CoreVision have updated their ShadeValley plugin to version 0.5.0. ShadeValley is a scripted material plugin for terrain objects generated by DeepValley. It works on Max 3.x and 4. The materials created by ShadeValley are optimized to the shape of terrain (slope, valley, ridge, etc) generated by DeepValley. This beta version works with authorized DeepValley version 1.0.3.

Integra, Inc. have released a beta version (v2.30) of their InSight renderer for Max 3.x and 4.x. You can get the plugin here for R3.x, and here for R4.x.

Changes for the new version include:
- Multiprocessor systems support.
- Improved antialiasing for reflected/refracted images.
- RPC objects support.
- Support of bleeding by material via appropriate InSight Material parameter.
- Atmospheric effects support.
- Fuzzy reflections support.
- 2-sided materials support.
- Fuzzy shadows support basing on shadow maps.

These plugins allow you to import fully textured TA (Total Annihilation, a realtime strategy game) models into Max for build pic rendering, and export untextured models from Max to 3do files just like they appear in Max (without any trifaces if there aren't any in Max).

These plugins allow you to import fully textured TA (Total Annihilation, a realtime strategy game) models into Max for build pic rendering, and export untextured models from Max to 3do files just like they appear in Max (without any trifaces if there aren't any in Max).

DDS.BMI is a texture I/O plugin for Max 3.1 and 4.2. It allows Max to utilize 2D bitmaps in the .dds format, and supports alpha and DXTn compression.

This plugin comes from the nVidia Developers site.

FaceGen is an all-purpose head generator for Max that makes designing characters fun! With FaceGen, you can create cartoonish aliens as well as realistic human heads with only a few mouse clicks. As such, the tool is great for quickly generating an entire population of unique, quality models.

The baseline FaceGen head model was developed using real human metric data to produce a mesh that can be altered to be either male or female, as well as be deformed into both realistic and caricatured faces.

What's more, FaceGen comes with a complete set of Custom Mesh components so that after you've created the head style you want, you can even add a skeletal structure beneath that will fit perfectly. This takes the pain out of trying to match eyes, teeth and tongue to a model, since the custom components are aware of the surrounding mesh and will align as expected.

And since the resulting face is constructed in a logical, edge-loop style, animating the features of the FaceGen face with Max built-in Skin modifier, or other 3rd party extensions, like Bones Pro 3 or Morph-O-Matic, is a much easier task.

FaceGen is available for Max 3 and 4, and costs $195.

Kelseus Ltd. have released an update for their Cloth plugin. There's no news on what has been changed, but they are offering the plugin for a limited period at the introductory price of $249.

Digimation have released a few new demo versions of their plugins for Max 4. Clay Studio Pro, Splash! MAX and Particle Studio are now available along with many more demos at the Digimation Plugin site, www.MaxUsers.com.

PowerStamper is a Texture Builder by Bitmap Projection. This means that an image is projected onto the 3D surface of a model, and stamped into its material bitmap textures.

The image is projected using the active viewport, which can be an orthogonal projection ( Top, Front, User) or a perspective projection ( Camera, Spot Light ). The projected image is known as the 'Stamping Image' and the material bitmaps as the 'Output Bitmaps'.

As a Stamping Image you can use photographs to compose complex photorealistic materials for a 3D model; typical material maps to create unique 3D seamless unstretched maps, like rock or sand; or, you can paint rendered images to create complex 3D painted maps. However, to get better results, you can mix all these three techniques!

The plugin is available for Max 3 and 4, and costs $49.95.

This is the Max 4.2 version of Editable Poly 2. This is the same as the shipping Editable Poly with the addition of edge extrude. Extruding interior edges is not a valid operation for EPoly, so those edges are deselected before the edge cloning. In other words, this only works on border edges using shift-left-drag to extrude the selected edges.

Changes for r4.04 Beta are:
- Netrendering is working now.
- RayMax Message Box not visible anymore.
- GI Supersamples crashed RayMax - fixed.
- BumpMap with Tracelevel > 0 (Reflection/Refraction/GI) is now working properly.
- Error in Scanline renderer without AntiAliasing on small triangles fixed.
- Caustics deadlock with Multithreading fixed.

ArchVision have released an update for RPC v2.0. Changes for v2.1 include:

- Network Rendering AutoStop
If an RPC file necessary for rendering cannot be found in the map paths, the network rendering will not proceed. An Error is logged with both the client and server machine. The machine running the rendering server will be marked as Failed and the job will be sent to another machine for rendering.

- Update Map Paths
If the RPC Plugin cannot find any RPCs in the current map paths (set in Max), a dialog is provided that allows the user to browse to a directory where the RPC files are located. This location is then automatically added to the Max map paths.

- Improved Utilities Dialog
The Utilities dialog now provides users with a graphical explanation of all the Icons and Options found on the Utilities dialog panel. This is provided in the prompt area of the Utilities dialog panel and appears when the user is not being prompted for other information. The icons depicting content types, located at the top of the Utilities dialog panel, can be used to filter the RPC content shown in the panel. Clicking the icon for a content type off removes the content of that type from the dialog panel listing.

- Ping-pong for 2.5D RPC Content
The functionality of the ping-pong script is now included the Plugin. The user can specify a minimum and maximum frame in which the 2.5D RPC's animation will play. The range of frames selected, from among the 600 included, will play forward and backward, working to fill segments of time greater than 20 seconds. Or, select motions can be defined and repeated again and again, depending upon the desired effect.

Someone has been kind enough to recompile the Doors and Windows plugins that shipped with Max 3.x, and which were left out of Max 4. I have no idea who it was, but thanks a lot! This is great news for those of us who made a lot of use of the plugins in Max 3.x.

Now you can make sophisticated laser images by working directly with standard 3D computer graphics. This autodigitizing magic is accomplished by Lasershow Converter MAX, Pangolin's new plugin for Max. The plugin enables CG artists to convert 3D objects and scenes into laser outlines. The result can be as simple as a single-frame logo, or as complex as an animated fly-through of a city.

It is available for Max 3 and 4, and costs $3495.

A lot has changed here since the Max 3 database first went online 1 year ago. Since then, databases for all other versions have gone online, as well as the commercial database. 1.5 million people have used the site, searching a collection of 1482(!) plugins. There are now 221 plugins for R1.x, 381 for R2.x, 476 for R3.x, 263 for R4.x and 141 commercial plugins in the database. Thanks to everyone for supporting my site (keep it up!) and a big thankyou to the plugin developers for making Max better and better. Dave.

Changes for Beta 0.3 are:
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Max to crash when browsing in the material view.

RayMax v4.03 Beta from Absolute Software GmbH is available for beta testing. This is the Beta 3 version, and is fully operational for 4 weeks. RayMax is a raytracer for Max, and this new version is also a full-blown global illumination renderer.

This filter enables Max artists to composite their Max scenes and animations together with output from the World Construction Set, a program designed for professional photorealistic terrain modeling, visualization, rendering and animation.

This filter enables Max artists to composite their Max scenes and animations together with output from the World Construction Set, a program designed for professional photorealistic terrain modeling, visualization, rendering and animation.

This plugin creates copies of selected geometry (animated or not) at the end of the geometry pipeline for every frame of animation without affecting the original.

This plugin corrects a minor oversight on Discreet's part. You can turn off all of the diffuse maps for all the objects in the scene by clicking on Views / Deactivate all Maps. Unfortunately, you can't turn them all back on without going into the material editor and turning on each map individually. So, I wrote this utility to turn on the diffuse maps. It's pretty self explanatory.

Digital Element have released an update for World Builder Pro v3.0. Changes include:
- Fixes for the flipboards.
- Fixes in the installation script.
- Fixes and improvements for the Poser import.

This is the same as the shipping Editable Poly with the addition of edge extrude. Extruding interior edges is not a valid operation for EPoly, so those edges are deselected before the edge cloning. In other words, this only works on border edges using shift-left-drag to extrude the selected edges.

Also note that this is based on the SDK from 4.02 not 4.2 so any changes that have been made to EPoly with 4.2 would be undone with this new EPoly.dlo. I'll try to recompile to 4.2 and I'll put the source code changes on a web page as soon as I get a chance. If you have trouble getting this release version to work, try the hybrid version which definitely works, but still has some debug code in it.

Cebas Computer GmbH have released updates for BunchOfVolumes and LumaObject to fix problems the plugins were having with Max 4.2. Registered users can download the updates in the Cebas Family section.

Changes for r4.03 Beta are:
- No GI with raytracing and AA on (e.g. fisheye rendering): this is now fixed. It was supposed to be fixed in the previous build, but some of the newer files got left out while compiling.

Digital Element have released an update for World Builder Pro v3.0. Changes include:
- Fixes for the shadows in Max Communication plugin.
- Fixes for the A-Buffer composition with Communication plugin.
- Fix for the spherical panorama.
- Fixes for the volumetric light.
- Overall stability improvements.

Darkling Simulations have released SimbiontMAX v2.0. SimbiontMAX is a powerful collection of plugin procedural shaders, 3D maps, and materials based on the DarkTree engine. It includes 10 new shaders, 24 new procedural maps and a collection of 110 procedural materials.

Available for Max 3 and 4, upgrades cost $65, and the full version is $195.

Changes for r4.02 Beta are:
- Bitmaps, Bumps in shadow areas & GI: works now, choose Filter with Mtl Diff or Filter with Mtl Amb.
- No GI with raytracing and AA on (e.g. fisheye rendering): fixed.
- RayMax Material/EmitLight: the color of the light emitter is now only for GI.
- Default Setting for GI is now Hemispheric Sampling.
- GI for transparent/refractive RayMax materials are now handled due to the Compute GI checkbox.

Changes for v0.99 are:
- Fixed a name conflict with the Freehand Tools script.
- Changed the internal architecture so inks can now be plugins.
- Added 2 new plugin inks: Create Spline and Scatter.