MAX Plugins.de News Archive

Archived Plugin News  –  May 2006
 

Plugin Update: Utilities

Changes for v3.502 are:
- Backburner submission no longer disconnects from manager after submitting a few passes
- Spline objects flagged as non-renderable are no longer hidden by the visibility set system
- Fixes a problem with object capture under certain circumstances
- Adds a workaround for setting .exr output with ',' as decimal divider

RPManager is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $300. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v5.5.1 are:
- Fixes a problem with unstable behaviour when using the 'refresh' button


Plugin Update: Connection

Changes for Build 283516 are:
- Fixed flattened out procedural terrains
- Fixed a freeze when rendering transparent or reflective materials with GI
- Fixed OpenGL preview of objects inside a locked layer
- Fixed overall slowdown after starting Vue 5 xStream
- Improved management of connections to the license server
- Other minor interface fixes and improvements

Vue 5 xStream is available for Max 7 and 8, and costs $495.


New Plugin: Animation

Craft HumanizerCam was developed as a tool to give warmth to an existing camera animation by adding the human factor. It has two major areas of use. The first is when a scene requires a fast paced 'live' hand held feeling. The second is to give warmth to any shot by adding a tiny, hardly noticeable humanizing-shake to it.

Craft HumanizerCam is a passive camera tool which means it must be attached to an animated object to be able to move. The usual way to use this tool is to align and then bind the HumanizerCam to a previously animated camera. If the camera is animated with splines it should first have a Craft SteadyCam bound to it to soften the motion path, and then the HumanizerCam is attached to the SteadyCam.

Examples of situations in which Craft HumanizerCam can be used:
- Add warmth to an animated camera
- When shooting a fast paced action scene
- When shooting sideways from a vehicle moving forwards or film a missile fly-by from the ground

Craft HumanizerCam is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $99. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Texturing

Changes for v1.2 are:
- Adds Mental Ray support
- Adds displacement map support
- Extra layer channels
- Adds a GroundWiz viewport texture
- Layer border detail and thickness
- Faster preview update
- Numerous small improvements and bug fixes

GroundWiz v1.2 also adds GroundWiz Planter, a mass placement and instancing tool, handling millions of objects to create full nature scenes with vegetation. It includes a geometry shader for Mental Ray that will allow users to render hundreds of millions of triangles.

GroundWiz is available for Max 5 to 8 (Mental Ray support requires Max 7 or 8), and costs $180. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v3.019 are:
- Complete re-write of Bridge and Fuse resulting in perfect integration

Orionflame is available for Max 5 to 8, and costs $149. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Post FX

Changes for v4.0 are:
- New setup
- Improved image viewer
- Improved image file support
- Improved RLA file support
- Adds RPF file support

Defocus Dei is available for Max 3 to 8, and costs $79. A demo version is available here.


New Plugin: Animation

Craft Gyro was developed to keep an object from rotating when attached to a moving object. It is a tool to extract only parts of the object position and rotation information. It's main purpose is to provide a stable platform when attached to a moving object. Gyro follows the object but does not get affected by it's rotation, making it an ideal object to attach, for example, a camera to.

Examples of situations in which Craft Gyro can be used:
- Provide a stable platform for cameras etc. when following a moving object
- Make a linked object (eg. a gun turret) always look in a certain direction
- Project an object's movements to a specific plane

Craft Gyro is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $99. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: mental ray Shaders

Changes for v1.2.2 are:
- Fixes a bug so that the shader now calculates correctly in worldspace


Plugin Update: Renderers

Changes in Service Pack 3a are:
- Fixes a crash situation when using sceneMSP in animations
- Shading problems that have shown up have been fixed
- Fixed instanced objects losing UV coordinates with sceneMSP
- Some problems with filter maps have been fixed

SP3a is a free download and can be acquired by registered users at the cebas shop.

finalRender Stage-1 is available for Max 4 to 8, and costs $795. A demo version is available here.


New Plugin: Objects

Spiral is a new parametric shape object similar to the standard Helix object. However, in contrast to Helix, it is based on the Gold (Archimedes' Spiral) or Logarithm (distance between turns is not equal) algorithm and the user can control the number of vertices.


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v1.03 are:
- Fixed export of morph target weights
- Fixed export of texture filenames with relative paths
- Fixed a problem with hidden bone transforms
- Fixed import/export of animation curve tangent values
- Fixed the infamous normals export bug
- Added export of size information for helper objects
- Minor change to reflect new API: external references
- Added missing ColladaMax.DEF file from the packaging batch
- Updated for the recent changes to the FCollada morphers
- Updated to use the new FCollada effect/profile architecture


Plugin Update: Import / Export

Changes for v1.19 are:
- Fixes a bug with missing frame data when importing
- Fixes a problem with object names and illegal characters


New Plugin: Import / Export

VERDANT for Max is an advanced tool to import any plant made in Verdant Plant Mechanic. It's an advanced way of reading the plants code and have lots of options to adjust the plant to your taste in no time.

Some of its possibilities:
- calculate unlimited variations
- adjust a lot of parameters of a plant like number of leaves, number of branches, overall height, stem thickness, etc...
- add advanced and realistic wind to your models

Verdant for Max is available for Max 7 and 8, and costs $249 for the download version and $269 for the CD version.


New Plugin: mental ray Shaders

This shader has a number of uses:
Multiple Pass Colors - With this shader you can create the whole render tree for all passes. You won't lose transparency, bump or displacement. And you can share textures, colors and fractals between multiple passes. If you have a scene with reference models and all reference models have this pass setup, you can easily add a new reference model without placing the new object into the right passes. All models have this color switcher applied, you just create one override in the pass for the switch number of this shader.
Random Colors - If you have a lot of similar objects which should have a slightly different materials, then you can put the different inputs into this shader and enable ramdomize. E.g. useful to get variation in grid-textured feathers.
Pass Channels - You can render different inputs into different passes. This can be useful if your scene render pre-processing takes a long time and you don't want this pre-processing for every pass.

Update: the include file for Max can be downloaded here.


Plugin Update: mental ray Shaders

Changes for v14 are:
- Fixes a bug in Oily_specular with hidden/inclusive/exclusive lights
- Fixes a bug in the Flat shader with hidden/inclusive/exclusive lights
- Adds ignore light color, use max color channel to Oily_specular
- Adds environment lookup dropdown-list to Raylength
- Adds sample environment to Raylength
- Adds spread center parameter to Raylength
- Raylength shader can now be used as an occlusion shader which recognises transparent surfaces

Update: the include files for Max can be downloaded here.


Plugin Update: Connection

Changes for Build 283088 are:
- Fixes a freeze when rendering transparent or reflective materials with GI
- Fixes OpenGL preview of objects inside a locked layer
- Fixes overall slowdown after starting Vue 5 xStream
- Other minor interface fixes and improvements

Vue 5 xStream is available for Max 7 and 8, and costs $495.


New Plugin: Animation

Craft CarCam is a four wheel vehicle simulator. It was developed as an effective production tool that would enable very quick rigging of any type of car mesh. After the dummies have been scaled and aligned to match the real car, the real parts are simply bound / linked to the corresponding plugin dummies. The steering, braking, booster, skidding etc is done in real time with any supported input device (DirectX compatible, keyboard, 3dxmouse (beta)) making the animation process more flexible and creative.

Craft CarCam is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $495. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Modelling

Changes for v3.018 are:
- Removed 'Dissolve Edges'
- Adds new version of 'Pola X' (v0.7)
- Adds new feature 'Select Diagonals [Pola X]'

Orionflame is available for Max 5 to 8, and costs $149. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: Utilities

Changes for v3.5 are:
- There are too many to list, read the change log here

RPManager is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $300. A demo version is available here.


Plugin Update: MAXScript Extensions

Changes for v1.34 are:
- Adds more coolbutton event handlers
- All window related functions now accept an HWND, Control, Rollout, Dialog, or RolloutFloater
- Adds more functions (dialogs.setAlphaAndColorKey, windows.getHWnd, windows.getWindowRect, windows.mapWindowPoint)
- Fixes coolbutton so that when the button is pressed and the mouse is moved outside of the button area and released, button pressed events are no longer fired


New Plugin: Renderers

Redviewer is a 3D interactive module for Max / VIZ . Fully integrated to the Max / VIZ User Interface, it enables interactive ray tracing previews at all stages of the 3D production workflow. It supports all kinds of shadows: point lights, area lights, shadow maps, colored and opacity map shadows and even true reflections, transparencies and advanced materials displays.

Redviewer is available for Max 7 and 8, and costs €390. A demo version is available here.


New Plugin: Animation

Craft HorrorCam creates the typical contracting effect by keeping the object in focus constant in size while the camera moves away from it by zooming in exact proportion to the distance between the camera and TargetMesh node. The target node can be bound to any animated object to keep the size. For example if attached to a car that is moving away from the camera the camera will change the zoom in exact proportion to the car speed.

Craft HorrorCam is available for Max 6 to 8, and costs $99. A demo version is available here.


New Plugin: mental ray Shaders

This material shader allows you to adjust FG, GI and caustic parameters individually by material. It is similar to ctrl_irradiance, but for Max.

Besides adjusting FG, GI and caustics, it has an additional feature called 'fast sky light' which multiplies FG occlusion by a simple color to simulate lighting from the sky.


New Plugin: mental ray Shaders

This is a geometry shader which allows you to adjust supersampling individually by object and store FinalGather maps in separate files by object.