > Scene tab > Denoiser section.

  • Tiling and Max Tile Size

  • Fine-tuning options: Color Influence 1 and 2, Feature Influence, Final Pass, Filter Radius and Firefly Remover. 

Improvements

• Improved the readability of the text fields when editing them.

• When activating the material preview auto-update, the preview is refreshed (FIRE will be stopped to avoid conflicts).

• UI minor improvements.

Changes

• FIRE default parameters changed to Quality 4 and SL 12.

• Default Priority set to “Below Normal”.

Fixes

• Crash with random uvs extension and displacement.

• The Global map did not show properly in the viewport.

• The Lat-Long Stereo camera creation triggered an error: “separation_map.png” not found.

• The Fish Stereo camera creation triggered several errors: “separation_map.png/turn_map.png” not found.

• FIRE did not update properly on Lat-Long/Fish Stereo parameters change.

• Studio installer was not able to detect and uninstall a previous Maxwell Render installation.

• Channels Output Mode “Separate/Embedded” option was not being written to the MXS file.

• Random crash starting Studio on macOS.

Known Issues

• Resources Browser makes Studio crash on widget resize in some rare cases.

• Studio won’t work on a remote desktop (Linux host).

 

MXED

New Features

• New Substance Designer assistant. It allows loading .sbsar files and editing their parameters directly from Maxwell. The material is automatically translated internally to a Maxwell material or you can permanently convert it to a Custom Maxwell material.

 

Network

Improvements

• The Cloud jobs now show in the Name field how many renders it has.

• Cloud jobs rows with one render show the current/target SL data of the render.

• The Maxwell Cloud ignores Search Paths in the MXS to improve dependency search time.

• Cloud job wizard now allows the user to set channels in the render parameters panel.

• The Network Monitor shows a “New Version” message on Maxwell Cloud updates when the user logs in.

Changes

• The “forgot password” link wasn’t working properly, now it opens portal.nextlimit.com/login/remember directly in the default internet browser.

Fixes

• Cloud job resolucion with locked pixel aspect was not taking into account the original output resolution of the scene and used 4:3 always instead.

• Linux: Wrong file type filter on missing dependencies dialog when sending a cloud job.

• There were some missing render parameters in the network job wizard UI: Render Engine, Motion Blur, Displacement and Dispersion.

• The user couldn’t log-in in Maxwell Cloud through Network Monitor if the password contained the character “%”.

 

SDK

Changes

• Cmaxwell::getRenderParameter/setRenderParameter new signature. The old one remains for backward compatibility.

• New maxwellcommon.h header.

 

formZ Plugin

Version 5.2.0.5 - 09 Mar 2021

COMPATIBILITY:

• Built for Maxwell Render 5.2.0.45.

• Now Compatible with MacOS Big Sur

 

Important: To use Fire on macOS Big Sur, formZ 9.1 with Maxwell plugin 5.2.0.5 (or greater) is required.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• New Denoiser implementation in Maxwell Render. Only one pass is needed, the denoiser information is now stored in the mxi file as another channel, better memory management for the denoising process, and more consistency in general.

• New Denoiser options in Display Options > Maxwell Render Options > Denoiser tab:

  • New Tiling option with maximum tile size option.

  • New fine-tuning options: Color Influence 1 and 2, Feature Influence, Final Pass, Filter Radius and Firefly Remover options. Check this link for more information: denoiser documentation page.

FIXES:

• Material Preview is no longer overexposed when preferences are set to metric on some installations.

• Embedded texture swatches created by Renderzone procedural materials for the "Shaded" renderer now also render in Maxwell (formZ 9 Windows version only).

[flakie]

What is the upgrade cost?  just upgrade to 5.1,  I hope the are not asking for additional 595.00 for 5.2.

[Next Limit]

For Maxwell 5 users, this upgrade is provided at no cost.

[ktejlgaard]

Upgraded Maxwell from 5.1 to 5.2 but FormZ wont regonize it. Do we need to upgrade the plugin as well. And has anyone had luck finding that?

[Next Limit]

The Maxwell for formZ installer can be downloaded from the Next Limit customer portal.

[ktejlgaard]

Thank you, I had already downloaded and installed.
Maxwell works fine (5.2) but when i press render in maxwell in Formz, maxwell doesnt start, but says:

[Next Limit]

What is the full path of the directory you copied the 5.2 plugin folder to? And what version of formZ are you running?

[ktejlgaard]

I replaced the previous maxwell 5 folder with the new installation (made a copy of the older 5.1)
So the search path is the same as before:

"system/applications/maxwell render 5"

Im running Form Z pro v 9.1.0 (Build A399)

[ktejlgaard]

If i bring the old "maxwell render 5" folder back containing 5.1 everything works fine. But with 5.1
When i bring 5.2 into the exact same folder i get the error attached above.
I checked the pylon maxwell plugin in FormZ in at might be calling for the 5.1 and cant run 5.2? Thats why Im asking if others upgraded succesfully.

[Next Limit]

The installer contains the correct versions of Maxwell, so it must be something particular to your system.

It sounds like the plugin could be finding your backup copy of the Maxwell Render 5.1 application. Copy the backup to removable storage, remove, and delete the backup from your computer.

 

If that does not work, make sure that among ALL your formZ extensions search path locations, that there is only ONE copy of MaxwellRender.fzp. If there is more than one, formZ's load order is undefined. For example, if you have an old (version 5.1) copy of MaxwellRender.fzp at one extensions search path location, and MaxwellRender.fzp version 5.2 at another, formZ may not be loading the one you intend. Of course, also make sure that this is the latest Maxwell 5.2 plugin.

 

[ktejlgaard]

Deleted and reinstalled. Everything works.
I didn´t download the integrated version with the plugin to begin with.
Thank you so much for the help, sorry for the inconvenience

[Shibui Design]

Installed Maxwell v5.2 yesterday and using FMZ 9.1.0 running Mac OS 10.14.6. FormZ crashes every time I try to launch a render or start Fire. This happens on two machines. Any pointers to sort out this problem?

[Des]

20 hours ago, Shibui Design said:

Installed Maxwell v5.2 yesterday and using FMZ 9.1.0 running Mac OS 10.14.6. FormZ crashes every time I try to launch a render or start Fire. This happens on two machines. Any pointers to sort out this problem?

Could be that you have GPU instead of CPU selected in the Maxwell render and Fire options, only Nvidia cards and CUDA supported I believe.

Also, FormZ 9.1.0 requires Mac OS 11 (Big Sur).

These could be contributing to your crashes although one of my machines (2013 iMac) is running 10.15.7 (Catalina) which seems to run Fz 9.1 with Maxwell 5.2 just fine (with GPU selection turned off of course).

Hope this helps,

Des

[AndyD]

"Also, FormZ 9.1.0 requires Mac OS 11 (Big Sur)."

Hi Des, I'm running formZ 9.1 and maxwell 5.2 on El Capitan and MacPro 4,1 (2009)...

[Shibui Design]

On 4/25/2021 at 3:34 AM, AndyD said:

"Also, FormZ 9.1.0 requires Mac OS 11 (Big Sur)."

Hi Des, I'm running formZ 9.1 and maxwell 5.2 on El Capitan and MacPro 4,1 (2009)...

I'm running formZ 9.1 on two computers that are running 10.14.6 or lower. I've sent a support ticket to Nextlimit and have not had a response. I'll check gpu settings. Thanks Des.

[Next Limit]

Shibui,

Please follow the troubleshooting instructions provided above:

https://forums.formz.com/topic/7248-maxwell-52-released/?tab=comments#comment-29233

Also, as others have said, formZ 9.1 does not require macOS Big Sur.

[Shibui Design]

Hello, 

My problem has been sorted out. Shortly after posting, Fernando contacted me.

 

I learned that using the Demo version, when launching Maxwell, the license activation requires selecting the FormZ plug from a dropdown box. It defaults to Maxwell Render and I didn't realize it was a dropdown. I accidentally clicked on Maxwell and the dropdown opened up revealing many selections. I selected FormZ and it launched without crashing. 

 

Thank you.

[Des]

Glad you got it sorted.

Regarding the OS requirement and as mentioned in my last post, I did say that I was running the latest versions of Fz & Maxwell on one of my machines not using Big Sur.

I only mentioned Big Sur as a requirement for FormZ because that's what AutoDessys say on this website in the system requirements for V9.1 while I was trying to think of a reason why your installation would not work.