RHINO 4 PLUGIN UPDATES V.1.8.2

The 1.8.2 release of the Maxwell Render for Rhino 4 plug-in sees movement toward greater simplicity, while also providing a more powerful workflow. Mainly, the changes made will be seen when working with the plug-in's Scene and Database Manager windows.

The Scene Manager has been rewritten from the ground up, in order to simplify working with the Maxwell Scene. Some highlights in this area include:

• The Scene Manager now uses all custom UI controls, instead of standard grids.
• The number of tabs has been reduced by grouping some similar parameter groups together.
• Collapsible sub-page panels are provided; their state is remembered between sessions, allowing you to reduce visual clutter by hiding parameters which you rarely use.
• The date/time page has been simplified and now allows you to customize the format of the date, which is also correctly aware of your specific regional settings.
• 
  
  
• The Environment tab now only shows parameters related to the chosen Environment type.
• The Output tab now presents a more logical grouping of parameters; more conveniently, file-output is now specified using a folder & scene name, rather than a set of absolute paths.

The plug-in now also provides a modeless (i.e. floating or dockable) Help Viewer window which is capable of showing help for any plug-in parameter. Help is shown by left or right-clicking on a parameter's label.

Version 1.8.2 sees the removal of the previous version's “Materials Database”. This feature, while potentially powerful, has shown to produce confusion. Many times, people were using the plug-in's MXM Browser instead, defeating the Material Database's purpose entirely. To resolve this, the new plug-in removes the Materials Database page from the Database Manager and replaces it with the MXM Browser. With the removal of “database” Materials, more focus has been made on making plug-in Materials interoperate with MXM files in a more seamless manner.

When a Material is actively linked to an MXM file, its thumbnails are shown with a green border; when it is not linked, it is treated as local to the document where it is located. If a linked Material is opened on a machine where the MXM file it links to is not found, it is treated as being embedded; that is, the scene will still render as it did when last opened. The Database Manager still retains catalogs for individual BSDFs, Emitters, Textures, etc., making it easy to build new Materials based on existing components.

The MXM Browser itself has been made more powerful and convenient as well; it now actively monitors the selected folder for changes being made to MXM files. It also allows easy export of plug-in Materials as MXM files by accepting Materials via drag-and-drop from the Scene Manager's Materials page.

As per several requests, the plug-in is now installed with a printable PDF-based manual, rather than the HTML-based manual which was previously used. The new manual includes a plug-in quick-start, as well as several basic tutorials.

The 1.8.2 plug-in supports animation using Bongo and Rhino AnimationTools automatically. It also supports export of meshes which have been created by one of the various RDK-based meshing plug-ins. Unlike other RDK-aware plug-ins, the Maxwell plug-in will not fail to load due to any of the common RDK configuration problems (i.e. no “dependent DLL is out of date” messages).

In late-breaking news, version 1.8.2 has now also been (very minimally) tested with the new Rhino V5 x86 WIP release, and it looks to be working quite well even at this early stage. When attempting to use the plug-in with Rhino V5 x86, it may be necessary to manually install it – just use Rhino's File > Properties > Plug-Ins > Install and locate the plug-in where you specified it to be installed (usually this might be somewhere similar to C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 4.0\Plug-ins\Maxwell\dll).