Changes for v3.1 are:
- Adds support for SolidWorks 2013 parts and assemblies

SolidWorks Importer is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs $150. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v4.1 are:
- Adds a Live connection for Max 2013 with V-Ray

HDR Light Studio is available for Max 2010 to 2013 and costs €399. A demo version is available here.

Changes for Build 1800 are:
- Infinity shader bugfixes
- Minor enhancements to the Infinity tools

Changes for v0.4 Beta 14577 are:
- Bug-fixes

Changes for v2.1.7.49974 beta are:
- Fixes the Krakatoa installation affecting MacroRecorder functionality
- Fixes a regression when generating CustomData Render Elements
- Fixes channel conversion of mapping coordinates controlling InputTexmap
- Adds a new PRT Surface object
- A new mode has been added to the existing Krakatoa PRTCloner Modifier
- Magma Errors are now considered fatal and will stop the rendering with an error message
- Adds Decimal Precision controls to the Particle Data Viewer
- Magma Output channel format now uses the type specified in the Krakatoa Memory Channels Rollout
- The Source Particles section of the Main Controls rollout has been extended to a 4x4 grid
- The VFB Extensions have been updated to show all source types
- Adds support for the new source types to the Schematic Flow tool
- Adds right-click handlers to the Time, Bytes/Particle, Cached Count and Memory buttons
- Changed the wording on the '>Limit To Number Of CPUs' to match the new name in Deadline
- Improved the class filters of the Magma (KCM) and Krakatoa Delete modifier MacroScripts
- An ActiveType Tool has been added to the Magma Editor
- Adds 'FaceSelection' channel to the list of pre-defined FaceQuery node channels
- Adds Debugger Decimal Precision data display controls

Krakatoa MX is available for Max 2010 to 2013 and pricing starts at $1000 plus support. A demo version is available here.

Mir Vadim has posted a video showing the new RayFire Cache feature in the upcoming version 1.61, as well as a tutorial video on how it works. RayFire Cache allows you to cache thousands of objects and their animation in a single file to keep all mesh and animation data outside of the scene. Using a variety of playback properties you can get results completely different to what was cached.

At the moment there is no mention of when v1.61 will be released.

RayFire Tool is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs $325. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.5 are:
- Adds optional texture conversion to DDS format
- Adds automatic shader generation for normal / specular maps
- Adds simple pixel lighting with multi light

Replication is a clone modifier for shape objects. It gives you the ability to create patterns and shapes in a procedural fashion. You can adjust shapes at their base object level while maintaining realtime feedback displaying the final results.

Replication is available for Max 2012 to 2013 and costs $2.

Changes for v2.5.17b beta are:
- Adds advanced options for blending, cull face and depth in Shader3D materials
- Fixes the transparency property not being saved
- Fixes issues loading reflection cubemap and flip normals filters in the library
- Fixes some bugs saving f3d and Collada files with skin
- Collada absolute texture paths now look for textures in the same folder as the DAE file

Flare3D is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs $496. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.14 are:
- Adds a version of Step Build from the PolyDraw panel that works with Work Plane
- Adds a version of the Extend tool from the PolyDraw panel that works with Work Plane

Work Plane is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs €10.

Changes for v2.6.0 are:
- The code has been completely rewritten
- New interface with a thumbnail viewer
- Pop-up full preview image
- Material categories now uses Tree View
- Most of the textures and materials have been corrected
- Fixes material compatibility between Max versions (2010 SP1 - 2013)
- Fixes problems with textures in materials
- Minor bug fixes

V-Ray Material Presets Pro is available for Max 2010 to 2013 and costs €140.

Changes for v2.5 are:
- Adds asymmetric map baking functions

Ccom Map Baker is available for Max 2009 to 2012 and costs approximately $18. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.2.0 are:
- Adds a searchbar to easily find folders, layers and objects in the scene
- Object Properties and Layer Properties dialogs now appear when clicking on their icon
- Adds support for UI docking enabled
- Dock position and size is saved on close
- Folders now import on File > Merge
- NLM no longer closes on File > Open, File > New and File > Reset
- API documentation and functionality has been added for MAXScript control
- Online error log reports can now be sent if an error occurs
- Improvements to loading and saving speed
- Huge performance increase when importing/merging a large quantity of objects
- Spelling of Colour changed to Color
- Fixes original folder structure always loading after renaming or deleting XRef folders
- Minor bugfixes and tweaks

Nested Layer Manager is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs €12. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.1 are:
- Adds support for Max 2013 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Cache sizes have been reduced up to 40%
- Playback speed improvements (5-15%)
- Adds support for groups
- Adds an 'Update every 'N' Frames' option
- Adds a 'NeedsRecording' MAXScript command
- Adds a SuperMesher_Manager.ms utility to manage multiple meshes at once
- Various UI and stability improvements

SuperMesher is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs $145. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.4.3 are:
- RailClone Tools now keeps the layer hierarchy of the source objects
- V-Ray proxies using non-ascii characters no longer fail in Max 2013
- Fixes a potential corruption if editing a RailClone scene without an active license

RailClone Pro is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs €180. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.30 are:
- Adds UVMap transformations: UV-Rotation and UV-Flipping
- Fixes an issue where a license could stop working during network synchronization
- Fixes an issue where UV data with invalid data in its charts was not saved correctly

This version of UV-Packer is available for Max 2010 to 2013 and costs €99. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v0.8.0.13027 are:
- Adds support for Python v2.7.x
- Adds support for environment variables for tool user guides and studio name
- Adds lib folders for specific versions of Python
- Re-structured the tools folder structure

AColorManager is a scripted plugin that allows you to convert colors and bitmaps in your Max scenes from or to a specified color profile or gamma value.

AColorManager is available for Max 7 to 2013 and costs €25. A demo version is available here.

Studio 75ive have extended the sale they have been running the past couple of weeks until the end of January. The sale gives you a 30% discount on their Ant Traffic Simulator and Ant Stitcher plugins.

Changes for v2.1.7.0 are:
- Fixes loading issues in Max 2012 and earlier
- Mental ray files are now installed to the correct paths
- MassFX dynamics now works with deforming meshes without a rigid body dynamics modifier
- The 'Capture State' button in dynamics now works properly
- Renamed dynamics 'Mass' parameter to 'Density'
- Density dynamics parameter now works without affecting spring or damping

Ornatrix is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs $499. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.0 Beta are:
- Adds a dockable UI
- Adds per-pixel vector calculation for more fidelity and smoothness
- Adds a dynamic interface to quickly scroll through your saved flow maps
- Adds a beta version of the dynamic layer interface (not yet fully implemented)

Changes for v2.1 are:
- Adds a video output publishing feature and an Animation Camera object
- The Depth Of Field effect has been completely rewritten
- Point cloud rendering speed up for most nVidia and ATI cards
- Adds suppport for the .c2m point cloud file format (Clouds2Max)
- Adds several nVidia specific speed optimizations
- Adds mouse-smoothing and movement-smoothing for the walkthrough camera
- Improved anti-ghosting for temporal AA
- Adds camera offset and mouse-smoothing feature for the object camera
- Adds missing create trigger button in 2D Button
- Adds several new bloom and exposure settings and features
- Fixes a bug with the license activation
- Fixes motionBlur and skybox 'warping'
- Fixes the startup failure bug for Max 2013 with PU6
- Several minor bugfixes

Click-VR Visualizer is available for Max 2008 to 2013 and costs €1,300. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v3.9.6 are:
- Animation samples are now properly updated when using random or maps
- V-Ray proxies using non-ascii characters no longer fail in Max 2013
- Editing a Forest scene without an active license no longer corrupts the Forest objects
- Fixes a bug in the trees.create MAXScript function

Forest Pack Pro is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs €180. A demo version is available here.

Changes for SP12 are:
- Adds 49 film response curves for use in finalRender's Physical Camera
- Adds a new method and enhanced algorithm to improve caustic light pattern calculations
- An issue when rendering splines has been fixed
- Various instabilities within finalRender materials have been fixed
- Instabilities when using finalRender wire shader have been fixed
- Support for latest Intel CPU types has been added and improved
- The stability and processing speed of finalRender proxies has been enhanced
- The HarmonicsGI engine has been enhanced, creating less artifacts
- Distributed rendering now works properly in Max 2013
- A bug with DR when using ImageGI has been tracked down and resolved
- fR Scatter instability issues have been fixed
- finalToon instabilities have been identified and addressed
- Random occurrences of missing lines in finalToon have been fixed

finalRender is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs €995 (Standard) / €1295 (Studio Edition) / €495 (finalToon). A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.7.0 are:
- Integrates a web interface into RenderPal
- Adds a new options tab for the integrated web server
- Adds a new user right to grant web access
- Adds various new data fields to queries
- You can now specify the path where script templates are generated by the renderer
- Reduced the hard limit for idle clients disconnect time to 3 minutes
- Many smaller improvements
- The server has been updated to SQLite 3.7.14.1
- Fixes some problems with the updater under MacOSX and Linux
- Empty render set values no longer lead to a freeze when using dynamic filenames
- Fixes complex or very long scene filenames in the render set leading to crashes
- Various smaller bug fixes
- Updates the Modo renderer
- Drops support for Windows 2000

RenderPal is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs €49 per node. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.0 are:
- Adds support for Max 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- A few bug corrections
- Fixes some memory leaks
- Speed optimizations (up to 2 times faster in some cases)

Changes for v2.5.17 beta are:
- Adds menu File -> Save, Save As, Save Selected As
- Adds right click on hierarchy objects -> Save Selected As...
- Adds menu File -> Screenshot
- Adds cut, paste, duplicate, delete
- Adds double click to open / close in the hierarchy panel
- Adds show in hierarchy on right click
- Adds menu Windows / Workspaces / Reset to change to the original workspace
- Fixes import issues with f3d models with normal maps
- Fixes the visible property taking too long
- Fixes specular values for f3d models
- Lots of general GUI improvements and optimizations
- Improved loading times
- Fixes mouse out event having a null surface object
- Fixes some flsl optimizations that produced wrong results
- Fixes a bug loading normals maps from f3d's
- Fixes bugs in the skin modifier
- Adds an animation complete event on Particles3D
- Adds new post fx and rotateTextureFilter examples
- Adds some material performance optimizations
- Mesh3DUtils.merge now uses layer properties to sort the objects when possible
- Improved Surface3D.polys for surface instances
- Improved ray and sphere collisions
- General optimizations and memory managment
- Improved the split process of skinning surfaces

Flare3D is available for Max 2009 to 2013 and costs $496. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.2.4.0 are:
- Adds a sort list function
- Fixes material preview renderings not updating correctly when map parameters changed
- V-Ray instances no longer render black
- Fixes PerElement and PerFace for polyObjects in mental ray
- Fixes a bug with maximum files not working consistently
- Adds support for V-Ray instance primitives
- Adds support for V-Ray MultiScatter
- Trailing whitespaces can now be used in the serial number entry dialog
- Adds global output gamma
- Adds a maximum files limit filter
- Adds subdirectory loading
- Fixes a Max 2013 crash with BerconTile and the Walls & Tiles script
- Fixes a problem when using Add Files in Max 2013
- When selecting bitmaps, the highest in the list can now be selected
- Updated the mental ray version to include color match modes
- Fixes a serious mental ray problem when using multiple instances of Crossmap
- Swapped the labeling of Distribution and Selection Modes
- You can now use all of the different mapping modes when Input Map is selected
- Fixes HSV color match mode
- Adds random spread to color match for input maps
- The Material Editor now updates when adding individual bitmaps
- Adds an HSV mode to the color match function
- Adds RGB weights to the color match function
- Adds Walls & Tiles interface functions
- Adds a color match function for the input map

Changes for v2.0 are:
- You can now use any auxiliary texture as a source of samples for the base color
- Adds the ability to vary the texture coordinates
- Adds the ability to vary the parameters for different Tile ID's
- Adds full support for MultiScatter for V-Ray 2.10 and above

Ky_Color Variator is available for Max 9 to 2013 and costs €43. A free update is available for registered users of v1.x A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.7 are:
- Reworked the Fit Vertex dialog and added several new projection options
- The Fit Vertex dialog now uses own ray collision routines and is much faster
- Due to the own ray routines, the Max ray collision bug is no longer a problem
- Random subobject selection has been improved
- 'UnhAll' now always unhides both vertices and faces
- The Pick Vertex dialog has been removed, it is now a part of the Fit Vertex dialog
- Edge loop could sometimes assert/crash, this has been fixed
- Fitting by vertex normal now works correctly under all conditions
- Soft selection dialog is now updated correctly when loading a selection

This is a set of scripts aimed at improving and speeding up working with CAT. Features include:
- Shortcuts to the most useful functions for the creation of new rigs
- A new layer manager offering easier access to CAT layers and their properties
- An enhanced pose manager
- A clip manage to load, save and delete CAT clips
- Utilities for importing common mocap filetypes
- A rig resizer script

If you would like to find out more about pricing and licensing, contact Raylight at info@raylightgames.com

At the moment there is no information on pricing or which Max versions are compatible.

Changes for v3.1 Hotfix are:
- Fixes some issues with control adjustment and skin phase

BonyFace Extended is available for Max 2008 to 2013 and costs $499. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v3.17.16 are:
- Changes the default map renderer's tiling pattern to be more coherent
- Fixes a bug in the OpenRL map renderer
- Recompiled using the latest libraries (OpenRL 1.2R1, JRE 1.7u10, Optix 3.0)

I'd like to wish all visitors to MAX Plugins.de a very happy and successful new year!

I haven't been able to update the site as often as usual recently, but I'll try and add some news tomorrow, and at the end of the week things should return to normal, hopefully.

Dave