Henning Hoffmann, who once wrote a RenderMan exporter for Max 2, has started development on a new RenderMan exporter called PaxRendus. The plugin is currently in alpha-testing stage, and is intended to work with all RenderMan compliant renderers.

Changes for v1.1 are:
- The greyed out tool selection combo box is not shown anymore in standalone modifiers
- Color correction in target weld may now be switched off
- New spinner for smoothing vertex colors in Adjust Vertex Colors dialog
- Config is written faster
- New selection tools (ring, loop, x,y,z,shrink, grow...)
- New help available from within modifier
- Settings dialog
- In the target weld uv and color corrections, the map vertices are now split prior to welding

The ResPower AutoFarm Upload Plugin is a collection of software tools that help to integrate the ResPower AutoFarm, the world's first self-service render farm, into Max.

It does this by adding an 'extended viewport' to the Max user interface, making it fit into your workflow smoothly.

Features:
- Detects improperly linked texture files
- Uploads all necessary files to the ResPower FTP server
- Only transfers changed files after revisions

Changes for v1.09.03m are:
- Fixes a bug with interpolated glossy reflections/refractions

Changes for v1.09.03k are:
- Fixed a bug with Precalc'd overlapped irradiance map lookup type that could cause crashes
- Better bump mapping with the irradiance map
- Some compression added to the irradiance map
- Prepasses will not add detail to the irradiance map for more than the specified Max rate when using Incremental add mode
- Added parameters to the Global switches rollout to control raytracing of transparencies
- Added a parameter to the Global switches rollout to skip the rendering of the final image and to compute only the irradiance/photon maps

Chaos Group have also updated their V-Ray Free renderer, which you can get here.

Changes for v1.15 are:
- I don't know, but I will find out...

A set of useful controls and functions for MAXScript.

New global variables include: consoleCommand, dialogs.setParent, dialogs.setClipChildren, dialogs.getState, dialogs.getSize, dialogs.setSize, dialogs.getTitle, dialogs.setTitle, isParityNegative, getObjectOffsetTM, pixelsToTwips, twipsToPixels.

Rollout controls include:
- TABCTRL - uses the standard windows Tab widget
- SPLITTER - control for dividing controls on a dialog or rollout
- COOLBUTTON - like a regular button control but allows mouse-over bitmaps

This plugin emulates all of the PhotoShop blending modes in map form. It can be used anyplace you would normally use a map including bump and displacement. This can generate some very cool effects though not all of the modes make sense in all cases.