Digimation, Inc. are running a few special offers that are valid until March 31st.

Some of the specials are:
- Absolute Character Tools - $995 (a saving of $295)
- Facial Studio - $499 (a saving of $200)
- Fatlips 3D - $675 (a saving of $125)

You can find the full list of GDC Specials here.

Discreet have now added the other unsupported patches for Max 4.2. These have also not yet been optimized for Intel P4 platforms.

Patch 2 fixes the following:
- The read-only flag is now correctly respected and the user is prevented from saving over read-only files

Patch 3 fixes the following:
- Custom Attribute Definitions (CADs) are now stored in .max or .mat files only if the CAD is actually used by a custom attribute stored in the file
- Custom Attributes (CAs) can now be created successfully within any Hold/Fetch sequence
- Pressing the spacebar in a dialog newly created by MaxScript no longer causes an application failure

Patch 4 fixes the following:
- Network Render Manager no longer fails when changing server assignments en-mass
- Network Render Manager no longer fails when Region Net Render deletes jobs
- Network Render Manager no longer fails when deleting a job while the job is still loading
- Network Render Server no longer complains about lacking available disk-space when the serverjob folder is deleted

The patches and read-me's are available here:
- Patch 2
- Patch 2 read-me
- Patch 3
- Patch 3 read-me
- Patch 4
- Patch 4 read-me

Discreet have posted the first of 4 patches for Max 4.2. The patch is unsupported and has not yet been optimized for Intel platforms.

It fixes the following:
- Custom Attributes are now correctly handled in the event of an associated plugin stand-in
- All of the Bend Space Warp parameters that can be animated are now supported in Track View

You can view the readme file here, and the patch itself is here.

cebas Computer GmbH are offering special pricing on their plugins for the duration of the NAB. All of the offers are valid from April 1st until April 15th.

The following plugins are on offer:
- finalRender Stage-0 R1.3 for $595 (normally $695)
- StairMAX, ScalpelMAX and Luma/BOV for $375 (normally $550)
- finalRender and maxVR.qt 2.0 for $740 (normally $890)
- ProOptics Suite and Matterwaves for $645 (normally $895)
- maxVR.qt v2.0 (new version with hotspot editor) for $195.

The complete list is available here.

VideoMAP is a texture plugin that allows Max users to use interlaced video footage in the same way they would use a bitmap texture. It includes controls for field dominance, trimming, keying and time-warping.

VideoMAP is available for Max 3 and 4, and normally costs $95. At the moment, however, you can download the plugin and get a free 1 month license, giving you full access to all functions.

Digimation, Inc. are now officially distributors for Exlunas' Entropy renderer.

They are offering Entropy for a special price of $1200 (a saving of $550) until March 31st, 2002.

This is a handy utility that lets you switch vertex number display for editable meshes on and off in the viewports.

This is a procedural UV modifier which uses a 2D bitmap to simulate a procedural material. Useful when working with game engines.

A modifier that allows you to vary the RGB components of an objects Vertex Color Mapping. It also lets you copy the Vertex Colors from one object to another.

This is a controller which makes it possible to control a float using a skeletal graph. Applying this to a translation or a rotation makes it possible to create a skeletal procedural animation.

Allows you to manage the XRefs in your scene. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for compiling it.

This is a recompile of the Accom WSD driver that shipped with Max R3.x, but was left out of max 4. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

Here's one I missed. This utility creates a storyboard letting you pre-vis the animation in your scene using multiple floating windows. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

This utility creates a storyboard letting you pre-vis the animation in your scene using multiple floating windows. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

Lets you render directly to your Windows Printer - margins, headers, footers, setup...., multi frame. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

This is a small utility that enables you to create a palette of buttons for calling up Max menus. Useful with a dual screen set-up. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for compiling it.

An import plugin for Alias Wavefront .OBJ files. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

Exports meshes to C++ code, usable as Max object plugins. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

KvBones is a mesh deformation plugin for Max. It is similar to Digimation's BonesPro or Character Studio, but does not have quite so many features. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

Allows you to select objects based on the Material ID or Object ID. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

This is a recompile of the Glow filter that shipped with Max 1.0. It is not animatable. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

A plugin that exports a geometric object (that is, vertex and face data), plus .C code that will read in the format and convert it to an OpenGL display list. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

This is a modifier for copying maps between objects. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

A utility that calculates the surface area of a selected object. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

This is a recompile of the AniGlow filter that shipped with Max 1.2. Thanks go to François Mourlevat for doing the recompile.

Changes for v0.2.26d are:
- This is exactly the same as v0.2.26c, except that it resets the timelock so the renderer will work for another 60 days.

Keep an eye on the SplutterFish news page. They are in the process of putting together the next public test build. That, and a website/roadmap update should be happening in the next few days.

Snoswell Design have released an evaluation version of their Absolute Character Tools plugin. The ACT Evaluation suite of plugins is a fully functional version of ACT and is only limited in the number of muscles and skin deforming nodes - it is also limited to 4 seconds of rendering. It is freely available for non-commercial evaluation purposes

Changes for v1.32b are:
- Added 'Use exposure control' switch to Lightscape Mesh Options dialog. This option determines whether the Brightness, Contrast, Daylight and Exterior Scene parameters will be used for calculating the vertex colors, or the Exposure control attached to the scene.
- The maps defined by the base material of Lightscape materials were not exported, hence Lightscape Meshes with maps end up without a map - Fixed.
- Some texts in the log-file were corrupt - Fixed.

Changes for v1.3 are:
- Fixed Reflect/Refract bug with scaling
- Fixed Re-use Solution not loading in network mode
- RectLights and Ambient only fixed.

The patch is available from the cebas Family Web page.

Inside Computer Graphics are hosting a live chat this evening with Victor Navone. Victor is a popular computer animator and artist. His animation, "Alien Song", got the attention of Pixar Animation Studios, where he is now employed as an animator. His most recent work can be found in "Monsters, Inc.", Pixar's new feature film.

The Live Chat event will be held on March 19th at 7:00PM PST. For more time zones, information and a formal letter you can use to announce this event please visit http://www.insidecg.com/feature.php?id=89 or http://www.insidecg.com/newscomclick.php?id=524.

Sitni Sati d.o.o. have released an EDU version of their DreamScape plugin. It is available for only $199, and is identical to the commercial version, except it will work only on the EDU version of Max.

As the name implies, Fragile breaks any object into fragments, which can then be influenced by forces such as wind and gravity.

This is a new version of the Notify.exe that ships with Max. It can send messages and alerts via LAN to one or more computers on various events such as render completition, failures etc. Include source files (Delphi).

This should work with all versions of Max, and costs $40.

Changes for v1.2 are:
- Fixes the HDRI problems accidently introduced with v1.1
- Fixes the .GIM autoloading problem
- Fixes the fRSoftShadows bug in conjunction with transparency
- and much more...

The patch is available from the cebas Family Web page. A demo version is available here.

VRay is an advanced raytracing system. Equipped with modern raytracing techniques it offers its users most advanced features.

Capable of making accurate reflections and refractions clean or glossy and blurred it helps achieve astonishing realism in the computer generated realm. Simulation of focusing (Depth-of-Field) helps in simulating real-life cameras. Different methods of illumination simulation as well as caustics calculations help artists achieve great rendering performance or fineart photorealistic images. Adaptive antialiasing is one of its advanced features. It includes sophisticated multipass methods as well as simple approaches. VRay supports subsurface scattering which gives you the power to create true photorealistic materials like wax smoked glass jelly etc.

Very few can offer network distributed rendering. VRay does. It gives incredible power to the studios with many computer boxes to use all the CPU power connected to the network for rendering within a single frame. No limitations on the size amount type of your computers as long as 3D Studio Max can run on them.

VRay is available for Max 3 and 4, and costs $209 for the Basic version, and $559 for the Advanced version. Note: These are special offer prices, regular prices will be $299 for Basic, and $799 for Advanced.

I'm going to be on the road for the next week, so I won't be able to update the site until Tuesday 19th.

Changes for v1.3 are:
- Support for reading tiled JPEG-compressed TIFF (ITIFF) and plane-sequential TIFF image formats
- Better handling of large numbers of images
- Expanded set of image brightness/contrast, gamma, and histogram clipping controls
- Improved source image camera registration accuracy
- Faster object loading and real-time updating in max/VIZ
- and much more...

You can read the full press release with all changes here. A demo version is available here.

Exluna, Inc. have updated the evaluation version of their Entropy renderer. The download now consists of Entropy v3.1 and the Max Bridge plugin for Max 4. You can get the demo version here.

In order to provide better authoring environments for 3D artists, blaxxun has improved the standard VRML97 Exporter in Max 4.

The new blaxxun VRML exporter serves in 3 ways:
- as a plugin for Max 4 to extend the available VRML helpers towards blaxxun VRML extension nodes
- as an enhanced exporter that optimizes the VRML output and supports several blaxxun extensions
- as a wizard application that helps creating a html page for the 3D content.

The following features are available:
- MultiTexturing and Environment mapping support
- Particle systems
- NURBS support
- H-Anim2001 support
- Layer2D/Layer3D support
- per object crease angle
- Collision node support
- Improvements on several other VRML helpers
- VRML output optimization + gzip compression
- Wizard for 'ready-to-go'-web publishing

This plugin can be used to generate curved sufaces for the Fly3D game engine. This is a new addition to the Fly3D SDK.

Allows you to import meshes in the Fly3d format (*.f3d) for the Fly3D game engine. This is a new addition to the Fly3D SDK.

Paralelo Computação have updated all of their Fly3D import and export plugins to work with the Release Candidate 1 of their Fly3D game engine. You can get the complete game engine with plugins here (20 MB!)

This is an adapted version of the shipping Motion Blur plugin that solves a number of problems with transparency, including:
- strange darkenings in multiple overlayed transparent things
- blur incorrectly added in totally-transparent areas of opacity mapped objects.

Drop in the attached file instead of motionBlur.dlv (save your original motionBlur.dlv as motionBlur.xxx so you can put it back if this does not work! I will not be held responsible if you screw this up!)

Changes for v0.90 are:
- Now allows multiple splines per layer
- The cancel button was fixed

Thanks to Mani and Danny for the translation.

QuickUVW is a new plugin that automatically generates UVW mapping channels without face distortion. The mesh face proportions and aspect from the original 3d model are respected in the generated UVW mesh, producing mapping channels without distortion.
This process is commonly known as 'skinning', and the drawback is that the final UVW mesh is divided in lots of chunks.
This tool was developed to work as a companion for PowerStamper but it is also useful for texture baking.

QuickUVW is a free plugin available only to registered Mankua users (owners of either Texture Layers, Flatten or PowerStamper).

Changes for v1.32 are:
- Exporting a Double-Sided material with a compound (e.g. Blend) material now works
- Shapes are now exported regardless if they are renderable or not.

The full list of changes in this release is available here.

Changes for v1.7.2 are:
- totex now handles tiff files of any orientation or photometric
- Replace-image feature now works again
- Environment variables in any path are now allowed
- Maximum number of photons that a light can emit increased from 150 thousand to 150 million
- MaxMan now has model attributes that can turn off a model's indirect visibility
- MaxMan now requires spatial and temporal quality values rather than pixel samples
- MaxMan now has a control to automatically set small objects to be invisible to indirect probe rays
- ENTROPYHOME and AIRHOME can now be manipulated through the path settings dialog
- Shader argument handling is now more robust
- Scripts/batch files driving the renderer now use a standalone program to do date stamp checking
- totex now uses entropy's version of mkmip
- The number of threads to use for an entropy render is now passed through to the alfred script
- The per-model shading rate override is now interpreted as a shading rate scale
- Translator skips creation of shadow maps in directions where there are no shadow casting surfaces
- Fixes a bug causing the 'soft' display to crash when too many buckets/pixels were displayed at once
- Textures used by objects in an archive are now converted at archive generation time
- IFL files can now be used to determine which RIB archive should be used on any particular frame.

Changes for v1.7.2 are:
- totex now handles tiff files of any orientation or photometric
- Replace-image feature now works again
- Environment variables in any path are now allowed
- Maximum number of photons that a light can emit increased from 150 thousand to 150 million
- MaxMan now has model attributes that can turn off a model's indirect visibility
- MaxMan now requires spatial and temporal quality values rather than pixel samples
- MaxMan now has a control to automatically set small objects to be invisible to indirect probe rays
- ENTROPYHOME and AIRHOME can now be manipulated through the path settings dialog
- Shader argument handling is now more robust
- Scripts/batch files driving the renderer now use a standalone program to do date stamp checking
- totex now uses entropy's version of mkmip
- The number of threads to use for an entropy render is now passed through to the alfred script
- The per-model shading rate override is now interpreted as a shading rate scale
- Translator skips creation of shadow maps in directions where there are no shadow casting surfaces
- Fixes a bug causing the 'soft' display to crash when too many buckets/pixels were displayed at once
- Textures used by objects in an archive are now converted at archive generation time
- IFL files can now be used to determine which RIB archive should be used on any particular frame.

Changes for v1.0 are:
- There are no changes to the plugin, but the ZIP file now includes a demo scene to show what the plugin can do.

Changes for v0.2 are:
- The plugin has been recompiled with different settings due to problems with Windows 2000.

natFX is a unique plugin that enables you to model plants in 3D with ease. Bridging the gap between 2D textured billboards and 3D models, natFX uses a revolutionary hybrid technology that blends these two elements to create rich vegetation with a minimum number of polygons.

Driven by AMAP procedural simulation technology, natFX plants come richly textured and can be correctly aged and set in any of the four seasons. Especially useful for those in the gaming and architectural industry, natFX offers those options that many have been seeking.

Like movie studio sets, only what is seen is built and saves production time and money. If the back of the tree is never seen, there's no point in generating its geometry. With natFX you get to determine which part of the tree has billboards and which part has geometry, plus you can modify each billboard and the geometry to your liking. Use the natFX Sector Mode to turn 180° of your tree into geometry and the other into billboards. If you want 10 billboards for a tree, tap 10 in the 2D Object Count box then watch as your billboards are rapidly generated.

natFX is available for Max 4 and costs $990, including 10 plants of your choice. Additional plants are available for $100 - $150. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v0.86 are:
- No idea what's changed, but this is a new version!

This is a version of EffectWares Splash Screen changer especially for Windows XP.

Welcome to the new version of MAX Plugins.de! I haven't changed much, but everything runs on a SQL database now, so I hope that searching for plugins will be a lot quicker. I will also be adding more pages to the link menu when I have the time, probably for models, textures and tutorials. Dave.