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the light simulator maxwell render 1.6

1. 127 INDEX 45 46 ABSORPTION 51 ADAPTIVE 50 ADD Coating 32 Embed MXM 33 Emitter 32 Remove Layer 33 Reset Layer 33 Subsurface 32 ADD BASIC LAYER 32 ADD COATING 32 47 ADD DISPLACEMENT Displacement 32 ADD EMITTER 32 52 ADDING JOBS 121 ADDING LAYERS 32 Add Coating 32 Reset Layer 33 ADDITIONAL TEXTURE OPTIONS 95 ADDITIVE MODE 35 ADD SUBSURFACE 32 ADJUSTING A UV SET 94 ALPHA 108 ANGLE 47 51 Object Smoothing 21 ANIMATED TIMELINE 112 ANIMATION 107 Animated Timeline 2 Rendering an Animation 24 Video ANISOTROPY 47 ANTIALIASING Smooth Antialiasing 66 APPEARANCE 99 100 APPLY TEXTURES 59 ASSIGNING MATERIAL TEXTURING AND ASSIGNING MATERIALS 93 ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO GROUPS 95 ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO TRIANGLES 95 ASSIGNING MATERIAL TO A SINGLE OBJECTS 94 ASSIGN MATERIAL 73 ASTERISK Key 91 ATMOSPHERE 82 Ozone 82 Sun 82 Turbidity 82 Water 82 ATTENUATION DISTANCE 43 56 64 64 BACKGROUND CHANNEL 83 BASE MESH 50 BASIC LAYER 32 BASICS MENU 30 BITMAPS 108 BLENDING MODES 35 BLOW UP 97 BOTTOM oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual D 64 BOUNDING BOX 65 BROWSER Material Browser 62 BROWSER MATERIAL BROWSER Panel 78 BSDF 29 30 32 38 39 41 47 51 52 56 5 58 BUFFERS Vertex Buffers 66 BUMP 47 BUTTONS Render Farm Buttons 124 Viewports 64 CAMERA 109 BLOCK UNBLOCK 81 Camera Fr
2. For example if you have this material applied to a lightbulb when the emitter is on it will shine light on the scene just like a regular emitter and when turned off it will reveal the glass bulb material Only one emitter component is allowed for the whole material ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 33 LAYER WEIGHTING LAYER WEIGHTING As mentioned earlier the influence of each layer can be controlled with a weighting factor or a black and white texture white means more influence To change the weighting or add a texture to the weighting click on the folder icon of the layer and in the main area adjust the weighting or load a texture The weight value controls the way different layers are blended together For example if there are two layers setting 50 for both layers will produce a 50 contribution of each layer Using a texture can produce more sophisticated blending between layers Layer weighting is always normalized internally by Maxwell meaning if you have 3 layers weighted at 40 50 70 respectively their added contribution will not exceed 100 Their real contribution will then be 25 31 44 40 50 70 160 40 160 25 50 160 31 70 160 44 This means you don t have to worry that the total weighting of all layers will exceed 100 and produce unnatural results The current weighting of the layer is displayed to the right of the layer folder If a texture is used to weight the layer a T
3. Ctrl 1 Ctrl 2 Ctrl 3 Ctrl 4 Ctrl 5 Ctrl 6 Ctrl 7 Ctrl 8 Ctrl 9 Ctrl 0 Alt Ctrl 1 Alt Ctrl 4 2 Ctrl R Ctrl P Ctrl Shift P RESOURCES MAXWELL RENDER Next Limit s Maxwell Render official website to keep you up to date with Maxwell Render news HTTP AWWW MAXWELLRENDER COM Next Limit s official MXM Gallery website An invaluable resource for Maxwell users find more than 1 000 ready to use and FREE Maxwell materials in all sorts of categories As a Maxwell user you too can contribute by uploading your own materials to the site HTTP MXMGALLERY MAXWELLRENDER COM A completely new site for Maxwell Render a knowledge base featuring FAQ tutorials and other useful info scheduled for Summer 07 HTTP THINK MAXWELLRENDER COM Maxwell Render official forum where Maxwell Render users share their knowledge show their work and discuss about techniques features and more HTTP WWW MAXWELLRENDER COM FORUM OTHER NEXT LIMIT S PRODUCTS Next Limit s official RealFlow4 website HTTP WWW REALFLOW COM Next Limit s official XFlow website HTTP WWW NEXTLIMIT COM XFLOW NEXT LIMIT TECHNOLOGIES Next Limit s official website developers of Maxwell Render HTTP WWNW NEXTLIMIT COM If you have any queries regarding Next Limit or any of its products please feel free to get in touch with us at the following addresses Sales amp Marketing HTTP WWW NEXTLIM
4. EMITTER PROPERTIES 52 56 Input 52 ENABLED MultiLight 85 ENABLING DISABLING TEXTURES 95 ENVIRONMENT Atmosphere 82 Environment Settings 62 Location Time Panel 82 Ozone 82 Physical Sky 82 Sky Globe 83 Sun 82 Turbidity 82 ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS 62 oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Atmosphere 82 Compass 83 Image Based 83 Location Time Panel 82 Ozone 82 Physical Sky 82 Set Colour 81 Sky Dome 8 Sky Globe 83 Sun 82 Turbidity 82 Water 82 ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS 81 ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS PANEL 81 EXIT 106 EXPAND 91 EXPAND ALL 92 EXPAND SELECTED 92 EXPORT MATERIAL 30 EXR 83 EXTRACT MATERIALS 30 F 64 F2 95 F8 91 F9 91 FIO 91 F11 91 FACE Front Face Polygon 9 FAR 71 FARM PAGE 131 Render Farm 120 Render Farm Buttons 124 FILE MENU 30 105 Ext 106 Load Image 106 Open 105 Open MXS 105 Save Image 106 Save MXI 105 FILM ISO 109 FLAGS COMMAND LINE FLAGS 113 FLAT 65 76 FLOATING PANEL 60 FPS 80 FRAME Camera Frustum 6 FRESNEL 27 FRONT F 64 FRONT FACE POLYGON 91 FRUSTUM Camera 67 F STOP 109 FUNCTION KEY FIO 91 FUNCTION KEY F8 91 9 91 FIT 9 132 Monitor 109 GENERAL 84 Caustics Layers 86 CPU Threads 84 Illumination Layers 86 IMG 85 MultiLight 85 MXI 85 Render Layers 86 Time 84 Viewport Preview 8 GEOMETRY SECTION 75 GLASS 12 27 32 33 35 41 43 46 56
5. F e oat accueil Eater 12128 BETA RENDER DISPLAY PREVIEW REFRESH RENDER DISPLAY TAB PANEL AREA wT PAGE 104 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MAXWELL RENDER VIEWER MXCL MXCL provides a standalone interface that allows users to load MXS scenes to render view the rendering progress and adjust render parameters Many of the parameters can be adjusted while MXCL is rendering While adjusting parameters the small preview image is updated in realtime MAXWELL RENDER VIEWER MXCL MXCL also allows users to load files the Maxwell native file format An MXI file is always created when rendering with Maxwell It contains high dynamic range image data and other Maxwell Render data This interface is opened automatically when the render button amp is pressed in Studio To display it also when rendering from the command line the option display or d is used The Maxwell Viewer provides a visualisation of the render in progress controls to tune the image while the render is in progress including tone mapping interactive Multilight control interactive f Stop and shutters peed and more MXCL ERE FILE MENU Open MXS FILE MENU Open an MXS file for rendering Press the icon to start the render ma Open MXI BBE Open 5 p Open an MXI file for viewing and modifying E E d ein Resume MXI Save MXI Merge MXI Save an MXI file Recent MXS Resume MX _ Recent MX Le
6. MAXWELL RENDER THE LIGHT SIMULATOR gt WARRANTY AND COPYRIGHT EMEEEEEN aL i THIS DOCUMENTATION I5 COPYRICHT 2007 NEXT LIMIT SL THE MAXWELL RENDER SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EXPRESS IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IN NO EVENT SHALL NEXT LIMIT BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL INCIDENTAL INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE DATA OR PROFITS WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE 2007 NEXT LIMIT S L THE CONTENT OF THIS MANUAL IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL USE ONLY AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE NEXT LIMIT ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR INACCURACIES THAT MAY APPEAR IN THIS DOCUMENTATION ALL PRODUCTS OR BRAND NAMES MENTIONED ARE TRADEMARKS OR REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE HOLDERS MENTION OF THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND CONSTITUTES NEITHER AN ENDORSEMENT NOR A RECOMMENDATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NO PART OF THIS ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT CAN BE ALTERED OR CHANGED TO CREATE AN ALTERNATIVE VERSION NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED OR UTILISED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS DIGITAL MECHANICAL INCLUDING PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOCOPYING
7. 90 and Nd number does not matter and can be left as default since the material has Lambert checked 100 diffuse surface The second BSDF will be the shiny topcoat of the plastic The refl 0 colour was left at default but you can lower or raise it to have an overall shinier plastic The refl 90 colour was also left at default since we want the plastic to be very shiny at the edges and no tinting of the reflections Nd was set at 3 which is a good value for plastics The blending weight of the second BSDF was set to 30 to make the shiny BSDF have less influence on the final material This makes a more realistic plastic Try to avoid having layers all weighted at 100 when using Additive mode This blending mode can produce unrealistically reflective materials since their values are added together and not normalized in the same way as in Normal blending mode To make the plastic more or less shiny there are two possible approaches 1 You can lower the refl 90 colour and or lower the Nd of the second BSDF to make it less shiny To make the plastic shinier since the refl 90 is already at max you can raise the Nd 2 You can increase the blending weight of second BSDF which will make this BSDF have more influence on the final look of the material Avoid increasing it too much beyond 30 in Additive mode SEE ABOVE SHINY WOODEN FLOOR The plastic material approach can be almost entirely copied for this particular material
8. Lens Scattering Is a parameter part of SimuLens which simulates the scattering of light inside a lens system This effect is typically called bloom and users can control the amount of lens scattering These advanced controls brings a new level of quality and realism to computer graphics Users can have control over Diffraction the frequency of Diffraction and also Lens Scattering to simulate blooming effect Also Vignetting control has been incorporated Vignetting is the darkening effect that happens on real world lenses especially wide angle lenses It s now possible to remove this natural darkening partially or completely from your renders All these features are combined under Maxwell Render s SimuLens system which is also compatible with Multilight OTHER RENDER FEATURES ZClip Planes You can cut your rendered object with far and near planes and the render will show the interior of the object without the need to model the edges Excluding desired objects from ZClip is also possible Very flexible and useful Shift Lens This camera parameter allows you to shift the film plane up down and left right without rotating the camera This is very useful in architectural rendering for keeping a two point perspective while capturing the entire building in the image Pen mb N d Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual WORKFLOW Maxwell Render provides two alternative workflows One method allows the user to use their existing 3
9. the base material metal crystal any material will be revealed The Matte Material flag turns the assigned material into an invisible object directly showing the environment This is very useful for compositing rendered images with photos Dispersion is a phenomenon that causes the separation of a wave into spectral components with different wavelenghts causing white light to separate into the colours of the rainbow It commonly happens when light goes through transparent materials Dispersion is an important touch for realism especially when rendering things like jewels or certain dielectrics and of course it is available in Maxwell Render Displacement allows you to render virtually detailed surfaces without having to model those details Using a greyscale map you specify how the surface should be displaced Maxwell s unique displacement method allows you to create virtually infinite surface details while using little extra memory Material Library and Wizards Among the possibilities to create and edit your own materials Maxwell Render offers wizards to quickly create materials Maxwell Render materials can be stored in independent MXM files Maxwell Render material file so you can make your own material libraries To get you started Maxwell Render comes with a material library with more than 200 ready to use materials Also the Maxwell Render material site has been created for users of Maxwell
10. LAMBERTIAN 26 44 LATITUDE 82 LAYERS Add Subsurface 32 BLENDING MODES 35 Caustics Layers 86 Illumination Layers 86 Remove Layer 33 Render Layers 86 LAYER WEIGHTING 34 LAYOUT Opening a layout 61 Setting a custom layout 61 LAYOUTS Quick Switching 6 Saving a Layout 61 Hri L 64 LIBRARIES 2 99 99 Preset Object Libraries 99 LIGHT REFLECTED LIGHT 26 LIST Camera List 62 Material List 62 oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Object List 62 LOAD Load scene to preview 3 LOAD FILE 45 LOAD FULL IOR DATA 46 LOAD IMAGE 106 LOAD PRESET 55 LOAD SAVE MXI 108 LOCATION TIME Date 82 Latitude 82 Longitude 82 LOCATION TIME PANEL 82 LOCK ASPECT RATIO 107 LONGITUDE 82 LOOK AT SELECTION 63 LUMINANCE 52 53 55 Efficacy 53 Luminous Power 53 Watts 53 LUMINOUS INTENSITY 55 LUMINOUS POWER 53 MAKE ACTIVE 81 MANAGER 119 MAPPING 47 Tone Mapping 109 MAPS AND TEXTURES 93 MATERIAL Assigning Material to a Single Objects 94 Clone Material Creating a New Material 94 PAGE 133 Importing a Material 94 Matte Material 35 New Material Renaming a Material 95 MATERIAL BROWSER 62 8 102 MATERIAL BROWSER PANEL 78 MATERIAL BROWSER PANEL 78 MATERIAL COMPONENTS 29 MATERIAL EDITOR 44 62 MATERIAL EDITOR 29 BASICS MENU 30 BLENDING MODES 35 Colour PICKER 39 DRAG AND DROP 39 Export Material 30 Extract Materials 30 FILE MENU 30 LAYER WEIGHTING 34 Material Components 29 M
11. Linux Installing tar gz Copy maxwell64 1 6 Linux64 tar gz to opt and uncompress and untar the package Type both and Create a user environment variable named MAXWELL_ROOT that points to the Maxwell installation folder Depending on your shell the procedure may differ slightly For example in Bash shell use In csh shell oo SSS NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE III PAGE IV LICENSING In order to license copy and paste the license information placed at the end of the license email into the license txt file located in the Maxwell installation folder If you purchased your license before Maxwell Render 1 6 s release please note that your license file will also be recognized by Maxwell Render 1 6 and you will not need a new license If you buy new licenses or need to renew your license please make sure that you use the license txt and remove older license dat files If you are reinstalling Maxwell Render with the old license dat file please license the software by adding the license dat file sent by Next Limit to Maxwell using the menu option Help gt Register Alternatively you can copy the license dat file into the Maxwell installation folder BASIC USACE Maxwell Render contains three main executable files MXCL Maxwell Render This is the standalone render engine It can read and render MXS Maxwell Scene files MXST Maxwell Studio A complete GUI application to create and render Max
12. will appear instead of a number The order of the basic layers does not interfere with the material behavior The contribution of each basic layer is only determined by its weight and the blending mode enabled Normal or BSDF Additive more about this on the following page Basic Coating BSDF Basic BSDF A complex material made from several basic layers blended together oo SS NS N PAGE 34 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual BLENDING MODES Each Maxwell material can be blended in one of two modes Normal or Additive It is important to BLENDING MODES understand that this blending mode applies to the whole material not to individual layers Change blending mode by clicking on the Blending mode button Normal mode Should be used when making materials that are fused together such as a mix of metals or different coloured glass Additive mode Should be used when making materials that are mixed one on top of the other such as rough molded plastic with a clear smooth coating applied on top ceramics with smooth coating laquered wood etc MATTE MATERIAL This option turns the material into a matte material which cuts through the entire image and reveals the background for example physical sky if it s enabled or black if no environment The diferenee behieem Normal Ade blending inode lighting is used This is useful for compositing purposes for example if you have columns in front of a character
13. 360 oe I SS NSI N PAGE 80 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual CAMERA LIST This panel lists all the cameras in the current scene Rightclicking in the camera list panel shows a menu with the following options New Camera Creates a new camera shortcut Ctrl C or Command C Mac Make Active This option will set the selected camera as the rendering camera and also switch the viewport view to this camera Note that you can also double click on the camera to make it the active camera Rename Rename a camera shortcut F2 Hide Unhide Hide or unhide a camera from the scene The camera can still be used to render Block Unblock Block or Unblock a camera to prevent accidental movements Clone Clones the currently selected camera Delete Select one or more cameras and choose this option to delete them from the scene Items Sort cameras alphabetically Icon Size Set the size of the icons displayed in the camera list panel You can select any camera in the list by clicking on it By Rightclicking E NVI RO N M E NT 5 GS in the camera list panel will display the panel dropdown menu Environment lighting options in Maxwell Render are grouped under this panel Choose from the drop down list the type of environment lightning you want NONE This will turn off all environment settings Perfect for setting up emmiter based projects ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS PANEL SKY DOME This option represents a uniform colour sky
14. FILMING RECORDING VIDEO RECORDING OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR SHALL NOT BY WAY OF TRADE OR OTHERWISE BE LENT RESOLD OR OTHERWISE CIRCULATED IN ANY FORM OF BINDING OR COVER OTHER THAN THAT IN WHICH IT IS PUBLISHED WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISTRIBUTED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES A NAI N NS NSI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE I gt ABOUT THIS MANUAL The manual should be used as a reference guide Additional tutorials and further tips will be available elsewhere NOTE Plugins specitic information can be found with the installation package of each plugin However the parameters and features described in MXST chapter can be used as reference for plugin parameters as well The manual is divided into tive major parts General info about Maxwell Render Maxwell Render material system MXST Maxwell Render Studio a complete environment to import geometry create edit materials and then send the full scene for rendering to MXCL MXCL The Rendering Application Network Rendering The following icons will appear on some pages to indicate an important point or a tip This icon will tell you if there is something important to keep in 4 mind to avoid common errors unnecessarily long render times etc This icon will indicate useful additional information This icon will indicate an enhancement new feature or f
15. ROTATE 90 ROUGHNESS 46 56 5 SAMPLING LEVEL 107 SAVE IMAGE 106 SAVE MXI 105 SAVING A LAYOUT 61 SCALE 90 Real Scale 38 SCATTERING 51 110 SCENE Center Scene 63 Enable Sky 66 SELECT ALL 73 SEDES FED Collapse Selected 92 Expand Selected 72 SELECTING A REGION 90 SELECTING OBJECTS 90 os BO Center Selection 63 Instance Selection 9 Look at Selection 63 Material Selection 9 Object Selection 9 Triangle Selection 9 SELECTION MENU 91 Expand 91 F8 91 9 91 F10 9 F11 91 Front Face Polygon 9 Key 91 Key 91 Key 91 4 Key 91 Paint Polygon Selection 9 Raycast Polygon 9 SENDING THE SCENE TO MXCL RENDER VIEWER 97 SERVER 119 SET COLOUR 66 81 100 SETTING A CUSTOM LAYOUT 61 SHADED 64 65 SHADOW CHANNEL 29 36 SHARP DETAILS 50 SHIFT LENS Ty 18 7l Offset SHINY 57 SHORTCUTS 101 SHUTTER 109 Rotary Disc Shutter 80 SHUTTER ANGLE 80 SIMULENS 110 SKY 66 Physical Sky 82 Sky Globe 83 SKY DOME 81 Set Colour 8 SKY GLOBE 83 SKY OPTIONS 59 SMOOTH ANTIALIASING 66 SMOOTHING 50 Angle 51 SPECULAR 26 SPLITTING A PANEL 60 555 29 32 51 STOR oN ME NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual f Stop 109 SUBSURFACE Scattering 5 SUBSURFACE SCATTERING 51 52 Absorption 5 SUN 92 83 SURFACE PROPERTIES 29 41 46 Angle 4 Anisotropy 4 Bump 47 Mapping 47 Normal 4 7 Roughness 46 T 64 TAB Console Tab 106 Multilight 111 1
16. Select the group and press the Move Rotate Scale A single set of transform handles will appear WORKING WITH INSTANCES Instances can be selected and manipulated in the viewport just like regular objects Using object selection mode select first the object that has instances attached to it Then click the instance selection mode button and select the instance s in the viewport to manipulate them By default an instance inherits the material of its parent object but you can apply another material to instances by drag and dropping a material from the material list to the instances in the Instances Panel MERGE OBJECTS Select two or more objects Rightclick in the Object List Panel and choose Merge Objects The separate objects will be merged into a single object This is useful to simplify your scenes merge for example all objects that share one material or to merge emitters to reduce the number Multi Light sliders in MXCL SN RE NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MAXWELL STUDIO MXST TEXTURING amp ASSIGNING MATERIALS MAPS AND TEXTURES Maxwell Studio provides built in features to map textures to objects using different UV sets Maxwell Studio also reads the UV mapping information exported from the 3D applications by the Maxwell plug ins In order to texture an object we need to introduce the concept of an UV set first A UV set is an object property that tells how to map a 2D Bitmap onto the 3D object surfa
17. and the columns will be rendered in another pass you can turn on Matte material Example of using Normal Rj E Addis A Blending medesin for the columns and the character will be rendered with the columns cut from the character The this example a clear coated plastic was the desired material so columns will still contribute to the lighting even with matte material turned on Additive mode is clearly more suitable MATTE MATERIAL The Matte Material ON OFF button The scene contains a backdrop which has matte material turned on in its material The resulting render shows the black background while the backdrop still influences the scene lighing JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 35 SHADOW CHANNEL The Shadow Channel ON OFF button SHADOW CHANNEL The Rendered Shadow Channel PAGE 36 SHADOW CHANNEL Turning on this option for a material will make all objects with this material applied behave as shadow catchers If you turn on shadow channel in the Render Options panel all materials that have this option turned on will render shadows only All materials with this option off will render white This allows you to render out a shadow only pass for compositing purposes The following image demonstrates the procedure Photograph taken to serve as background Render of a scene Alpha channel rendered to crop out the background Objects cropped in Photoshop using the alpha channel The rendered shadow
18. length The smaller the f Stop 1 8 2 2 2 8 the smaller the DOF meaning only a small area of the image will be in focus With the focal length parameter larger focal lengths will reduce the DOF for example 50mm 70mm 100mm A focal length of 24mm typically called wide angle will have a very large DOF so almost all areas of the image will be in focus TNS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual The Maxwell camera has a visual focus indicator that provides information about the focus conditions of the target When the camera moves the focus indicator changes according to the distance to the objects from the camera The focus indicator is composed of two circles and a rectangular indicator just in the center of the camera When the target object the central point of the circles is exactly in focus the rectangular indicator turns to yellow otherwise it remains black A black rectangular indicator does not necessarily mean that the render will be out of focus it also depends on the DOF distance To measure if the camera target is inside or outside the DOF distance the circles use blue or red colours The area of the circle with red colour means than the specific target area is beyond the far plane Conversely when the area of the circle is blue the points are before the near plane Areas in red and blue mean out of focus zone Transparent areas are in focus The yellow mark is the exact focal point Use the shortcut Press
19. BAR CONSOLE TAB SL Current sampling level Next SL Time to next sampling level Update Time to next image update between samples Time passed Total time elapsed Time left Time left to finish Benchmark Maxwell benchmark number higher means faster rendering The benchmark number is scene dependant Image Update Interval MXCL updates the main image at every new SL reached when the render has just been started If _ the next SL level takes more than 10 minutes to complete MXCL continues to updated the image The Console Tab window every 10 minutes instead of the next SL showing the incremental SL reached Display Hide the current render in MXCL CO N SO LE TAB Start Stop Resume the current render This panel provides information about the rendering process scene statistics etc Any error or warning messages are also displayed in the Console tab If your scene does not start to render look first in this panel for information on what might be the problem oo SS NSI eae PAGE 106 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual RENDER OPTIONS TAB This panel shows the rendering options that can be adjusted in MXCL Most of these options RENDER OPTIONS TAB can be set from the command line and have already been explained see the Render Options in MXST section on page 82 however we will go over each option here as well in particular the MXI Resume options which are specific to MXCL INPUT PARAMETERS MXS Path and scene t
20. Click the Settings tab to expand its settings Set Colour Clicking on this button will open a colour picker to choose the dome colour Intensity Im Type in the intensity of the sky dome in lumens Use physical sun This will use the sunlight from the current date time location of the Physical Sky settings NSN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 81 _ ENVIRONMENT PANEL PAGE 82 PHYSICAL SKY Maxwell Render provides a physical sky model that reproduces the skylight conditions at different locations dates hours When the sky is enabled the viewport shows a visual representation of the sky that can be enabled and disabled by pressing the K key LOCATION TIME Longitude Latitude Earth positions to calculate the sky sun light direction Date Set the date lime Set the time GMT offset Set the Greenwich Mean Time offset of the longitude latitude location Now Press this button to set the time and date to your computer s current time and date Auto Enables the Auto GMT function This function updates the GMT automatically as you move the Sky globe or change the longitude latitude City List of cities for quickly choosing a location The list is a text file which you can edit to add delete locations It can be found in your Maxwell install folder cities txt Ground Rotation Allows you to rotate the north direction This is useful when you want to reposition the sunlight without changing th
21. Ctrl Alt RMB VIEWPORTS Display Hide viewport info Display Hide physical sky HDR K Cycle viewport shading type 5 Display Hide compass Z FILE New Scene Ctrl N Open scene Ctrl O Import object Shift l Save scene Ctrl 4 S Save scene as Ctrl Shift S PAGE 142 SELECTION Select object by keyword Ctrl F Select all objects Ctrl A Deselect all objects Esc Hide Unhide selected objects Ctrl H Cycle selection mode T OBJECT GROUPS TRIANGLES MATERIALS UVSETS Add to selection Shift LMB Remove from selection Ctrl LMB TRIANGLE SELECTION Expand selection to connected region Expand selection Collapse selection Invert selection T Expand selection to facet mode F8 Raycast selection mode F9 Front face selection mode F10 Paint selection mode Fl HOLD SHIFT TO ADD TO SELECTION EDITING Create clone Ctrl D Create group Ctrl G Move W Rotate E Scale R Selection handles All Q Delete Del NSN NIN SY Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual CAMERAS Create new camera Display camera handles Ctrl C L PRESS REPEATEDLY TO SWITCH FROM CAMERA HANDLES CAMERA TARGET HANDLES CAMERA TARGET HANDLES Autofocus PANELS Viewport Material Editor Material List Material Browser Object List Object Parameters Camera List Camera Parameters Environment Settings Render Options History Panel Console Panel RENDERING Render to MXCL Preview render viewport Render viewport
22. Even if they are very smooth they reflect their own colour much more The environment they reflect will become much more tinted by their own colour wT N NS N I Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual TRANSPARENCY An object becomes transparent when light doesn t stop at the surface but goes through the object and out the other side When light passes through a material it slows down because the material is denser than vacuum Because of this change in speed the light is bent or refracted when going from vacuum or air into the material This refraction occurs whenever light changes speed so it happens when it moves from one material to another with different densities The refraction is also what causes caustics concentrated pools of light In the render on the right it is refraction that makes the checkered pattern look distorted and makes the caustics pattern Different materials slow down light more or less relative to the speed of light in air or vacuum This difference between lightspeed in vacuum lt gt lightspeed in medium is specified as the index of refraction IOR for that particular medium THE FRESNEL EFFECT The Fresnel effect is the apparent increase decrease of a surfaces reflectance based on viewing angle For example if you look at your monitor screen straight on the monitor glass shows almost no reflection but if you look at it from an angle almost parallel to the glass it has become very reflective The
23. Film ISO Sensitivity of the film to light the higher the ISO number the higher the sensitivity Shutter 1 s The shutter speed specified in 1 n of a second TONE MAPPING Changes the dynamic range of the images Burn Tone mapping parameter that controls how fast the image is overexposed Monitor Gamma Tone mapping parameter that controls the monitor gamma of the output image MXI t Stop Controls the aperture of the lens intensity Intensity of the emission map The MXI options are only available for adjusting MXI files or LDR HDR EXR images for using as MXI EXR fi les in emitters Adjusting the f Stop or intensity of the LDR HDR EXR images will change their intensity when used in emitters To convert an LDR image jpg tif png etc into an MXI or EXR to use in an image based emitter load the image using File gt Load Image Adjust it s intensity using the f stop and or the Intensity sliders then save the image as either an MXI from File gt Save MXI or an EXR from File gt Save Image JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PREVIEW MXI TAB PREVIEW MXI TAB PAGE 109 PREVIEW MXI TAB 3 LP uim bien Liam Min APERTURE MAPS 4 Y Examples of aperture maps OBSTACLE MAP EXAMPLE P PAGE 110 SIMULENS Allows you to control the lens diffractio
24. Fresnel effect is dependant on the IOR of the material The higher the IOR the more reflective the material becomes at ALL angles so the fresnel effect diminishes the material becomes equally reflective at all angles SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual refracted light PAGE 27 PREVIEW WINDOW y allow MetallicC oatedP aint De F BSDF L Basic e Coating BSDF ADDITIONAL BUTIONS MATERIAL COMPONENT WINDOW PAGE 28 FILE MENU MATERIALS PROPERTIES PANEL TEXTURE BIN COLOUR CHIP Material proc erties 1 000 0 000 OR LAGE ak TEXTURE ICON Surface properties SURFACE PROPERTIES PANEL TEXTURE BIN oT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MATERIAL EDITOR The material editor is one of the most important areas of Maxwell It provides a powerful set of parameters for advanced editing of a Maxwell material The four main areas of the material editor are MATERIAL EDITOR A Material Components Maxwell s materials can be composed of different layers and each layer includes one BSDF a coating and a Subsurface Scattering SSS component Emitters and Displacement are also defined here B Material Preview Provides a quick preview of the material Preview options are accessible via rightclick C Material Properties Parameters to control the main optical properties for each material component BSDF coatings etc D Surtace P
25. Manual VIEWPORT RENDERING 97 Sending the Scene to MXCL Render Viewer 9 VIEWPORTS 64 3D Viewport 62 VIEWPORTS 63 2D 3D Viewports 64 B 64 D 64 F 64 L 64 Perspective 64 R 64 Shaded 64 T 64 VIEWS Bounding box 65 Flat 65 Hidden Line 65 Shaded 65 Textured 65 Texture Decal 65 Toon 65 Wireframe 65 VIGNETTING 85 110 w WARNINGS 99 WATER 47 82 110 WATTS 53 WEIGHTING 34 WIREFRAME 65 70 WIZARDS 31 WIZARDS MENU 31 WORKING WITH GROUPS 91 Collapse All 92 Collapse Selected 92 Expand All 92 Expand Selected 92 Group 92 HIERARCHIES 92 Ungroup 92 WORKING WITH INSTANCES 92 YELLOW FRAME Camera Frustum 6 7 2 ZBUFFER 108 Z CLIP PLANES 18 71 Far Near 2D 2D 3D Viewports 64 Grid Scale 65 2D 3D VIEWPORTS 64 3D 64 B 64 Bounding Box 65 D 64 F 64 Flat 65 Hidden Line 65 L 64 Perspective 64 R 64 Shaded 64 65 T 64 Textured 65 Texture Decal 65 Toon 65 Wireframe 65 2D VIEWPORT 62 63 3D 64 2D 3D Viewports 64 3D 64 3D VIEWPORT 62 KEY KEY 91 KEY 91 KEY 91 oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 141 SHORTCUTS LIST GENERAL Open preferences Ctrl Shitt O Exit Studio Ctrl Q Undo Ctrl Z Redo Ctrl Shitt Z VIEWPORT NAVIGATION Rotate Alt LMB Pan Alt MMB Zoom Alt RMB Local rotate Alt Shift LMB Roll Alt Shift MMB Local Zoom Alt Shift RMB Slow rotate Ctrl Alt LMB Slow pan Ctrl Alt MMB Slow zoom
26. REMOVING LAYERS 32 RENAME 74 77 81 RENAME MATERIAL 77 RENAMING A MATERIAL 95 F2 95 RENAMING OBJECTS 9 89 RENDER 50 Cooperative Render 22 Render Options 62 RENDER CHANNELS 22 86 RENDER FARM 120 Options 124 RENDER FARM BUTTONS 124 RENDERING Network Rendering 19 Sending the Scene to MXCL Render Viewer 9 PAGE 138 Viewport Rendering 97 RENDERING 97 BLOW UP 9 Pack and Go 9 RENDERING AN ANIMATION 124 RENDER OPTIONS 9 36 62 97 107 121 Caustics Layers 86 Illumination Layers 86 IMG 85 MultiLight 85 85 Output 35 Render Layers 86 Viewport Preview amp RENDER OPTIONS PANEL 84 85 86 Caustics Layers 86 CPU Threads 84 General 84 Illumination Layers 86 MultiLight 85 85 Output 85 Render Layers 86 Time 84 Viewpor Preview amp RENDER OPTIONS TAB 107 Alpha 108 Animation 107 Bitmaps 108 Default Path 108 Image 10 Input parameters 107 Load Save 108 wT RE NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Lock Aspect Ratio 107 Material ID 108 MultiLight 108 MXI 108 MXS 107 Object ID 108 Output Settings 107 Priority 107 Render 108 Resolution 107 Resume 108 Sampling Level 107 Threads 107 Time 107 zBuffer 108 RENDER STATUS BAR 106 REPLACING OBJECTS 89 RESET LAYER 33 RESET VIEWPORT 63 RESOLUTION 79 85 107 RESUME 108 RESUME MXI 105 KOB 53 RIGHT R 64 RIGHTCLICKING 63 ROTARY DISC SHUTTER 80 FPS 80 Shutter Angle 80
27. TAB 106 NSN NSI NAI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual CONTROLS Playback Controls 112 COOPERATIVE RENDER 122 CORRELATED COLOUR 53 CPU THREADS 84 CREATE TRIANGLE 101 CREATING A CAMERA 7 66 CREATING A KEYFRAME 112 CREATING A NEW MATERIAL 94 CREATING A NEW UV SET 93 CUSTOMIZABLE LAYOUT 59 CUSTOMIZING THE LAYOUT 60 Opening a Layout 61 Quick Switching 61 Saving a Layout 61 CUSTOM ND 44 D D 64 DATE 82 DEFAULT Custom Layout 61 DEFAULT PATH 108 DELETING A KEYFRAME 112 DEPTH OF FELD 7 68 69 DESELECT ALL 73 DIAPHRAGM 80 DIFFRACTION EFFECTS 110 Diffraction 110 Frequency 110 Scattering 110 Vignetting 65 110 DIFFUSE 26 DISABLE CHANNEL 83 DISABLING Enabling Disabling Textures 95 DISPERSION 45 DISPLACEMENT 32 Adaptive 50 Base Mesh 50 Height 49 Offset 48 Parameters 48 Precision 49 Sharp Details 50 Smoothing 50 DISPLACEMENT 48 DISPLAY Display Preferences 65 DISPLAYING JOBS 121 DISPLAY MODES 7p 64 65 Bounding Box 65 Flat 65 Hidden Line 65 Shaded 65 Textured 65 Texture Decal 65 Toon 65 Viewport Grid 65 Wireframe 65 DISPLAY PREFERENCES 65 Enable Sky 66 Set Colour 66 Smooth Antialiasing 66 Threshold 66 Vertex Buffers 66 DISPLAY SECTION 75 DOF Depth of Field 68 DOWN D 64 DRAG AND DROP 39 DXF IMPORT OPTIONS 101 E EFFEL TA Diffraction Effects 110 EFFICACY 53 EMBED MXM 33 EMISSION 55 Temperature 55 EMISSION IMAGE EMISSION 55 EMITTER New Emitter
28. Viewport 63 Rightclicking 63 Select All 73 Triangle Groups Ungroup 3 Unhide All 4 UV Parameters 6 UV Sets Section 76 VIEWPORTS 63 PARAMETERS 48 Camera Parameters 62 Object Parameters 62 Rotary Disc Shutter 80 PATHS 99 PERFORMANCE 100 PERSPECTIVE 62 64 PHYSICAL SKY 20 82 84 PIVOT SECTION 75 PLASTIC 30 57 74 PLAYBACK CONTROLS 112 POLYGON Front Face Polygon 9 Paint Polygon Selection 91 Raycast Polygon 9 POSITION 79 PRECISION 49 PREFERENCES Display Preferences 65 PREFERENCES 99 Appearance 99 DXF Import Options 101 General 99 Import Options 100 Materials 102 OBJ Import Options 101 Open GL 100 oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Paths 99 Performance 100 Preview 102 Shortcuts 101 Warnings 99 PRESET OBJECT LIBRARIES 89 PREVIEW 97 102 Viewpor Preview amp PREVIEW MXI 109 Camera 109 Film ISO 109 f Stop 109 Intensity 109 Monitor Gamma 109 MXI 109 Shutter 109 SimuLens 110 Tone Mapping 109 PREVIEW OPTIONS 29 37 PRIORITY 107 PROPERTIES Subsurtace Scattering 5 PROPERTIES Emitter 52 QUEUE Job Queue 120 QUICK SWITCHING 61 PAGE 137 R R 64 R2 45 RAYCAST POLYGON 91 REAL SCALE 38 REFLO 56 REFLO 56 5 REFLECTANCE 41 42 44 46 55 Rete TED 26 REFLECTION CHANNEL 83 REFRACTION CHANNEL 83 REGION Selecting a Region 90 REMOVE 47 74 77 78 REMOVE LAYER 33 47 60
29. can use one MXI HDR EXR map for illuminating the scene and another map for the reflections Background channel Allows the addition of an MXI HDR EXR map as a background environment not for emission purposes but for having a background image in the scene Screen mapping can be used to map the MXI HDR EXR image to screen coordinates Reflection channel Add MXI HDR EXR map for reflections on scene objects Retraction channel Add an MXI HDR EXR map for refractions on scene objects Illumination channel Add an MXI HDR EXR map as a background emission Each channel can be edited separately The following options are available for each channel Browse button For selecting the MXI HDR EXR map Disable channel Map will not be used for rendering intensity Adjust the contribution of the map for scene illumination reflections refractions Scale For scaling the current map Offset For rotating the spherical environment in X and Y axis O 100 represents rotation from 0 360 ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual COMPASS Compass and Sun direction The Image Based dialogue panel PAGE 83 RENDER OPTIONS PANEL The General options panel is highlighted here PAGE 84 Sky used in disabled channels adds an extra control over the environment If any MXI HDR channels are disabled you have the option to use the SkyDome Physical Sky or None to replace the disabled channels Additionally there is a Co
30. drag and drop a material from the material list to an instance in the Instances panel to apply another material to it However we have to take a closer look in the case of multimaterial objects Instances will inherit multimaterial properties from the initial object but the user cannot specify multimaterial directly to an instance Motion blur doesn t currently work on instances so like in the emitters case they will be transformed into real copies ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual HISTORY PANEL You can see in this panel all your previous actions PAGE 87 NSN NSI NI PAGE 88 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt WORKING WITH OBJECTS IMPORTING OBJECTS Currently the file formats supported are MXS OBJ STL LWO XC2 DXF 3DS FBX Plan 2005 Some of these formats only store one single object while others support any number of objects Maxwell requires these formats to provide 3D polygonal data as triangles Other geometry formats are not supported Another alternative to importing geometry into Studio is to save a MXS scenes Maxwell scene file format with the Maxwell plug in for your application and opening or importing that scene into Studio There are three possible ways to import objects into Studio 1 Use the menu command File gt Import 2 Rightclick in a graphical viewport and choose Import 3 Drag and drop an object from your file explorer into the object list panel or v
31. instantly converted to use the jpg version of your textures If you wish you can now select all your materials from the Material list panel and drag and drop them back into the Material Browser for later use IOR files Set the location of the IOR material files PREVIEW Quality Factor 1 10 This defines the quality of the preview render higher is better Bounces Number of times light rays should be allowed to bounce If your preview scene contains complex objects or several in front of another and you want to preview a transparent material raise this setting if you get black parts in the preview Scale Reduction Specify the scale reduction of the preview thumbnail This will help speed up material preview renders Use RSI engine for the material preview Normally the preview renders use the RSO render engine which is the preview render engine Checking this option will instead use the final rendering engine RS1 for making the material preview renders It is useful if you want more accurate material preview renders Render time of the preview will be increased using this option INSTANCES Display Instances Enables disables the displaying of instances Max Instances Displ Useful for limiting the maximum of instances displayed Shading Default shading for instances Pan mb P NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual RENDER STATUS BAR RENDER BUTTON RENDER DISPLAY STOP BUTTON
32. instead of starting a fresh render Multilight Stores a bigger MXI for using the Multilight feature Note When resuming a render the original render must have Multilight already enabled otherwise Multilight will not be available when resuming the render BITMAPS By checking this box you have control over the on or off function of the Bitmap If you uncheck this option the scene will be rendered without textures Default Path The path where MXCL will look for textures and bitmaps CHANNELS Render Output the main render image Alpha Output an alpha image Note Selecting opaque will render refractive objects as solid white in alpha channel Shadow Shadow Pass shows the cast shadows of the materials with the Matte Shadow Flag enabled Object ID Output multicoloured object silhouettes zButter Output an image representing scene depth within the two values specified in Z buffer range The range is in meters Material ID Output multicoloured object silhouettes TN Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PREVIEW TAB These controls can be altered in realtime while rendering except for the SimuLens parameters and also after a render is finished The preview thumbnail to the left is updated in real time when a Tone Mapping or Camera value is changed Maxwell will update the main image using the last edited values when the main image is refreshed Update time is reached CAMERA
33. lt 0 100 gt _ 0 means no vignetting 1000 maximum vignetting Returns control to the console after the render finishes This option starts Maxwell in SERVER mode allowing eerver ManagerlP distributed render tasks For more information read the section related to network rendering server ManagerlIP allows you to connect this server to a specific manager on your network in case you are running several managers at once If several managers are running and you start a server without specifying a particular manager IP the server will connect to the first manager that sees it manager This option starts Maxwell in MANAGER mode allowing distributed render tasks For more information read the section related to network rendering Makes Maxwell Render in modes server or manager to start directly minimized on the icon tray instead of Opening the console window oT ASS NSIS N PAGE 116 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual channels r a ao s m o z min max This option establishes the different layers that Maxwell ch r a ao s m o z lt min max gt can export r Render channel a Alpha channel ao Opaque alpha This option will render refractive objects as solid white in alpha channel s Shadow channel m Material ID channel Object ID channel z Z Buffer channel This option also requires two additional values indicating distances from the camera The z value is then calculated by centering on the focal
34. pass The shadow pass composited in Photoshop using Multiply as the blending mode Additionally the shadows can be tinted using a Hue Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop Objects pasted into photograph background 8 Final composition PM e IM oT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MATERIAL PREVIEW This panel shows a preview of the current material To preview a material click the icon or double click on the preview image or use the CTRL P shortcut Rightclicking on the material preview you access some specific options Load scene to preview The preview window can preview any MXS file By default it uses the defaultpreview MXS file in the preview folder Nextlimit Maxwell preview PREVIEW OPTIONS This option specifies the quality and number of bounces of the preview engine Complex materials may require higher quality settings These options are also available in the Preferences panel There are two render engines you can use the engine ment for preview renders named RSO which is selected by default and RS1 the same render engine used in the final render Making your own preview scenes The material preview window can actually render any MXS this is useful to preview specific scenes or objects When the Rightclick menu is shown all the MXS files available in the preview folder are shown letting you choose the desired one You can simply make your MXS scene as usual and
35. point distance 0 Note That when the channel option is set the r option should be added to obtain the rendered image if required mxi filename resume When rendering Maxwell writes a special MXI file that mxi filename r contains information about the rendering process MXI is the high dynamic range Maxwell image format this allows the user to resume previously rendered work Available in a next add on If this switch is not used it will use the same name and path as the MXS scene The resume option continues the render from a previously saved MXI file In order to resume a previous render job and update the MXI file F option must be added NOTE The MXI file is useful to resume the rendering process later to use Multilight when Multilight option has also been enabled or use it as a light emission map Specifies the render engine to be used rs 0 Preview Engine r 1 Production Engine by default NSN NSI NIS Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 117 PAGE 118 wT Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt NETWORK RENDERING FIRST OF ALL IT IS EASY UNDERSTANDING NETWORK RENDERING In order to initialize network rendering you need to know about the network components of Maxwell Render USAGE MAXWELL SERVER rur ud NOTE Hybrid Networking and Linux can work together in the same network even for cooperative rendering mxcl
36. power failures etc servers may go offline and it may take some time before they become available again or they may stay offline forever So Server Timeout value lets you set max time in seconds to wait before discarding the unavailable server and proceed to the next Since the chain of failures may last longer than expected there is variable to limit the number of forwarding actions By default it s three 3 which means that it will try to connect to three different servers waiting 60 seconds each time to see if the server is available If after three tries it still couldn t find a server the render job will be stopped OPTIONS RENDER FARM BUTTONS Group You can select multiple servers by Shift or CTRL key combination and make a group from them So Options later you can select multiple machines by selecting the group tree and send them jobs quickly RENDER FARM BUTTONS Ungroup Clicking Ungroup with a group tree selection will unchain all the servers in that group If you do the same with selection of server s which are member of a group it will only detach them from the group Add Clicking will let you add a server manually by entering its IP address That could be a server having a different range of IP than already autodetected Ungrouan SN RE PAGE 1 24 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual NETWORK COMMON SITUATIONS AND TIPS Network and Distributed rendering won t work
37. practical examples and tips to help you better understand the parameters discussed above We strongly encourage you to experiment with the material system in the beginning with simple one BSDF materials COMMON GLASS Nd was set to 1 51 which is a reasonable Nd for glass Following the relationship of Nd and the Fresnel effect we can use the Fresnel formulas to calculate that the reflectance of such a material with an Nd of 1 51 near incidence angle looking straight on at the material would be about 4 which translates into RGB at about 11 This is the value used for the refl 0 colour Of course you don t have to calculate this value exactly just know that for materials with the Nd around 1 5 the refl 0 colour has a value of around 10 20 Of course you can always raise it if you want shinier looking glass but it s always good to know how this kind of material would behave in reality if it s realism you re looking for Most glass materials have an Nd around 1 5 COMMON GLASS The reflectance 90 colour can be left at 255 since this glass will not tint the specular reflections and it will also reflect almost light at this viewing angle Transmittance was set to R 227 G 230 B 230 to give it a slight green blue tint The transmittance was set a little low here to mimic a low grade glass with imperfections which give it a slight colour and it is not extremely transparent like high grade optical glass types Attenuation distance
38. real geometry at render time as if it was actually modelled This feature is very useful for adding fine detail to a mesh which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to actually model Displacement uses a texture to define the geometric detail Unlike many other displacement solutions which pre tessellate the geometry causing an increase in memory usage at render time many times in the order of hundreds of megabytes for large detailed displacement Maxwell s unique displacement method allows you to create virtually unlimited detail while using very little extra memory The Parameters To use displacement you need an object with UVs and a displacement texture The texture used is similar to a usual greyscale bump map you have different shades of grey to describe elevation levels For example lighter greys will raise the geometry darker greys will create cavities The main displacement parameters control the surface precision and height of the displacement Displacement Map You must first load a displacement texture to access the displacement parameters Maxwell can use 8 16 or 32 bit greyscale displacement maps It is recommended to use at least 16 bit displacement image as 8 bit images may not contain enough grey levels only 256 to make a smooth displacement You may see a stair stepping effect if using 8 bit maps 8 bit maps may be enough for displacements that don t require smooth transitions between grey levels and additionally
39. the Material Browser will open in that folder Assigning adding materials from the browser is done by drag and drop in one of three ways 1 Drag and drop a material onto a selected object or group of triangles in the 3D 2D viewports This action will add the material to the current scene and assign it to the object triangles 2 Drag and drop the material to the material list both trom the browser in Studio or trom the browser in MXED The material is added to the list but not assigned to any object 3 Drag and drop the material into the material editor both trom the browser in Studio or from the browser in MXED The material is added to the material list and is also opened in the material editor for editing The material is not assigned to any object SN RE Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual A material can also be dragged from the Material list into the Material Browser which is an easy way of creating your own material libraries Several materials can also be selected at once and dragged to the Material Browser DRAG amp DROPPING MATERIALS A from browser MXST or MXED to the selected object triangles B from browser MXST or MXED to the material editor C from browser MXST or MXED to the material list CAMERA PARAMETERS The camera parameters hold all the settings for the Maxwell cameras For more info about working with the cameras see the section on page 64 Block Checking this
40. the main menu option click Window and choose which panel you wish to open as a floating panel Dock it by clicking its title bar and drag drop it into an area of the layout Removing a panel Panels be removed by clicking the in the title bar The layout always reconfigures automatically expanding or stretching the rest of panels Splitting a panel Panels can split vertically and horizontally allowing new panels to be added to the layout This is the usual way to build a new layout by splitting the existing panels and adding new ones The split quad option creates four new panels and replaces the original tT SN NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Collapsing a panel Panels can quickly be collapsed expanded by clicking the button in the upper right corner of a panel A collapsed panel shows a light grey button when collapsed Click it to expand the panel Collapsing panels is very useful to quickly make more space for other panels without having to rearrange or close the panel Saving a layout Once you are happy with your custom layout save it from the main menu Window gt Save Layout The file will be saved as an stlay file Opening a layout From the main menu choose Window gt Load Layout and navigate to a folder containing the stlay file Quick switching between layouts You can quickly switch between different layouts by using the drop down list located in the top row of buttons You can al
41. ways 1 Select the material in the Material List panel and drag it over the object in the Object List Panel 2 Rightclick the object in the Object List Panel and choose Apply Material gt Your material 3 Select the material in the Material List Panel and drag it over the object in the viewport If one or more objects were already selected the material is applied to the selection If no objects were selected a red bounding box appears on the object that will receive the material SN RE Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual ASSIGNING MATERIAL TO SEVERAL OBJECTS Select one or more objects in the viewport or the Object list panel Select the material in the Material list panel and drag it over the selection in the Object list panel or in the viewport ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO GROUPS HIERARCHIES Select the material in the Material list panel and drag it over the group in the Object list panel If the objects in the group hierarchy didn t already have a material assigned the material will be assigned to all the objects If the objects had a previous material the new material will be applied only to the parent group object To change the material assignment for all the objects in this case hold down the Ctrl key and drag drop the material over the parent group Holding the Ctrl will update the material for all the children as well as the parent ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO TRIANGLES Enter triangle selection mode and select some face
42. we only need to add a diffuse texture to the first BSDF and a bump map The diffuse texture is added to the first BSDF the lambert one in the refl 0 slot The bumpmap is also added to this BSDF strength set at two Experiment with the bump value and remember the bump parameter is pretty sensitive Very high values such as 40 can produce unrealistic effects and longer render times The second BSDF can be left untouched except you can increase the roughness value to avoid perfectly smooth reflections For this image the rougness was set to 15 If the floor is too reflective the quickest way to change the amount of reflection is to lower this BSDFs weight value oN SSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PLASTIC amp SHINY WOODEN FLOOR PAGE 57 CLIPMAP EXAMPLE PAGE 58 WHEN TO USE REGULAR BSDF OR IOR FILES Suppose you work in jewellery and want to render gold and only gold in its pure form and you don t mind waiting longer for a high resolution image as long as the result is physically accurate in the most precise way possible capturing the subtle effects of light and the unexpected shifts in colour as it would if a real gold object was present In this situation the use of a complex IOR material is best for you On the other hand suppose you re working on a two minute animation of a gold robot for a TV production In this case you need speed and flexibility For instance you might want the gold to loo
43. 08 Network Tab 2 Render Options Tab 107 Video TEMPERATURE 52 93 55 Emission 55 TEXTURE Additional Texture Options 95 Texture Decal 65 TEXTURED 65 TEXTURE DECAL 65 TEXTURE PICKER Filtering 38 TEXTURE PICKER 38 PAGE 139 Channel 38 Channel ID 93 Invert texture 38 Loadding a texture 38 Offset texture 38 Real Scale 38 Tiling Options 38 Unloading a texture 38 TEATURES 102 Enabling Disabling Textures 95 Maps and Textures 93 TEXTURING AND ASSIGNING MATERIALS 73 Maps and Textures 93 THICKNESS 47 THREADS 107 CPU Threads 84 THRESHOLD 66 100 TIME 84 107 TIME PANEL Location Time Panel 82 TONE MAPPING 109 TOON 65 TOP T 64 TRANSMITTANCE 42 43 46 Sly 56 58 TRANSPARENCY 27 TRIANGLE Create Triangle 10 TRIANGLE GROUPS 77 TRIANGLES Assigning Materials to Triangles 95 Group Triangles 3 TRIANGLE SELECTION 91 PAGE 140 TURBIDITY 82 Image Based 83 Sky Globe 83 UNDOCKING PANELS 60 UNGROUP 73 92 124 UNHIDE ALL 74 UNLOADING A TEXTURE 38 UV PARAMETERS 76 UV SET 93 Adjusting a UV Set 94 UV SETS Creating a new UV Set 93 UV SETS SECTION 76 VERTEX BUFFERS 66 100 VIDEO 111 Animated Timeline 1 2 Creating a Keyframe 2 Deleting a Keyframe 2 Playback Controls 1 12 VIEWER 120 VIEWER 105 VIEWPORT 2D Viewport 62 Grid Scale 65 Reset Viewport 63 Viewport Grid 65 VIEWPORT GRID 65 VIEWPORT PREVIEW 87 wT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User
44. 58 Refl0 56 Roughness 56 GLOBE Sky Globe 83 GRID Grid Scale 65 Viewport Grid 65 GRID SCALE 65 GROUP 3 91 92 124 GROUPS Assigning Materials to Groups 95 Collapse All 92 Collapse Selected 92 Expand All 92 Expand Selected 92 HIERARCHIES 92 Triangle Groups wT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Working with Groups 9 GROUP TRIANGLES 73 H HEIGHT 49 HIDDEN LINE 65 HIDE UNHIDE 74 81 HIERARCHIES 92 HISTORY 7 20 62 87 HISTORY PANEL 87 1 ICON SIZE 74 78 81 ID Channel ID 93 ILLUMINANCE 55 ILLUMINATION CHANNEL 83 ILLUMINATION LAYERS 86 IMAGE 107 IMAGE BASED 83 Background channel 83 Disable Channel 83 EXR 83 Illumination Channel 83 Reflection Channel 83 Refraction Channel 83 IMAGE EMISSION 55 IMG 85 IMPORTING A MATERIAL 94 IMPORTING OBJECTS 99 IMPORT 77 IMPORT OBJECT 59 IMPORT OPTIONS 100 DXF Import Options 10 MXS Import Options 100 OBJ Import Options 101 INPUT 44 52 107 INPUT PARAMETERS 107 INSTANCE Instance Selection 9 INSTANCES 87 102 WORKING WITH INSTANCES 92 INSTANCE SELECTION 91 INTENSITY 55 83 109 Luminous Intensity 55 INVERT 38 74 101 INVERT TEXTURE 38 KOR FILES 46 47 58 98 Water 4 ITEMS 74 JOB QUEUE 120 JOBS Adding Jobs 121 Displaying Jobs 12 KEY F8 91 ro 91 10 91 F11 9 Key 91 Key 91 Key 91 KEYFRAME Creating a Keyframe 2 Deleting a Keyframe 2 L L 64
45. ATERIAL LAYERS 32 Material Preview 29 MATERIAL PREVIEW 37 Material Properties 29 New MXM 30 Open Material 30 Shadow Pass 36 Surface Properties 29 WIZARDS MENU 31 MATERIAL ID 108 MATERIAL LAYERS 32 Add Basic Layer 32 Add Coating 32 Add Emitter 32 Adding Layers 32 PAGE 134 Basic Layer 32 BSDF 32 Coating 32 Removing Layers 32 9595 327 MATERIAL LIST 62 77 79 91 Wy 102 MATERIAL LIST PANEL 77 Clone Material Import New Emitter New Material Rename Material MATERIAL PREVIEW 29 MATERIAL PREVIEW 37 MATERIAL PROPERTIES 29 41 COATING PROPERTIES 48 Colour Picker 4 Load File 45 Load full IOR data 46 Roughness 46 Transmittance 42 MATERIALS 102 Assigning Materials to Groups 95 Assigning Materials to Triangles 95 INSTANCES 102 Textures 102 MATERIALS 25 Aly 56 Abbe 45 Attenuation distance 43 BSDF 58 Clipmaps 58 COMPONENTS 41 Custom Nd 44 wT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual DIFFUSE 26 FRESNEL 27 Glass 56 IOR Files 47 Lambertian 44 Material Browser 62 Material Editor 62 Material List 62 Material Properties 4 Plastic 57 56 Reflectance 4 REFLECTED LIGHT 26 Shiny 5 SPECULAR 26 TEXTURING AND ASSIGNING MATERIALS 93 Thickness 4 Transmittance 58 TRANSPARENCY 27 MATERIAL SELECTION 91 MATTE MATERIAL 35 MAXWELL RENDER 105 106 Console Tab 106 Exit 106 FILE MENU 105 Load Image 106 Open 105 Open MXS 105
46. Croup Triangles New Camera en Mew UV See 4 Croup ingroup Or alternatively select the object and Rightclick in the viewport CHANNEL ID The Channel ID is located here in the Texture Icon up window PAGE 93 CUBIC UV An object with a cubic UV set applied white square PAGE 94 ADJUSTING A UV SET The UV sets can be moved scaled rotated in the viewports the same as with objects or you can use the numeric inputs in the UV parameters section of the Object Parameters panel You must select the UV set first from the UV Sets section of the Object Parameters Panel To see the projector the viewport switch to UV set selection mode This selection mode allows you to move rotate scale only UV sets and not the object itself CREATING A NEW MATERIAL Rightclick in the Material List panel and choose New Material IMPORTINC A MATERIAL Rightclick in the Material List panel and choose Import Browse to a folder containing an MXM file When importing a material with textures Studio will look for the textures in the following order The paths contained in the material itself The folder where the MXM is located The folder of the currently opened scene The five texture paths set in the Studio preferences Edit gt Preferences gt Materials gt Textures If Studio still can t find the textures it asks the user to locate them ASSIGNING A MATERIAL TO A SINGLE OBJECT Three possible
47. D package and the appropriate Maxwell Render plug in to send scene data to the render engine MXCL The other method allows you to import objects into Maxwell Studio MXST where you create edit assign materials set up lights and cameras and MXST then sends the scene to MXCL Maxwell Studio Maxwell Studio has been improved for this version The performance and stability have been the main focus for this version Among a lot of characteristics we highlight OpenGL pertormance Optimizations in performance were made and big scenes with lots of textures are now easy to handle Other special features are available like the transparent shading of dielectrics in the viewports Blow Up This feature allows the user to choose a region of the viewport and render it at the final resolution chosen It is ideal for rendering details without having to set a new camera Exporting options Users have the option to export selected geometry like MXS or obj Exporting as MXS will also export the material s attached to the object s Export to obj and MXS is protected by the user who created the MXS from the corresponding plug in by a tag in the plug in interface This tag has been included in more plug ins for this version Support to instances Instances can now be generated via most of the plug ins and are a big memory saver when making multiple copies of an object You could have for example 10 000 instances of an object and during rendertim
48. Diets More options for working with groups are available via the Rightclick menu PAGE 92 WORKING WITH GROUPS HIERARCHIES Objects can be grouped by selecting the objects to be grouped and choosing Group from the Rightclick menu in the viewports or the Object list panel Objects can be moved from one group to another or removed from groups by dragging them out of the group in the Object list panel Objects can also be parented to other objects by drag and drop and groups can also be parented to other objects In this way you can easily organize your scene The hierarchy depth is unlimited More options for working with groups and hierarchies are available via the Rightclick menu in the Object list panel Please note that depending on the type of selected item some of these options won t be available Group Select more than one object and select this option to group the objects Ungroup Select one or more groups and select this option to remove the objects from the group The objects will be placed outside the group they won t be deleted from the scene Expand All Expands all the groups the object list Expand Selected Select one or more groups and select this option to expand the group s Collapse All Collapses all the groups in the object list Collapse Selected Select one or more groups and select this option to collapse the group s Groups can also be moved and rotated using a single pivot point
49. GL 100 Appearance 100 Performance 100 OPENING A LAYOUT 61 OPEN MATERIAL 30 OPEN 105 OPEN MXS 105 OPTIGS 79 OPTIONS 124 Render Options 62 OPTIONS PANEL RENDER OPTIONS PANEL 84 wT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual OPTIONS TAB Render Options Tab 107 OUTPUT 85 Command Line 85 IMG 85 OUTPUT SETTINGS 107 Image 107 Lock Aspect Ratio 107 Resolution 107 OZONE 82 3 PACK AND GO 97 PAINT POLYGON SELECTION 91 PANELS 20 60 Oly 62 99 Collapsing a Panel 1 Floating Panel 60 Moving Panels 60 Opening a new floating panel 60 PREFERENCES 99 Removing a Panel 60 Saving a Layout 61 Splitting a Panel 60 Undocking Panels 60 PANEL TYPES 7p 62 73 90 2D Viewport 62 3D Viewport 62 Assign Material 3 Atmosphere 92 Camera List 62 Camera Parameters 62 Clone 3 Console 62 Deselect All 73 Display Section 5 Environment Settings 62 ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS PANEL 81 General 84 Geometry Section 5 Group 3 Group Triangles 3 Hide Unhide 4 History 62 History Panel 87 Icon Size 4 Invert 4 Items 4 Location Time Panel 92 Material Browser 62 MATERIAL BROWSER Panel 78 Material Editor 62 Material List 62 MATERIAL LIST PANEL Merge Objects 4 Navigation 63 New UV Set 73 Numerical Inputs 62 Object List 62 OBJECT LIST PANEL 73 Object Parameters 62 OBJECT PARAMETERS 5 Output 85 Pivot Section 5 Remove 4 Rename 4 Render Options 62 RENDER OPTIONS PANEL 84 Reset
50. I mode so no render display is available To be able to visualize the render in progress you must add the d option to the command line mxcl mxs scene mxs This will start MXCL and also display its interface where the render in progress is shown and numerous options are available which can be changed during and after the render has finished Another way to open MXCL with interface is to double click the MXCL shortcut in Windows For a description of all MXCL command line options available please see page 111 B FROM MAXWELL STUDIO MXST is an independent application which allows you to import objects in different formats apply materials lights and textures and render the scene This workflow is mostly recommended for people working with 3D applications that do not have an available plug in to directly connect their scenes to MXCL But even if there is a plug in available for your application MXST can still be used by importing your mxs scene and making further adjustments or even merging of different scenes using the various tools available in MXST JN NS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE V NSN NSI NI PAGE VI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual CONTENTS MAXWELL RENDER What is Maxwell Render MAXWELL RENDER 1 6 FEATURES Render Engine Characteristics Technical Characteristics Lighting Shading Cameras and Effects Other Render Features Workflow Output Network Rendering SDK Communi
51. IT COM SALES SUPPORT HTM Technical support HTTP WWNW NEXTLIMIT COM TECH SUPPORT HTM Training HTTP WWW NEXTLIMIT COM TRAINING SUPPORT HTM NEXT LIMIT TECHNOLOGIES C Angel Cavero 2 28043 Madrid SPAIN Fax 34 917 219 464 Europe Time Zone 6H US Eastern time MAXWELL RENDER USER MANUAL Manual Design by SOLID DESIGN Manual Published by SOLID PUBLISHING HTTP WWW SOLIDPUBLISHING COM oN NY NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 143 COPYRIGHTO 2007 NEXT LIMIT S L
52. LIST 140 gg RESOURCES 141 98 98 99 100 100 SNA NS NIN SZ Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 9 NSI NI PAGE 10 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt WHAT IS MAXWELL RENDER Maxwell Render represents the next generation in rendering technology It is based on the physical equations governing light transport and enables users to digitally create highly accurate and believable imagery of the real world Maxwell Render produces incredibly realistic illumination without resorting to the tricks and approximations used by many current industry standard renderers Maxwell Render is more than just a render engine it is The Light Simulator Maxwell Render s algorithms and equations reproduce the behavior of light in a very accurate way All of the elements in Maxwell Render such as light emitters material shaders and cameras are entirely based on physically accurate models Maxwell Render s method of calculation always converges to the correct solution without introducing artifacts due to the fact that it is an unbiased render Unbiased means that no tricks or interpolations are used to calculate the lighting solution in every pixel It can fully capture all light interactions between all elements in a scene All lighting calculations are performed using spectral information and high dynamic range data Maxwell Render operates as a stand alone command line application that targets many different environments of th
53. Manual gt MATERIALS COMPONENTS BSDF PROPERTIES The BSDF component is the base of the Maxwell material system It contains all the parameters necessary to create many different types of materials ranging from clear glass sandblasted glass plastics and metals In this first section we will go through each parameter in order with a brief description of each In the second section we will show different material examples and discuss the settings used DIFFERENT FRESNEL COLOURS When a BSDF is selected in the material layers the BSDF properties are displayed in the right panel There are two sets of controls Material properties and Surface properties MATERIAL PROPERTIES Reflectance 0 90 This is the light reflected by the material In other words it is the material s colour Choose a reflectance colour by clicking the Colour Picker or specify a texture by clicking in the texture gf button You can enable or disable the texture using the check button near the texture button A full white reflectance RGB 255 means that all the light that falls on the object is reflected back Black reflectance RGB 0 means that all the light is absorbed There are two reflectance colours depending on the light reflected when the object is seen at 0 degrees frontal view or at 90 degrees glancing angle The Reflectance 0 is the objects main colour The Reflectance 90 colour is the objects colour at glancing angles This is usef
54. Maxwell s texture interpolation helps to render even 8 bit images smoothly Offset This parameter allows you to specify which grey level in the texture should represent zero displacement It is important that you set this parameter correctly based on what type of displacement map you use For example some displacement maps may use 50 grey to specify zero displacement darker shades than 50 in the texture will create cavities lighter than 50 will raise the geometry In this case you have to set the Offset parameter to 0 5 to get a proper displacement If your displacement map uses black to represent zero displacement set Offset to O oo I SS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Height This parameter sets the maximum allowed displacement distance It tells the engine how much real geometric height you want to displace on your base mesh This value needs to be greater less than zero for displacement to appear The white of your texture will be raised to the height value you set Displacement height can be set to use either relative or absolute height by having the Adaptive Units option unchecked the given value will represent the desired height as n of the longest edge of the associated object s bounding box For example you have a car 300 x 150 x 110 cm and you set height as 1 this means the peak displacement will be 1 of 300 the longest edge of the bounding box which is 3 cm to be observed as real length in render output
55. Render to share their materials with other users The site continues to be a great success in a short period of time just like its contests more than 2000 materials are freely downloadable oT ASS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Material Editor is the ideal tool for creating Maxwell materials It offers the quickest most efficient way of creating and reviewing MXM files I 4 78 a a en cT ro py i Ul CI IUPFUCIGCT Io lIiCo uic A small panel inside the material editor allows you to quickly see all the textures in your scene and drag amp drop a texture from the panel into one of the texture slots C Nito The texture editor gives you the option to view the loaded texture at full resolution 7 3 Drag and Drop You can now copy textures and colours by dragging and dropping on other texture or colour chips even from different BSDF or coatings The new generation of plug ins which started with the re writing of the Maya plug in is able to interpret the 3D platform s native shading to a greater or lesser extent Cameras in Maxwell Render operate completely differently to those in other render engines Traditionally most render engines use a pinhole camera This type of camera simulates a tiny hole that allows light rays coming from the scene to reach the viewing surface Maxwell Render simulates a real camera with the associate
56. Render Options Tab 107 Render Status 106 Save Image 106 Save 105 VIEWER 105 MAXWELL STUDIO Apply textures 59 CUSTOMIZING THE LAYOUT 60 Import object 59 MENU Selection Menu 9 MERGE 105 MERGE OBJECTS 2 74 92 MODE Additive Mode 35 MODES Display Modes 65 Selection Modes 9 MODES BLENDING MODES 35 MONITOR GAMMA 109 MOVE 90 MOVING A CAMERA 7 67 MOVING PANELS 60 MULTILIGHT 111 MULTILIGHT 85 108 MULTIPLE CAMERAS 59 MXCL 114 Animated Timeline 2 Command Line 4 COMMAND LINE FLAGS 113 Console Tab 106 Creating a Keyframe 2 Deleting a Keyframe 2 Exit 106 FILE MENU 105 f Stop 109 Intensity 109 Load Image 106 MAXWELL RENDER 105 Monitor 109 109 Network Tab 2 Playback Controls 12 PREVIEW MXI 109 Render Options Tab 107 Render Status Bar 06 Save Image 106 Sending the Scene to MXCL Render Viewer 9 Shutter 109 SimuLens 110 Tone Mapping 109 Video 11 VIEWER 105 MXI 85 108 109 Alpha 108 Bitmaps 108 Default Path 108 Intensity 109 Load Save MXI 108 Material ID 1 08 Merge 105 MultiLight 108 Object ID 108 PREVIEW MXI 109 Render 108 Resume 108 Resume 105 zBuffer 108 MXM Import New MXM 30 MXS 107 MXS IMPORT OPTIONS 100 oN NSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MXST Apply textures 59 Customizable Layout 59 CUSTOMIZING THE LAYOUT 60 Import object 59 Librar
57. TIONS General rendering options OBJECTLIST objects and groups of objects in the scene OBJECT PARAMETERS Parameters of the selected objects CAMERALIST List of cameras the scene CAMERA PARAMETERS A Parameters of the selected camera CONSOLE Console messages HISTORY List of changes made in the scene INSTANCES selected object More detailed information about using each panel type can be found in the MAXWELL STUDIO PANEL TYPES section on page 71 Most of the panels are divided into subsections to form a more efficient display of information Click on the section name to expand that section and click it again to collapse the section The numerical inputs can be edited by typing new numbers or pressing the middle mouse button and dragging up and down to scroll the number Press CTRL while using MMB to scroll faster through the numbers Alternatively you can use the scroll wheel of the mouse for quicker number scrolling Background section collapsed and then expanded NUMERICAL INPUTS 4 clicking a numerical input numeric precision be chosen for that particular You can change the numerical values by either typing new numbers or pressing the middle mouse button and dragging tT SS NS N PAGE 62 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual USING THE VIEWPORTS AND CAMERAS The viewports in Studio are OpenGL based and display all t
58. The use of complex IOR data means Maxwell has a lot more math to do Complex IOR computations require evaluation of more mathematical functions and they are dependent on view angle and on spectral wavelength as well as involving the computation of full dispersion which by itself introduces a performance hit taking longer to resolve image noise This method does not allow many optimisations without sacrificing the intended physical accuracy However surface properties such as roughness anisotropy bump can still be changed when using IOR files Of course a BSDF with an IOR file loaded can still be mixed with other regular BSDFs to create many interesting materials The Colour Chips Reflectance and transmittance influence each other For example if more light is reflected from the surface of the object then less light will be transmitted through it Therefore the reflectance and transmittance colours are corrected according to this You can see a second colour square showing the corrected colour Hovering the mouse over the squares will show a tooltip with the numerical RGB values SURFACE PROPERTIES Roughness The roughness of the surface ranges from 0 perfectly smooth surface to 99 almost pure diffuse The Lambertian checkbox will use a perfect diffuse model like 10096 roughness It is important to remember that if you want to have very smooth mirror like surfaces or clear glass the roughness should be low ex 0 10 You c
59. Using relative height is useful when you wish to preserve the same displacement height if you scale the object checking Absolute Units allows you to set the Height in centimeters and it will always displace to this given value regardless of object dimensions Precision Precision defines surface accuracy ability and response to detail independent of texture resolution This means two things specifying a low precision value and using a high resolution texture lots of detail will not show more detail in the render than what is allowed by the precision value specifying a high precision value but using a low resolution texture will reach the limit of the pixel detail of the texture and will not result in a more detailed displacement The displacement will have reached the detail level of the texture This is important to understand because you can optimize the displacement by starting with a high resolution texture and lower precision value and keep raising the precision value until the detail in the displacement is satisfactory Example of The image shows grey values 51 20 grey how surface detail and render time are affected by increasing precision for the same texture 127 50 grey and 255 white in order Precision 4 Precision 16 Precision 64 Precision 128 SL7 2m 48s 615 23 SL7 3m 195 12 89 SL7 6m 34s 66 52 SL7 11m Example of how surface detail and render time are affected by increasing precis
60. V set in relative to the object Adjust to object Pressing this button will adjust the position rotation and scale of the current UV set to the global position rotation and scale of the object it is attached to tT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual TRIANGLE GROUPS Show all triangle groups belonging to the selected object Note that only one object has to be selected for the list to display the triangle groups MATERIAL LIST PANEL To view the triangles associated with a triangle group make sure you in Triangle Selection J mode and select a triangle group The triangles appear in the viewport You can drag and drop a material from the material list onto a triangle group to assign that material to just that triangle group You can also select a triangle group in the list and then drag and drop a material directly in the viewport To remove a triangle group select it and press the Delete key on your keyboard Additionally if you Rightclick on a triangles group a menu will pop up Merge This will merge two selected groups and will leave the material of the first selected to the new merged group of triangles Recalculate This option will recalculate the group to add or remove some triangles Rename For renaming a group Remove Same as the delete key it will remove the triangle groups but not the triangles themselves MATERIAL LIST All the materials currently loaded in the scene are listed in the material list i
61. WW STACK STUDIOS COM P13 PATRICE SIEBENALER WWW SP3D BE P15 ATILLAAKIN A K A TOM WWW ATILLAAKIN COM P17 fF HENRI DESBOIS P16 ANDREA RETTORI A RETTORI TIN IT P20 JOHN DOBSON 4HERO P19 BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P18 JOHN DOBSON 4HERO P22 JAKE MORRISON GOAT VISUAL EFFECTS JAKE GOAT COM P21 WWW STACK STUDIOS COM P23 wT PAGE 126 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P24 ATILLAAKIN A K A TOM WWW ATILLAAKIN COM P48 THOMAS ANAGNOSTOU WWW RAYFLECTAR COM P68 RAD ILIUTA WWW ILIUTA COM P88 BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P103 MIKE VERTA WWW MIKEVERTA COM P114 YUSUKE OKAUE WWW PHOTONWORKS COM P117 WWW MAXWELLRENDER DE P125 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PURE WWW PURERENDER COM P40 OLIVIER CUGNIET P54 THOMAS ANAGNOSTOU WWW RAYFLECTAR COM P69 HERVE STEFF WWW INSIDEKO COM P96 JOHN DOBSON 4HERO P112 WWW STACK STUDIOS COM P115 ANDRE KUTSCHERAUER 4 WWW AK3D DE P118 WWW KEYTOON COM P128 oN NY NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual ANDREA RETTORI A RETTORI TIN IT P42 YUSUKE OKAUE WWW PHOTONWORKS COM P59 CURT ROTH CGN XR311 COM P72 IVOX3 METAL APPLES P98 MARKUS GROETEKE WWW 3DWORKS COM P113 DAVID DE YARZA DYARZA SEANET COM P116 MIKE VERTA WWW MIKEVERTA COM P122 2 al 3
62. Working with Instances Merge Objects MAXWELL STUDIO MXST TEXTURING AND ASSIGNING MATERIALS Maps and Textures Creating a New UV Set UV set Channel ID Adjusting a UV Set Creating a New Material Importing a Material Assigning Material to a Single Object Assigning Materials to Several Objects Assigning Materials to Groups Hierarchies Assigning Materials to Triangles Assigning Materials to Instances Renaming a Material Enabling Disabling Textures Additional Texture Options MAXWELL STUDIO MXST RENDERING Viewport Rendering Blow Up Region Sending the Scene to MXCL Render Viewer Pack and Go Function MAXWELL STUDIO MXST PREFERENCES General Warnings Paths OpenGL Performance Import Options Shortcuts Materials Instances MAXWELL RENDER VIEWER MXCL 89 Viewer MXCL 105 89 File Menu 105 89 Render Status Bar 106 89 Console Tab 106 90 Render Options Tab 107 90 Preview MXI Tab 109 91 Multilight Tab 111 92 Network Tab 112 92 Command Line Flags 113 92 NETWORK RENDERING 93 Understanding Networking Rendering 119 93 Server 119 93 Manager 119 94 Viewer 120 94 Render Farm 120 94 Job Queue 120 94 Jobs 121 95 Adding Jobs 121 95 Displaying Jobs 121 95 Cooperative Render 122 95 Making a Cooperative Render 122 95 Making a Cooperative Renders Manually 123 95 Rendering an Animation 124 95 Options 124 Render Farm Buttons 124 Tips 125 97 97 97 98 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 127 97 INDEX 129 a SHORTCUTS
63. age has a transmittance value HSV of 200 right image has a value of 250 You can see the subscattering seems to be more localized in the right image we get a bigger distinction between areas that show subscattering and areas that do not For instance the thinner ring lets the subscattering peak through and the scattering is also brighter on the upper left part of the sphere because that is the direction the light is coming from SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 51 EMITTER PROPERTIES Ernither Light Emitter properties Input Colour Luminance In most situations an emitter material should be applied to a single polygon plane Try to keep the geometry of the emitter as low as possible as it takes more time to remove noise if the emitter is made of complex geometry EMITTER PROPERTIES Emitter properties Input Temperature of emission PAGE 52 The effect of different scattering settings can be difficult to see it depends largely on the size of the object In small objects even a low scattering value will have the effect of scattering much of the light Subsurface scattering effects EMITTER PROPERTIES The emitter material can be applied to a BSDF material or it can be a material of its own Emitter materials can be applied to any object in Maxwell To create an emitter only material create an emitter type material To add an emitter component to a normal materi
64. ains the mixer where you adjust intensity of the lights and can also animate the ISO and Shutterspeed Each emitter in the scene will be represented by a slider with the name of the emitter including the Sky any of the available Sky options and HDR MXI environment The Emixer key framed sequence can also be saved as an emixer file This is useful if you have several camera views of the same scene and you want to apply the same lighting animation to other camera views Light Slider Controls the intensity of the light It has a text box for specifying the exact intensity 5 Solo button will set this light as the only visible light muting all the others An important thing to remember is that the Solo buttons work on the principal of an audio sequencer For example if you have 20 lights in the scene you can choose to Solo two lights This is easier than having to mute 18 lights if you only wish to see the influence of two of the lights Stands for mute and will switch off the current light source Max Frames Maximum number of frames in the Emixer timeline VIDEO Save sequence Saves a sequence of images which can then be made into a video using a video editing application Transitions are animated within MXCL Load Emixer data Loads an emixer sequence file Save Emixer data Saves an emixer sequence file ACC SNL N NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MULTILIGHT TAB Multilight Tab Emixer PAGE 111 Anim
65. al rightclick on any of the BSDFs or BSDF folders and choose Only one emitter component can be added to a material Input This is the most important parameter as it defines which type of emission will be used emission There are several possibilities Colour amp Luminance Temperature of emission Image Emission Load emission data file Te RSS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual COLOUR AND LUMINANCE Colour This parameter refers to the colour of the light emitted There are two ways in which you can specify the colour RGB Red Green and Blue Clicking on the coloured square allows the user to choose a colour in the Maxwell colour picker Correlated colour at Lets you choose the colour that would correspond to an emission in Kelvin degrees Please note that choosing this option will not make any changes on intensity just colour Low Kelvin temperatures are reddish coloured 6 500K is considered white higher values will produce bluish light Luminance Specifies the intensity of the light There are several ways the user can choose Watts and Etticacy Allows you to specify how much electricity a lightsource consumes Watts and how efficiently it converts that electricity into visible light Efficacy The efficacy number specifies how many lumens are emitted per watt For example a common 40W incandescent bulb will have a pretty low efficacy of 12 6 lumens watt This data can usually be found on the manufac
66. ally obeys energy conservation laws even with Reflectance 0 at 255 but setting Reflectance 0 to almost pure white will cause loss of contrast and much more noise in the renders A white piece of paper in reality has the reflective RGB equivalent of about 220 Reflectance 90 colour however can be set as high as 255 if you need strong reflections Thicker areas are more attenuated oT SS NS N PAGE 42 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Attenuation distance As light travels through a material it loses energy and the attenuation distance parameter allows AITENUATION DISTANCE you to specify how far light can move through the object before losing half its energy For example if you have a 2cm thick glass window and you set the attenuation distance to 2cm then light shining through the glass on the other side will be half as bright Attenuation distance and transmittance work together You must set transmittance higher than RGB 0 for the attenuation distance to be taken into account Also if your attenuation distance is very small 1nm the object will remain opaque since light can only travel a very small distance into the object On the other hand if you have a 1cm thick glass window and set attenuation distance very high ex 900m and set transmittance colour to blue the glass will not be coloured blue at all it will be completely transparent because there was not enough distance in the 1cm thick glass to cause any attenuatio
67. ame Items This menu item contains several options Expand All Expands all objects and groups Expand Selection Expands all selected objects and groups Collapse All Collapse all objects and groups Collapse Selected Collapse all selected objects and groups Sort Alphabetically Sort all objects and groups alphabetically Icon Size Set the size of the icons displayed in the object list SN RE Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual OBJECT PARAMETERS When a group or a set of objects are selected in the Object list panel the Object parameters panel will show the list of parameters that can be changed for that selection The panel is divided into several sections which can be expanded collapsed by clicking on the section title GEOMETRY SECTION Position X Y Z world position of the object s Rotation Euler angles of the object s Scale X Y Z scale of the object s PIVOT SECTION Center pivot Set the pivot point to the geometric center of each object Pivot Position X Y Z position of the pivot Pivot Rotation Euler angles of the pivot DISPLAY SECTION Hidden trom Camera Hide the object from the render view but have it participate in the render calculation cast shadows refract etc Hidden trom Retlection Retraction Reflected or refracted objects are hidden seen in enough specular materials or with low roughness like a vampire in a mirror Hidden trom Means the object will r
68. an also set a black and white texture to control the roughness Brighter values in the texture means higher roughness a more diffuse surface When using a texture the roughness number is stil applicable but with a texture applied it controls the maximum roughness allowed For example if you use a black and white checkermap as a roughness texture and you set the roughness to 30 then the white parts of the texture will result in 30 roughness while the black parts will represent roughness If you now change the roughness to 70 the white parts of the texture will result in 70 roughness and the black areas will still represent O roughness oo I SS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Anisotropy Specify anisotropy strength 0 for isotropic surfaces 100 for full anisotropy You can also set a texture to control the anisotropy strength Angle Specify the anisotropy angle the main direction of reflected light You can also set a texture to control the anisotropy angle Bump and Normal Mapping Specify a bump texture and the bump strength There is an additional option to specify a normal map as a bump texture For normal maps you have the choice of flipping the X Y Z in the texture picker depending on how the normal map was created Bump is a very sensible parameter and standard values will be around 1 15 COATING PROPERTIES Coatings are very thin layers that are placed on top of the BSDF Because coatings are so th
69. areas in the image In most cases this parameter should be left at default Lowering it too much may produce unnatural looking images Monitor Gamma Maxwell internally uses a gamma of 2 2 to convert from spectral space to RGB space You can use this parameter to control the gamma conversion Lower gamma values darkens the image higher values lightens the image Note that you can control this parameter interactively while rendering in MXCL Vignetting Vignetting is an artifact darkening the image through the edges due to camera optics now you can partially or completely remove it by dragging the slider from 1000 to O A NAI CN NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 85 RENDER CHANNELS Several render layers are available useful for compositing tasks Calculating more layers will take RENDER OPTIONS PANEL extra time at the beginning of the rendering phase The output will be saved in the same directory as set in the MXCL Render Path Render Output the main render image Alpha Output the alpha image Object ID Output multicoloured material silhouettes zButter Output an image representing scene depth within the two values specified in zBuffer range The range is in meters Shadow Shadow Pass shows the cast shadows of the materials with the Flag enabled Material 10 Output multicoloured object silhouettes Les psa lair errr laor er ee n FTE i ILLUMINATION LAYERS Choose whet
70. ated Timeline Creating a Keytrame Grab the slider to set a keyframe at the desired time Rightclick on the slider set the keyframe and adjust light values or turn them on and off Deleting a Keytrame Go to the keyframe you want to delete you will notice it is a keyframe because the slider will turn orange Rightclick on the slider and choose Playback Controls Go the beginning of the timeline Play the sequence preview with this button or press spacebar Pause the animation with this button or press spacebar CO Disable preview Use this button to disable changes in the preview window Toggle status of all emitters Invert solo and mute status of emitters Export separate layers By clicking this option you will get a separate image per emitter and per frame Export separate layers gt NETWORK TAB Network tab gives access to users to the networking rendering controls in order to manage jobs sent to the render farm Please refer to page 117 to know how network rendering and this particular tab work NSN NS NI PAGE 112 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MXCL is the standalone rendering engine and can be used either from the command line Maxwell Studio or from the 3D applications Maxwell plug ins In order to check that Maxwell Render has been properly installed type mxcl in a command line window MXCL Commands should be listed like in the image below Windows OS Ma well Hende
71. aterials PREFERENCES PANEL Set a materials folder in Studio preferences Edit gt Preferences gt Paths PAGE 78 Select Assigned Objects Select a material and choose this option to select all objects that have this material applied Select Assigned Triangles Select a material and choose this option to select all triangles that have this material applied Add Assigned Triangles If you already have selected some triangles in the scene use this option to add to that selection all triangles that have this material applied Remove Assigned Triangles If you already have selected some triangles in the scene use this option to remove from that selection all triangles that have this material applied Reload Preview Select one or several materials and choose this option to generate a new preview for all the selected materials at once Items This menu contains the option to sort the materials alphabetically Icon Size Set the size of the icons displayed in the material list MATERIAL BROWSER This panel provides a way to browse the Maxwell materials available on your system It is also available in the MXED the standalone material editor For every MXM file found in the material database the material browser shows a small preview of the material Within the Maxwell installation folder there is a material database that you can browse If you have set a materials folder in Studio preferences Edit gt Preferences gt Paths
72. be rendered You can specify another name than the currently loaded scene and Studio will save it under that name before starting the render RENDER OPTIONS PANEL IMG Specify name along with suffix eg jpg omp tif png and path for the image file created when rendering An image file is always created when rendering if you don t specify a path and name it will be saved as default png in your Maxwell install folder MXI Specify a name and path for the file created when rendering An file is always created when rendering if you don t specify a path and name it will be saved as default mxi in your Maxwell install folder Mus p etn oboe wn nhan nee Ag eae le Mus pacati eiie uem lc La Multilight Enabled Enables the Multilight feature Disable Bitmaps No textures will be used when rendering and all materials will be replaced by a default Maxwell material Command Line Text box where you can enter any command line option please refer to page 111 Any of the commands entered here will overwrite the render options As an example you can render to a test resolution from command line without losing the final render parameters specified in Resolution parameter in the Camera Parameters panel Burn Parameter to control the highlights in a render Lower burn values will decrease the intensity of the highlights to avoid burned out
73. bject list panel is where all the groups and objects in the scene are listed in an Explorer style interface The material applied to objects groups are shown to the right Further to the right is a lock icon allowing you to lock an object to prevent accidental movement You can still apply a different material to a locked object Each column in this panel can be resized by click dragging on the column separators Assign Material Select one or more objects and or groups and select this option to apply a material to the selection Clone Create clones of your current selection Instance OBJECT LIST PANEL Create instances of the current selection Group Select more than one object and select this option to create a group from the selection A pop up will appear allowing you to name the group Groups can be nested to create hierarchies Simply drag drop a group over another group or object Ungroup Select one or more groups and select this command to ungroup the objects contained in the group s Group Triangles Select an object and switch to triangle selection d mode select some triangles and choose this command to make a triangle group from that triangle selection The triangle group can be found in the Object parameters panel under the Triangle Groups tab New UV set Select one or more objects and click this button to create a new UV set for the object s Select all All objects and groups will be selected Desele
74. ce There are different kinds of UV sets cubic spherical cylindrical and planar to project the Bitmap according to the desired effect CREATING A NEW UV SET Select the object and Rightclick in the viewport or click the Geometry menu and choose New UV Set The new UV set will be added to the UV Sets section in the Object parameters panel where all UV sets belonging to the object are listed Every UV set contains a set of editable parameters These parameters are available in the Object Parameters Panel UV parameters section You can add as many UV sets as you want to a single object Every UV set will be given a unique channel number For details about the parameters in the UV set parameters panel please see page 74 UV SET CHANNEL ID It is important to understand that the channel ID of the UV set is the way for Maxwell Studio to know which texture should use which UV set You specify this channel number in the material editors texture picker For example if you have two UV sets applied to an object one cylindrical with the channel ID of 0 and one flat UV set with the channel ID of 1 and you want to map a texture to the object using the flat UV set then you must specify in the texture picker for it to use Channel 1 JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MAPS AND TEXTURES Cubic Spherical and Planar UV sets CREATING A NEW UV SET Edit Selection Render Window Help Clone instance Se
75. ch is reflecting equally no matter the viewing angle but the reflections will appear weaker For opaque materials an Nd of at least three is recommended if you want them to become reflective Metals have even higher Nd The Nd setting can go as high as 1000 For a mirror like surface it s usually enough to set the Nd at 100 Note For a lambertian material the Nd has no influence on the look of the material For transparent materials Nd also controls the amount of refraction Seawater for example has an Nd of about 1 33 oo I SS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Abbe Different wavelengths of light can be refracted at slightly different angles as they pass through a material and this is what causes dispersion the effect seen when a beam of light passes through a prism and is split up into the different wavelengths of light The name Abbe comes from the German physicist Ernst Abbe who defined the Abbe number Abbe controls the amount of dispersion the higher the Abbe number the less dispersion will be visible in the render An Abbe number higher than 60 70 will render as if dispersion was not activated Load file This option allows us to include an r2 file to have a maximum control of the fresnel effect over the surface For most materials the falloff between the 0 color and the 90 is controlled by the ND and roughness parameters a high ND number means more of the 90 color will be visible when using a low roug
76. ct all All objects and groups will be deselected Rightclicking in the Object list panel will open its options aN ANS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 73 OBJECT LIST PANEL By Rightclicking on the Objects window you can gain quick access to the dropdown menu PAGE 74 Select by Keyword A pop up appears where you can enter a string of characters found anywhere in an objects name For example if your scene contains the objects named Glass Container and Plastic Container entering Contain in the pop up will select both objects Invert Inverts the current selection Hide Unhide Hides or unhides the current object group selection from the viewport display and rendering Unhide All Unhides all objects in the scene that were hidden Merge Objects Select two or more objects and choose this command to merge them into one object Remove Select one or more groups or objects Choose this command to delete them Note that objects in the group s will also be deleted Rename Select an object or group and choose this command to rename it Shading mode Set the shading of the current selection Note that the shading mode set in viewport has precedence for lower shading modes For example if viewport shading is set to wireframe it will override the shading mode set per object On the other hand if viewport is set to Textured and you set object shading to Wireframe the objects will be displayed in wirefr
77. d lens set diaphragm aperture diaphragm blades etc By using this type of camera model Maxwell Render can automatically simulate depth of field motion blur effects image distortion and aperture diffraction due to the lens set Other render engines currently on the market use post render filters or special tricks to create these effects Maxwell Render does not produce motion blur as a post process or using various tricks Instead Maxwell Render considers the moving objects to have random positions along their trajectories during the camera shutter speed time This creates a natural and realistic motion blur Some improvements in this area have been made for this version and now motion blur computes Clip Maps and Opacity Maps perfectly PAGE 18 SimuLens Diffraction happens when light goes through small holes apertures and behaves like waves It is very important in optics as it explains why a perfect telescope or microscope that can take a photograph of a star and render it as a single dot instead of some circles halos or streaks Maxwell Render s SimuLens system allows the user to define a pattern to simulate the shape of the diaphragm that will model the pattern of light reaching the camera film creating realistic lens diffraction effects glare Furthermore users can add a second pattern which defines obstacles in the lens such as dust fingerprints or eyelashes adding to a more realistic diffraction effect
78. default icon size for objects materials and the toolbar PREFERENCES PANEL PATHS WARNINGS You can specify here whether Studio should show warning pop ups before proceeding with operations such as deleting objects and materials Do not show material performance warnings check box is used for hiding pop ups when you turn on dispersion or load an IOR file in the material editor PATHS You can specify here the default paths that Maxwell should use Paths can be set for Scenes Materials Textures Renders Temp MXS files used when rendering through MXCL viewer Default MXM NSN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 99 PREFERENCES PANEL OPENGL PREFERENCES PANEL IMPORT OPTIONS PAGE 100 OPENGL APPEARANCE Set colour Colour of viewport backgrounds Threshold Maximum angle to merge polygon lines shown in the viewport this is only applied to OpenGL display no polygon lines are merged for rendering Enable sky in new scenes Physical sky will be on by default in new scenes DISPLAY SELECTION MODE Wire selected objects will have their wireframe lit up in orange Brackets selected objects will display brackets surrounding them This mode can be useful when adjusting textures on dense objects so the wireframe doesn t obscure the texture PERFORMANCE Vertex Buffers Uses the vertex buffer feature of OpenGL 1 5 to greatly increase viewport speed with heavy geometry Disable this featur
79. e MXCL will use the same amount of memory as if you were rendering 1 real copy of that object Hierarchies Nesting groups into groups is now possible in Maxwell Studio This is important for scene management and to provide an easy workflow for big scenes You can also parent objects to other objects or groups to an object Transtormation and object manipulation This area has been entirely re written to improve the workflow and make it more user friendly stable and reliable JN NS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 19 Maxwell Render Studio now keeps track of all scene changes and shows them listed in a history panel Users can scroll through the history list to undo redo changes The history list can also be purged Maxwell Render Studio s user interface has got a good organization thought for a versatile use and a fast workflow Also layouts can be configured stored and exchanged displays applied materials to the right of the object name inside the object ist for a faster overview of applied materials 5 pane has been fused with triangles and projectors panels Parameters panels h hove been for collapsing expanding groups of settings individually ohi s and the possibility to change layout aspects Icon size in object list and material list can be switched between small medium large textures can be dropped from one slot to another Settings for one slot quickly copi
80. e their knowledge with other users It includes tutorials tips videos and documents Some of them are even translated to different languages and it is in short a growing reference for the community oo SSS NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 23 5 5 5 Uo 9 o c ES 2 Z gt MATERIALS INTRODUCTION Before explaining the material parameters used in the Maxwell material system it is important to have a basic understanding of what light is how it interacts with materials and why a material White liaht looks shiny dull transparent etc Please review this information as it will make the parameters in nie ngn the Maxwell material editor much easier to understand 1 Heflected red light WHAT IS LIGHT Visible light is really very small portion range of electromagnetic radiation This radiation travels in waves of different wavelengths The difference in wavelengths the tops of each wave is what makes the difference between blue red gamma rays x rays radio waves etc Gamma X rays Ultraviolet Infrared Radar TV Shortwave AM rays rays rays t M Visible light ium 400nm 600nm T U0nm Wavelength nanometers White light is a combination of all the colours in the visible light spectrum and when we perceive an object as red for example what happens white light falls on the red surface a
81. e concepts in the following pages ADDING REMOVING LAYERS In the material component panel Rightclick in the panel The following menu appears Add Basic Layer This option creates a new layer with one BSDF Only one BSDF is allowed per layer Add Emitter Adds an emitter component Emitters can be mixed with a material for example if you have this material applied to a lightbulb when the emitter is on it will shine light on the scene just like a regular emitter and when turned off it will reveal the glass bulb material Only one emitter component is allowed for the whole material Add Coating Adds a new coating to the selected layer Add Subsurtace Adds subsurface component to the selected layer only one SSS component per layer is allowed Add Displacement Adds displacement component to the current material Only one displacement component is allowed per material oT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Embed MXM tile Imports an MXM Maxwell material file into the current material The new materials layers are added to the current layers Reset Layer Restores default parameters in currently selected layer Remove Layer Deletes the current selected layer You can click on the folder icon to delete all the components in the layer or click an individual component to only delete the selected component Example of emitter added to a material Material Emitter layer and glass emitting light
82. e high end rendering market architectural visualisation product design jewelry film production and scientific research Maxwell Render has been built for Windows 32 and 64 bits Linux 64 bits and Mac OS X UB platforms This version includes plug in connections to 3ds VIZ XSI Maya LightWave Rhinoceros SolidWorks Archicad CINEMA formeZ SketchUp and indirectly AllPlan and solidThinking not supported by Next Limit Additionally other file formats are supported such as OBJ STL LWO XC2 DXF 3DS and FBX Maxwell Render includes features such as a material editor material browser and library texture mapping support light and camera editors and sky and environment options all based in physically accurate models The 1 6 version provides both GUI and command line functionality LI NAI NY NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 11 gt MAXWELL RENDER 1 6 FEATURES RENDER ENGINE CHARACTERISTICS Physically Correct Maxwell Rendering technology is strictly based upon the real governing physical equations of light transport Maxwell Render is capable of producing incredibly realistic illumination results without having to resort to illumination tricks Consequently the results produced by Maxwell Render are highly accurate renditions of the real world Spectral Calculations for Light and Object Properties Most render engines perform calculations in a specific colour space typically RGB However i
83. e if you experience problems or artifacts in the viewport display Smooth Enable disable line antialiasing Lights Number of lights used OpenGL viewports lexture Res Texture resolution to use in the OpenGL viewports Show bounding box when navigating Acceleration mode showing the objects as bounding boxes when rotating panning zooming in the viewport Use absolute grid By default the Studio grid adapts to the current zoom level Using absolute grid allows you to specify a fixed grid Spacing Distance between each grid line Lines nr of lines to display in the grid ex if Spacing is set to 1m and Lines to 10 the entire grid will be 10m big Major lines frequency How often a thick grid line should appear ex if set to 2 every other grid line will appear thicker IMPORT OPTIONS MXS IMPORT OPTIONS Create one UV set per each object loaded If an object in an MXS file generated by a plug in for example does not have any UV information this option will create a UV set for the object Normalize UVs of objects with real scale applied If some objects in the MXS file are assigned materials which have real scale enabled this option will normalize the UVs of those objects so that the textures will be displayed and rendered properly for those objects SN RE Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Create triangle groups automatically in multimaterial objects This option is useful for importing older MXS scen
84. e in your base mesh the less precision you will need to render the same amount of displacement detail Thus using less precision will always render faster For example if you re planning to render displacement over a plane model your initial plane using more than 2 triangles A typical 4 x 4 subdivision will remarkably speed it up Objects made of evenly distributed polygons are preferred for better quality Otherwise you will need to increase the precision to compensate the surface fidelity and it will add to your render time Rendering Sharp Details For rendering sharp details consider turning off texture filtering It will help you render high contrast areas in your texture sharper If you re using a moderate precision value displacement will tend to smooth the rendered detail In this case you should also turn off Smoothing under displacement options for rendering the details sharper Keep in mind that turning off texture interpolation will tend to reveal stair stepping effect if using 8 bit maps with smooth gradients in them oo I SS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Object Smoothing Angle To avoid any possible artifacts gaps in the displacement on objects which contain polygons connected at sharp angles make sure you set an object smoothing angle that exceeds the max polygon angle the object contains e g for a cube it should be 90 or greater SCATTERING SUBSURFACE SCATTERING PROPERTIES Subsurface scattering SSS
85. e location or date time settings which would change the sky illumination Google Earth Data Allows you to import a KML file to set the location ATMOSPHERE Sun Enable or disable direct sunlight The direct sun light can be enabled or disabled independent from the sky light lurbidity Ozone Water Physical properties of the sky slightly affect the colour components of the sky Increasing turbidity gives a warmer yellow tone increasing Ozone gives a colder blue tone Pan b P NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual SKY GLOBE You can interactively rotate the Earth in the display to change to a different location Use AIt LMB to rotate and AlttRMB to zoom in out The shortcut key K enables or disables the sky representation in the graphical viewport The graphical viewport shows the geographical directions N E S amp W by means of a compass located in the bottom left corner The sun is represented by a small yellow sphere that points to the sun direction When the sun is below the horizon the yellow sphere fades to black IMAGE BASED Applies an HDR EXR image file to a spherical environment These three image formats store high dynamic range data providing accurate environment lighting NOTE That there are several available channels for specitying MXI HDR EXR maps this is a very powertul feature as it allows the user to have more control over the effects of the environment on the scene For example you
86. e of the blades for Polygonal diaphragm ROTARY DISC SHUTTER Shutter Angle FPS Enabling this check box allows the amount of motion blur in an image to be affected properly by the Shutter Angle parameter found in animation cameras For still camera photography Maxwell Render s default the amount of motion blur in an image is controlled by the Shutter Speed parameter The lower this value is the longer the shutter is open and the more pronounced the motion blur will be However for animations where you are replicating a film camera the shutter speed is generally fixed to a certain speed usually 24 frames per second 1 24 Since film cameras can t control the amount of motion blur by changing the shutter speed they instead have a rotating disc with an adjustable pie shaped cut out on it which controls how long each frame is exposed The width of the cut out is called Shutter Angle and is expressed in degrees Fully open 180 degrees will yield the maximum amount of motion blur while a very narrow setting say 15 degrees will produce very subtle motion blur This feature automatically translates your usual ISO Shutter speed settings in combination with the Shutter Angle so your animation exposure will match your still image exposure while producing the proper amount of motion blur Maxwell Shutter exposure FPS 360 Shutter Angle Shutter Angle FPS 360 Maxwell Shutter exposure of blur Shutter Angle 100
87. ecking light levels and if textures are mapped correctly to objects Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 97 PAGE 98 PACK AND GO FUNCTION This function can be accessed from File gt Pack and Go The Pack and Go function lets you copy all materials textures IOR files used in the scene as well as the scene file itself to a folder of your choice This makes it very easy to share scenes with other users or use the Pack and Go function if you want to quickly organize your scene making sure you have gathered everything that is needed tT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MAXWELL STUDIO MXST PREFERENCES The Preferences can be accessed from the top menu Edit gt Preferences GENERAL Delete temporary tiles when closing When exiting Studio this option will delete the temporary MXS files created for rendering APPEARANCE Load Studio look This option will display the Studio default grey look PREFERENCES PANEL GENERAL Show RGB colours in axis In object and camera panels the X Y Z axis numeric input boxes can display a colour indicating the axis of the numeric input X Red Y Green Z Blue Scroll in lists to the item selected in viewport The object list panel will automatically scroll to show the currently selected object Check tor updates automatically By selecting this checkbox Maxwell will check for any new Maxwell Render updates available icons size Set the
88. ed to all slots Decim orecision can be defined by the user globally or per parameter list has been added to Physical Sky which loads a list of cities from a text file Cities c can be added removed easily from the list by editing the text file when setting a certain location Studio automatically sets the correct GMT for that location bility to rotate the Physical Sky system for easier positioning of the sun Ability to rotate and scale the entire scene along with the cameras d options allow you to set the grid in absolute units erences for the latest changes s or cameras to prevent accidental movement panel to show instances of selected object This new of plugs ins is highly superior to previous ones and we will continue to improve all plug ins Generally the plug ins are much more integrated and transparent to users allowing for a faster workflow more flexibility and ease of use This version includes plug in connections to 3ds Max VIZ LightWave Maya Rhinoceros SolidWorks Archicad CINEMA formeZ and SketchUp and there are currently more plugins being made by third parties oN SS NSI ae OUTPUT MX MXI is the Maxwell Render proprietary high dynamic range format It stores lighting information per pixel and per light individually if Multilight is enabled along with RGBA values as opposed to common 24 or 32 bits images that can only store RGB or RGBA values The MXI format is more
89. ema 4D LightWave XSI Rhino SolidWorks SketchUp Form Z and ArchiCAD However an alternative workflow is possible using Maxwell Render Studio a 3D application to set up your scene All the plugins have been re written or heavily improved within this version or the previous one and we will continue doing so for next versions Geometry Accepted Maxwell Render is not a full 3D application but a render engine so modeling within Maxwell Render is not possible Instead Maxwell Render needs polygons to be able to light and shade surfaces So a lot of polygonal formats are accepted like dxf obj and lwo among others Furthermore plug ins convert other types of geometry to polygons internally so that things like nurbs and surfaces are still renderable Instances Maxwell Render now has the possibility to generate instances from almost all available platforms This is a great enhancement in memory terms as multiple copies of objects will now have little impact on memory consumption SNA NS NSS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 13 PAGE 14 nima Preview Engine Maxwell Render s preview engine is called RS0 as opposed to RS1 which is the render engine This preview engine is faster and lower in quality than RS1 and it has been improved for this version Core Engine The RS1 engine brings the quality of rendered images to a completely new level Memory intensive tasks such as glare Multilight with a l
90. ender but will not affect lighting Exclude trom ZClip If this option is selected the object won t be cut by ZClip planes Show normals Show the normals of the object in the viewport Normal Size The display length of the normals Shading lype Choose the display mode for the selected object s ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual OBJECT PARAMETERS 1 Object panel with Geometry Pivot and Display sections expanded PAGE 75 OBJECT PARAMETERS 2 SMOOTHING Sphere A with smoothing on PAGE 76 Sphere B with smoothing set to Flat Normals Reverse This will change the renderable side of the polygon by changing the direction of the normal vector It is relevant with objects that have got emitter or dielectrics materials applied Recalc Recalculate the objects normals This parameter can help remove rendering artifacts due to corrupt normals of an imported object Smoothing Choose whether to smooth objects at render time or if the object s should not be smoothed Flat Smoothing Angle Angle of smoothing If the angle between adjacent polygons is smaller or equal to this angle they will be smoothed UV SETS SECTION Displays all the UV sets belonging to the current object Note that only one object has to be selected for the list to display the UV sets To know more about how to create an UV Set please refer to page number 91 UV PARAMETERS Lets you edit the parameters of the currently se
91. entimeter cm set it to 0 1 If it was created using millimeter mm set this option at 0 01 Rotation X Y Z Lets you change the rotation of the DXF file for systems that use the Z axis as the up axis for example SHORTCUTS Allows you to set your own shortcut keys for Studio commands View keys You can see in this menu all the keyboard shotcuts listed Invert rotation Allows you to invert the rotation behavior when rotating the view in the graphical viewports SN IN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PREFERENCES PANEL IMPORT OPTIONS PREFERENCES PANEL MATERIALS PAGE 101 PREFERENCES PANELS PAGE 102 MATERIALS Set texture paths and material editor preview options TEXTURES Extension independent textures This feature is very useful if you wish to convert a series of materials that use textures in one format to materials that use the same textures but in another format For example if you have 100 materials using only tga textures and you have converted those textures to jpg to save space and kept the same texture names drag and drop all your materials from the Material browser into the Material list panel in Studio you can select all of them and drag and drop all materials at once Studio then sees that the tga versions of the textures are no longer available and instead searches the same textures by name but with a different extension This way all your materials have been
92. erative MXI file in the temp directory of the operating system of each render node Pen mb N d Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MXI NEW MXI MXI bw gt FINAL MXI MXI FINAL RENDER 7 7 NEW b NEW MXI MXI Note It is strongly advised that there is only one Manager activated MAKING COOPERATIVE RENDERS MANUALLY In order to make a cooperative render manually each file from the different computers must have a different starting seed so that each render has a slightly different noise pattern This random seed value is given automatically by the idcpu command the user does not have to specify it please check idcpu flag in command line flags for details on page 114 Once the rendering has finished on each individual computer you can use File gt Merge MX to select a folder where all these MXI files MXCL will then merge all the MXI files and save new file which will a higher sampling level than any of the individual MXI files higher sampling level less noise NOTE In order to put all cooperative MXI files together in a single folder you will have to rename them and collect them from their respective computers Locate each cooperative MXI file in the temp directory of the operating system of each render node Select File gt Load MX and pick the merged MXI file that was just created Once this file is loaded you can adjust it and make the app
93. es in which case Studio will create the triangle groups for each imported object that had multiple materials applied to it If this option is off Studio still imports the objects correctly with multiple materials applied but you will not have any triangle groups to edit in case you want to add delete to the triangle selection or apply other materials to the triangle groups Please not that for a scene with many objects turning this option on will increase scene loading time The newer plug ins automatically create triangle groups so this option is not necessary OBJ IMPORT OPTIONS Create one UV set per each object loaded If an object in an OBJ file does not have any UV information this option will create a UV set for the object DXF IMPORT OPTIONS Create one UV channel per each object loaded If an object in an DXF file does not have any UV information this option will create a UV set for the object Create one material per group DXF layers will be imported as groups in Studio and this option creates and assigns the same material to all objects that are part of that group Launch material conversion table When importing a DXF with several layers this option brings up the material conversion table which lets you specify which material should be assigned to which layer Scale factor Lets you specify the scale that was used for creating the DXF file If your DXF was created using meters leave this option at 1 000 If created in c
94. exe server optionally you can add silent switch for starting minimized at task bar THE NETWORK COMPONENTS ARE SERVER S USAGE MAXWELL MANAGER Responsible for rendering on every node Each node can run one server at a time Running MXCL exe with server turns a computer into a render node So you should start a server on every single computer you want to make a render with MANAGER S Responsible for managing the render queue and distributing jobs among the network Manager is the most comprehensive and sophisticated component of the Maxwell Network which works mxcl exe manager silently in the background Running MXCL exe with manager switch on your computer is enough optionally you can add silent switch for starting minimized at task bar to initialize a manager in a renderfarm NOTE A manager computer can also run as a server In this way it can both manage the network rendering and also contribute to the rendering process More than one manager can coexist in a network These complex configurations are meant for big renderfarms In a network with more than one manager each server will be affiliated to a manager aN ANS NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 119 mxcl exe d RENDER FARM PAGE 120 ingroup VIEWER Also called Maxwell Display it s responsible for user interaction with Maxwell Render network Viewer is the user end frontface for managing every task in a
95. f realism in comparison to traditional render engines outputting smoother shadows and increasing the overall quality Another important characteristic of the Maxwell Render engine is the number of lights that can be placed in the same scene Most other render engines cannot handle a large number of area lights without incurring a significant performance loss Light sources in Maxwell Render are defined by spectral characteristics Thus a light source can possess a lot of information about the intensity of emission at any of the possible wavelengths Using Maxwell Render the user can choose from three different types of environments The first one is a sky dome defined by colour plus intensity Sky dome now has the ability to use sunlight from the Physical Sky Users can also choose for a HDR MXI environment to make use of lighting information of high dynamic range image formats It is also possible to use a physically based sky simulator or physical sky where the user simply specifies the geographical location and the time of day for a scene and Maxwell Render automatically handles the rest Multilight is an advanced tool for editing lighting It allows changing the intensity of individual lights during and after the rendering process These changes affect all global illumination and lighting aspects of the scene Multilight is also a real compositor that can produce a lighting animation from a single render It is possible to save eac
96. g feature Maxwell can render the scene in a specified amount of minutes providing the best possible quality Example p low Set Maxwell priority to low priority low threads N Specifies the number of threads N that Maxwell is th N allowed to use Normally this should be equal to the number of CPUs available in the system By default N is the number of CPUs found in the system except in cases where hyperthreading features are available display Opens a window and displays the render in progress d This option is also used when distributing render tasks For more information read the section related to network rendering JN NS NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 115 Sampling level This value establishes a quality level for the render This S level _ value is useful when you want to render a sequence of frames using different hardware configurations If the quality level is reached before the maximum render time then the render ends Alternatively if the maximum render time is reached before the sampling _ level the render also stops the calculus To have an idea of the image quality during the render process you can take a look at the command line window where the sampling level is being actualized during the render process Enables Multilight function storing an mxi file with all the emitters information vignetting value 0 100 This option controls the vignetting parameter v value
97. g Options Choose to tile the material in X Y axis and the tiling amount Offset texture Choose an offset for the X Y axis Invert texture Inverts the loaded texture Practical for black and white textures used as weightmap on a two BSDF material You can re use the inverted version of the same texture on the second BSDF weight Real scale m Checking this box will make Studio use a 1m x 1m x 1m projector for this texture regardless of what other projector is applied to the object This is very useful for creating reusable materials which you can simply drag and drop on any size object For example if you want to create a material with 25cm tiles check the Real Scale Box and set the tiling for both X and Y axis to 0 25 Now you can drop this material on any size floor and your tiles will always be 25cm Filtering Turning this option on applies filtering to the texture which may be useful in some cases to avoid pixelisation when rendering closeups of smaller textures Filtering is mostly useful for displacement textures to smooth out the displaced surface especially when using 8bit textures It is recommended to keep this option turned off for regular textures color bump weightmaps etc to avoid blurring these textures Channel Specify the UV set to be used for this texture In Studio a UV set is a set of UV coordinates for an object One object can have several UV sets If an object only has one UV set applied to it t
98. h emitter in a separate layers for each frame It also works with other characteristics of the MXI format making the Multilight system compatible with SimuLens NSN NSI NI PAGE 16 SHADING Materials Based On Real Optical Properties Maxwell Render materials are defined in a physically correct manner from their BSDF curves Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function adding the ability to superpose different layers of physical materials in the same object like other BSDF or SSS Sub Surface Scattering effects Thin coatings are also available for very subtle and realistic effects for creating thin film interference effects such as the multicoloured look of a thin layer of oil in water or soap bubbles The improved calculation of IOR data provides the possibility for users to use IOR data files directly measured in laboratories This allows for easier rendering of real life materials Maxwell Render materials are not only physically correct but also very flexible and versatile They allow for the creation of special materials such as Opacity Maps and Clip Maps Normal Mapping is also supported and it is possible to set the intensity of Normal mapping with bump value Emitter Materials are defined in a very intuitive way using everyday terms like watts or efficacy Emitter materials can be mixed with BSDFs as well In this way if the light is only incandescence can be seen But if the emitter is switched off
99. hat UV set will be nr 0 If an object has two UV sets they will have the numbers 0 and 1 More info on texturing workflow in Studio can be found in the TEXTURING section on page 91 oT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual COLOUR PICKER Maxwell colour picker is a simple and fast tool for choosing colours The circle on the outside coloured wheel lets the user rotate the triangle inside choosing the hue The second circle lets you choose value and brightness within the hue selected You can also specify the colour in HSV RGB or XYZ coordinates with the text boxes below the chromatic graph DRAG AND DROP FUNCTIONALITY The material editor has certain drag amp drop features You can drag amp drop COLOUR CHIPS TEXTURE ICONS MI By default both texture and texture settings tiling offset etc are copied Hold Shift before starting the drag amp drop to only copy the texture itself The drag amp drop functionality also works between BSDFs you can drag a colour chip or texture icon from one BSDF to another To do so start dragging the icon over a BSDF layer icon and the rightside of the material editor will change to show the BSDF layer properties Now you can drop the icon in one of the appropriate slots JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual COLOUR PICKER DRAG AND DROP You can drag and drop colour chips and texture icons into other areas PAGE 39 A SS NS N PAGE 40 Maxwell Render 1 6 User
100. he base SI unit for luminous intensity the power of light emitted in a certain direction Luminance nit cd m 2 One Nit is one candela per square meter Load Preset Maxwell Render provides some emitter presets of standard type lightsources TEMPERATURE OF EMISSION A temperature in Kelvin degrees can be chosen This will affect not only the colour but also the intensity of the emission A higher temperature will make the emission more intense The colour will change from RED low temperature to ORANGE gt YELLOWISH gt gt WHITE BLUE IMACE EMISSION This emission option allows you to texture an emitter with an MXI HDR EXR The intensity of an MXI HDR EXR map can be adjusted using MXCL MXCL can also be used for converting regular bitmaps or an HDR EXR map into an MXI map For more info about using MXCL for adjusting HDR EXR maps or creating maps see the section on on page 102 ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MIRROR LIKE MATERIAL The Nd was set to a high value here 1000 since we wanted a totally reflective surface The roughness was set very low in order to have sharp reflections The Reflectance 90 colour was set to full white to have strong reflections The Reflectance 0 colour was left at default 128 grey which such a high Nd the Reflectance 0 will have almost no influence on the look of the material PAGE 55 gt MATERIALS TIPS In this section we will provide
101. he scene items objects cameras etc You can create as many viewports in a layout as needed Any panel can be switched to display a 3D 2D viewport NAVIGATION These are the basic functions to navigate in the graphical viewports ALT LMB ROTATE CAMERA AROUND THE TARGET ORIGIN ALT MMB PAN CAMERA ALT RMB ZOOM IN OUT CAMERA ALT CTRL LMB slow mode slowly rotate camera around the target origin Up Down arrows on keyboard can be used to change how slowly the camera should move in this mode You can repeatedly press the Down or Up arrows to adjust then use ALT CTRL left mouse button ALT CTRL MMB slow mode slowly pan camera ALT CTRL RMB slow mode slowly zoom in out camera ALT SHIFT LMB ROTATE CAMERA TARGET AROUND THE CAMERA ORIGIN ALT SHIFT RMB DISPLACE CAMERA ORIGIN ALONG THE LOOK AT DIRECTION This also moves the camera s focal point camera target along with the camera ALT SHIFT MMB ROLL CAMERA The last function is only available when the viewport is a camera view Additionally there are quick navigation options when Rightclicking on any viewport Reset Viewport will reset the viewport to a default perspective view Look at Selection applies to both camera and perspective view and it centers the selection on the viewport without changing the position of the viewer or the camera zoom Center Selection centers the current selectio
102. her to render direct lighting indirect lighting or both Render time could be slightly reduced when disabling any of these layers Direct Enables the direct lighting render layer Direct lighting is considered light that falls directly on objects Indirect Enables the indirect lighting render layer Indirect lighting is considered light that has already bounced off of another object CAUSTICS LAYERS Controls the rendering of caustics Render time could be slightly reduced when disabling any of these layers Reflection Direct Enables the direct reflected caustics if direct layer is enabled These are caustic light patterns caused by direct light bounced off reflective objects Reflection Indirect Enables the indirect reflected caustics if indirect layer is enabled These are caustic light patterns caused by indirect light bounced off reflective objects Refraction Direct Enables the direct refracted caustics if direct layer is enabled These are caustic light patterns caused by direct light going through refractive objects Retraction Indirect Enables the indirect refracted caustics if indirect layer is enabled These are caustic light patterns caused by indirect light going through refractive objects SN RE NSIS N PAGE 86 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual VIEWPORT PREVIEW Set the options for the preview rendering in the viewports Bounces Number of bounces for the preview renderer more bounces the
103. hness value but as you increase the roughness the 90 color will start to disappear until at roughness 99 or lambert the 90 color won t be visible at all This is the normal behavior but there may be special cases where you would like to control the influence of roughness and still keep the 90 visible at high roughness Examples would be car paints that quickly change their color to another color based on viewing angle or velvet which has a high roughness but has a bright sheen which would not be possible to create without an r2 file The r2 file is a simple text file containing two parameters You can make your own r2 files with a text editor and writing for example 35 0 Save it with an r2 extension and load it in the Load file of the IOR section of the material editor NOT the Load full ior section The first parameter can be set between 0 90 and controls the falloff angle between the 0 and 90 colors The second parameter can be set between 0 100 and controls how much roughness should influence the effect For instance if you write 45 0 the 90 color will start appearing when the viewing angle increases more than 45 and roughness will have no influence on the effect Other r2 file examples 15 0 the 90 color will quickly become visible right after the viewing angle is 15 and more Roughness will not influence the effect 70 50 the 90 color would become visible only at a large viewing angle making it a
104. idden line like wireframe but backfacing polygons are not shown Flat flat shading Toon cartoon shading Shaded smooth shading Texture decal textures are previewed in the viewport without shading Textured textures are previewed in the viewport with shading THE VIEWPORT GRID The grid visible in both 3D and 2D viewports gives you an indication of how big your objects are For the 3D viewport there is a grid size indicator at the bottom right of the viewport showing the current grid size This indicator will change as you zoom in out of the viewport and the grid spacing updates The number of the grid size indicator tells you the distance between two bright lines of the grid For the 2D viewports the grid shows size indicators starting from the scenes origin and they increase from that point You can also use an absolute grid setting in the Studio preferences OpenGL section in which case the grid will show a fixed size no matter the zoom level NS NIN EZ Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual DISPLAY MODES a9 F BL RT O Bounding box Wireframe Hidden line Flat Toon Shaded Textured decal Textured GRID SCALE Grid 0 5m The Grid size is also indicated in the bottom right cornor of your window PAGE 65 DISPLAY PREFERENCES On the Mac this is under the MXStudio Menu gt Preferences gt OpenGL CREATING A CAMERA PAGE 66 DISPLAY PREFERENCES Display preferences are found the
105. ies 59 Materials 102 Multiple Cameras 59 MXS Import Options 100 PREFERENCES 99 Preview 102 Shortcuts 101 Sky Options 59 NAVIGATION 7 63 Center Scene 63 Center Selection 63 Look at Selection 63 Reset Viewport 63 Rightclicking 63 NEAR 09 71 NETWORK RENDERING 119 Adding Jobs 121 Displaying Jobs 2 Job Queue 20 MANAGER 119 Render Farm 120 SERVER 119 Viewer 120 NETWORK TAB 112 NEW CAMERA 81 NEW EMITTER 77 PAGE 135 NEW MATERIAL 77 NEW MXM 30 NEW UV SET 73 Creating a new UV Set 93 NORMAL 47 NUMERICAL INPUTS 02 90 OBJECT Object Parameters 62 Selecting by using a region 90 OBJECT ID 108 OBJECT LIS 62 OBJECT LIST PANEL 73 74 Assign Material 3 Clone 73 Deselect All 73 Display Section 5 Geometry Section 5 Group 3 Group Triangles 3 Hide Unhide 4 Icon Size 4 Invert 4 Items 4 MATERIAL LIST PANEL Merge Objects 4 New UV Set 73 OBJECT PARAMETERS 5 Pivot Section 5 Remove 4 Rename 4 Select All 73 PAGE 136 Triangle Groups Ungroup 3 Unhide All 4 UV Parameters 6 UV Sets Section 76 OBJECT PARAMETERS 20 62 73 7 5 90 93 OBJECT PARAMETERS 75 76 OBJECTS Create Triangle 10 Importing Objects 89 Merge Objects 4 92 Preset Object Libraries 39 Renaming Objects 89 Replacing Objects 89 Selecting Objects 20 OBJECT SELECTION 91 OBJECT SMOOTHING Angle 5 OBJ IMPORT OPTIONS 101 OPPSET 38 48 7 1 83 OFFSET TEXTURE 38 OPEN
106. iewports When Maxwell Studio saves the scene the geometry is packed in an MXS file therefore the original object files are no longer needed RENAMING OBJECTS Select an object and press F2 to rename it REPLACING OBJECTS If you need to replace an object in the scene with an updated one you can simply reimport it and Maxwell will recognise the object with the same name already existing in the scene It will show you a pop up asking you what to do with the new object This is a very practical feature as the geometry of the objects can be changed without removing all the material properties USING PRESET OBJECT LIBRARIES It is also possible to load any of the preset scenes and objects available with the installation by clicking on File gt Load Environment and File gt Load Object from Library SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual IMPORTING OBJECTS Object 1 almady exists in scone Rename the old one ignore the new one Replace the one gt Keep materials assignment v Koop UVs assignments Keep object parameters Over nie all the parameters Apply Apply to all PAGE 89 SELECTING OBJECTS Make sure you are in object selection mode SELECTING BY USING A REGION PAGE 90 By loading any of the environments the user will have a studio like environment to render their own objects Please note the environments are set to match a certain scale please keep this in
107. in they produce an effect called thin film interference which breaks up the light and can cause a rainbow like pattern Think for example about spilling a drop of oil on a surface of water the very thin layer of oil will create interference patterns The coatings can also be used to create rough materials with a clear coating for example a glossy white plastic can be made of a diffuse BSDF plus a coating The main property of the coating is its thickness The thickness is specified in nanometers nm The thickness can be specified by a numerical value or through a weight map To avoid interference colouring you have to use higher thickness values such as 1 mm 1000000 nm Only one coating is allowed per BSDF You can make a material having just a coating and no BSDF To do this add the coating normally Rightclick on the BSDF or the BSDF Folder gt Add Coating and then simply select the BSDF and delete it by pressing the De Key on your keyboard or Rightclicking and choosing Remove Layer Coatings with different thickness ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual COMPLEX IOR FILES Water bubble using the h2O ior file Coating bubble and coating applied to diffuse sphere PAGE 47 Dispalcement Map affsatz aifsatz 5 offset 1 N Displaced Mash Base Mesh Surface PAGE 48 MAXWELL DISPLACEMENT Introduction The displacement feature simulates
108. ing the axes or using the numerical inputs in the Object parameters panel For the numerical inputs you can press the middle mouse button inside an input box and drag the mouse up down to interactively change the values Additionally you can use the mouse scroll wheel or hold down the Ctrl key to change values in larger increments SN RE NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual SELECTION MODES There are different selection modes accessible through the icons in the main toolbar or with the keyboard shortcut T By default the selection mode is set to Object e Object selection Select objects L Group selection Select only groups E UV set selection Select only UV sets Triangle selection Select only triangles Material selection This is useful to pick the material assigned to an object or face EJ The material will be selected in the Material list panel Instance selection Select first an object that has instances then click this button to select the objects instances in the viewport Extra features to improve the triangle selection process are available from Selection gt Polygon Selection and Selection Polygon Selection Mode Selection menu Key will expand the selection to the neighbour faces Pressing the key several times will propagate the selection to the next neighbor faces of the current selection Faces you want to become selected must be connected Key will do the oppo
109. ion for the same texture We can see in this case that going beyond precision 128 wouldn t add more detail but it would keep increasing render time So it s important to avoid unnecessarily excessive precision values JN NS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 49 128 SL7 10m 45s b3 99 In the example above the same texture was used and adaptive mode turned on We can see that the maximum detail this texture can provide has a similar render time of using a 128 precision value But perhaps the user would have mistakenly set the precision value to 200 300 resulting in increased render time not realizing the texture couldn t provide any more detail So in cases where you want to get the most possible detail out of the texture Adaptive mode can be useful In most cases however it is recommended that you fine tune the precision value and leave Adaptive mode off as this allows you to optimize the render time while still having an acceptable level of detail PAGE 50 Adaptive The adaptive option locks the precision value to the given texture detail at half pixel accuracy which has the advantage of always creating the most detailed displacement that a given texture can provide The user doesn t have to guess what the maximum precision value should be for that texture or worry about exceeding it which would increase render time but not increase the detail However this mode needs to be used with ca
110. ition rotation scale pivot smoothing normals etc Apply textures using UV projectors Apply physical materials and lights Visualise the 3D scene in graphical viewports Create multiple cameras and adjust their position and parameters Set sky options Fully customisable layout with the ability to save layouts Libraries of preset scenes materials and layouts L a NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 59 CUSTOMIZING THE LAYOUT fh Displaying any panels is easy Click on the Upper right icon to access the list You can divide your window by using the Split panel drop down menu Split Quad in the graphic viewport PAGE 60 CUSTOMIZING THE LAYOUT Maxwell Studio s layout is fully customisable Each window can display any of the available built in panels by clicking in the upper left icon and choosing the appropriate panel If a panel is already open and it s unique its name will be greyed out Moving panels Panels can be moved from their place to another by clicking their title bar and simply drag and drop in another area of the layout This makes it very fast and easy to configure a layout Undocking panels Panels be undocked from the main layout by clicking the in the title bar Once a panel is undocked drag and dropping it in an area of the layout Opening a new floating panel From
111. k a bit redder and you might want it to reflect some blue light in areas In this case the extreme accuracy of an ior file is not needed In this case you can use a regular BSDF material and adjust the parameters until you get something that ressembles gold in many respects Your custom made gold is still following the physical laws of light for accuracy while still being entirely customizable and production friendly The use of BSDF materials will also speed up rendering time The biggest speed gain for BSDF Vs IOR files will be seen for glass type IOR files metal files will not slow down the render by much CLIPMAPS USING TRANSMITTANCE MAPPING The transmittance map can be useful to simulate clipmaps Clipmaps are defined by a black and white bitmap used as a transmittance map Remember that the transmittance colour is defined as the colour obtained approximately at the attenuation distance However there are two exceptions If the transmittance colour is pure black RGB 0 0 0 the object is considered opaque If the transmittance colour is pure white RGB 255 255 255 the object is considered transparent oT SS NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MAXWELL STUDIO MXST INTRODUCTION Maxwell Studio is a full standalone application to render scenes and objects imported from other 3D applications Maxwell Studio provides the following functionality Import object files Set attributes of objects pos
112. k of a material it is important to understand the Fresnel effect This effect states that the strength of reflections on a surface is dependant on the viewing angle For example if you look straight on at your monitor screen you will see very weak reflections however if you look at the screen at an angle the reflections will appear stronger The relationship between Nd and the fresnel effect is that with a higher Nd number the surface will start to look equally reflective no matter the viewing angle So in effect higher Nd cancels the Fresnel effect With this in mind understand that changing the Nd number controls the overall reflectivity of an object For example you can have the reflectance 90 colour set to full white but with an Nd of 1 the object will not seem reflective Setting the Nd to a high value like 40 and keeping the reflectance 90 to that same full white colour will result in a mirror like surface The following images demonstrate this From the images above you can see that raising the Nd has the result of increasing the influence of the reflectance 90 colour while the reflectance 0 colour in this case it was set to almost black has less and less influence when increasing the Nd Of course the value of the Reflectance 90 colour will also affect the maximum strength of reflectance For example you can set a high Nd but set the reflection 90 colour to a dark colour The result will be a surface whi
113. lected UV set For more info about working with UV sets in Studio see section on page 91 To edit a UV set you need to set it to something other than Locked You can select several UV sets at the same time and edit the properties for all of them Lets you choose the type of UV set needed for the object There are four types of UV sets available Flat Spherical Cylindrical and Cubic Objects imported which already had UV sets will have their UVs imported as Locked This UV type does not allow any editing You can also set a current UV set to Locked to avoid editing it by mistake Channel Set the UV channel that this UV set will represent The UV channel is used when applying textures to a material in the material editor you specify the UV channel that texture should use For example an object may have two UV sets one spherical channel 0 and one flat channel 1 A material applied to this object can use both the spherical UV set and the flat UV set In the material editor you can set one texture to use channel 0 and another texture to use channel 1 Position The position of the UV set relative to the position of the object it is applied to 0 0 0 means the UV sets pivot is at the center of the object it is applied to Rotation The orientation of the UV set relative to the orientation of the object it is applied to 0 0 0 means the UV set has the same orientation as the object it is applied to Scale The size of the U
114. ll Render Software Development Kit is available upon request and proposal evaluation We can highlight the tollowing characteristics 5 tile creation is faster and sater Support for new features New platforms supported Available for OS X Win 32 and 64 bits and Linux 64 bits If you are a developer and are interested in Maxwell Render s SDK please send us an email explaining your interest to i COMMUNITY AND LEARNING Smart Community Maxwell Render offers a variety of learning resources like manuals tutorials videos forums very open and friendly community Maxwell Render users are enthusiastic people and we like to call them the smart community because they share talk and learn from each other with respect and passion Lead by the A Team Maxwell Render experts and testers you can also become part of this adventure Also the Maxwell Render resources center has been created for users of Maxwell Render to share their knowledge with other users It includes tutorials tips videos and documents Some of them are even translated to different languages and it is in short a growing reference for the community Learning Curve Maxwell Render is very easy to learn but it is also flexible enough to allow for in depth technical tests reviews or renders if that is what you are looking for Also the Maxwell Render resources center has been created for users of Maxwell Render to shar
115. mages that have been created at the end of the rendering process It has some further useful functions like grouping nodes for exclusive assignment or displaying jobs Maxwell Render s networking was vastly improved and optimized and it is now more stable and faster We have included new functionalities for more versatility and usefulness Several managers It is possible to set up several managers on a network and assign servers and jobs to different 0 managers Creating complex systems on big networks raises the reliability Managers can now also be called by machine name instead of just by IP address Global Sampling Level Sampling level for cooperative jobs can be specified as a global sampling level This largely 9 requested feature is now available to make the use of networking as easy as ever Displaying jobs One of the most powerful feature of the Job Queue window is the Display function While servers are rendering you can select any of them and when you press the Display button it will automatically reveal the image being rendered on that node Display button also supports instantaneous viewing of a cooperative job as merged during the render progress Redesigned UI Maxwell Render engine MXCL interface has been designed to make Network rendering comfortable to the user wT SS NS N PAGE 22 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Selection of servers Selection of servers can be specified by name or IP SDK Maxwe
116. main menu Edit gt Preferences gt OpenGL Set Colour Colour of viewport backgrounds Threshold Maximum angle to merge polygon lines shown in the viewport this is only applied to OpenGL display no polygon lines are merged for rendering Display Selection Mode Wire selected objects will have their wireframe lit up in orange Brackets selected objects will display brackets surrounding them This mode can be useful when adjusting textures on dense objects so the wireframe doesn t obscure the texture Enable Sky in new scenes Physical sky will be on by default in new scenes Enable transparency tor dielectric materials Objects having transmittance other than black will be displayed with transparency in the viewport Vertex Butters Uses the vertex buffer feature of OpenGL 1 5 to greatly increase viewport speed with heavy geometry Disable this feature if you experience problems or artifacts in the viewport display Smooth Antialiasing Enable disable line antialiasing Lights Number of lights used in OpenGL viewports Texture Res Texture resolution to use in the OpenGL viewports Show bounding box when navigating Acceleration mode showing the objects as bounding boxes when rotating panning zooming in the viewport Use absolute grid By default the Studio grid adapts to the current zoom level Using absolute grid allows you to specify a fixed grid Spacing distance between each grid line Lines nr of lines t
117. make sure you have a material called preview the scene applied to the object s you want to use for material previewing Then save your MXS in the preview folder located in the Maxwell install folder SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MATERIAL PREVIEW Rightclick on the preview window for Preview Options PREVIEW OPTIONS Preview Options Panel PAGE 37 TEXTURE PANEL Texture picker dialogue window A If an object only has one UV set but you specify in the texture picker for the texture to use UV set 1 you will get an error at rendertime specitying the object does not have enough UVs to render the texture Make sure you use UV set 0 for all objects that only have one UV set applied to them Applications Maxwell materta es aroway boands 02_d100 p Textures are available for selecting in the drop down menu PAGE 38 TEXTURE PICKER Clicking on any texture Fa icon will bring up the texture picker allowing you to load a texture Loading textures To choose a bitmap click on the Load Button or drag and drop it from any Explorer or desk top window into the main frame You can drag and drop multiple textures at once This will make the textures available for selecting in the drop down menu Unloading a texture Select a previously loaded texture from the drop down menu and click Unload button to remove it from the scene This will free up some memory used by Studio Tilin
118. meras properties in the Camera parameters panel MOVING A CAMERA Switch the viewport to and rotate or zoom the view as explained earlier ALT mouse This mode affects only the origin of the camera In order to pan or rotate the camera as well as the target of the camera use the shortcuts ALT SHIFT mouse The camera can also be moved using its translate handles To move a camera using its handles select it from the Camera list panel and press the move icon from the top row of icons The translate handles appear and you can move the camera without moving its target Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual SWITCHING TO A CAMERA Perspective Camera 1 Camera Above CAMERA FRUSTUM The yellow frame indicates the area of the camera frustrum PAGE 67 DEPTH OF FIELD DOF PAGE 68 DEPTH OF FIELD DOF Maxwell s cameras are designed to work like real cameras so it is important to understand first of all the concept of depth of field Consider the following image The camera is pointing to the interest area the koala The focal distance should be the distance to the object in order to get a perfectly focused image The near and far planes define the DOF area Inside the DOF area all objects are in focus Near plane Focal distance rut i gt 22 The most important camera parameters to remember regarding the DOF the f Stop and focal
119. mind when choosing an environment Users can also create their own environments and objects by simply saving their scene in the studio environments folder or the objects library folder found in the Maxwell install folder They will then be available from within Studio for quick loading SELECTING OBJECTS Objects can be selected in the 2D 3D viewports by clicking single objects with the left button or dragging a region with the left button pressed Selected items will be highlighted Shift Left click will select additional objects Ctrl Left click will deselect the object Press ESC to deselect all objects The objects can also be selected in the Object List Panel Shift and Ctrl can be used as with the viewport selection NOTE If an object is imported with motion blur and selected it will display motion blur vectors Selecting by using a region There are more options for working with object selections available by Rightclicking in the 3D 2D viewports or in the Object list panel These options are explained in the MAXWELL STUDIO PANEL TYPES section on page 71 MOVE ROTATE SCALE In order to move rotate or scale any objects they must be selected previously You can edit one or more objects at the same time Switch to object editing mode using the icons in the upper toolbar or using the keyboard shortcuts Q all W move E rotate R scale You can move rotate or scale the selected objects dragg
120. n harmony with reality Maxwell Render considers light as an electromagnetic wave defined by a frequency spectrum ranging from the Infrared to the Ultraviolet Once Maxwell Render has completed the rendering procedure each pixel in the output image contains different amounts of spectral energy sourced from the light in the scene Maxwell Render stores this information in a proprietary format called MXI high dynamic range format The pixel colour which is generally the final desired result is an interpretation and sensation of the different frequencies which arrive at the film sensor or the retina Maxwell Render simulates this process and ultimately transforms the spectral measures into known colour formats such as RGB Full Global Illumination Maxwell Render calculates all possible interactions between light and the objects within a scene The global illumination interacts with surfaces and also layers beneath the surface to produce translucency and subsurface scattering effects Thanks to Full Global Illumination any scene containing complex caustics can be simulated in a realistic manner These include reflection and refraction caustics produced by indirect or direct lighting caustics produced by dielectric materials plastics or glossy metals No restrictions at all are imposed on the nature or the number of caustics in a scene Maxwell Render also computes full global illumination effects for moving objects i e a moving glas
121. n lens scattering and vignetting effects of the Maxwell SimuLens system Dittraction Ettects Happens when light goes through small holes causing interference patterns It is a very important phenomenon in optics as it explains why a perfect telescope or microscope cannot be built Light will always cause slight interference patterns because of the optical components used causing the visual artifact known as glare The diffraction effect can also be used on HDR images Simply load it using the File gt Load image option and apply diffraction to it Aperture Map The shape of the diaphragm will model the pattern of light that reaches the film For example a circular diaphragm will create circular patterns a hexagonal diaphragm will create 6 light streaks You can set the diaphragm shape using a black white map it can be a colour one called the aperture map Note the examples on the left show a bigger white area for Clarity in practice the white area should be smaller in regards to the black area Obstacle Map Water drops eyelashes dirt etc on the camera lens will also cause diffraction effects Again a white black map is needed If you don t want to use an obstacle map you can leave this path blank you only need an aperture map for diffraction to work Anyway if you want to use an obstacle map be aware that you also need to have an aperture map loaded Diffraction Controls diffraction glare intensity Freque
122. n objects and or groups in the viewport Center Scene centers the entire scene in the viewport ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual NAVIGATION OPTIONS The Navigation option is available by using the right mouse button menu PAGE 63 VIEWPORTS PAGE 64 2D 3D VIEWPORTS Maxwell Studio provides perspective and orthographic viewports The buttons at the top of the viewport allow you to quickly change between views Perspective allows you to change between the perspective cameras point of view When clicked a menu will appear listing all the available cameras and perspective view The Shaded option will change the display mode of the window Please see the Display Modes section for more details The button 3D can be clicked to change to a 3D perspective view by default it will show the last active perspective in that window Clicking any of the other letters will changes the viewport to orthographic views Tq FOR TOP D FOR BOTTOM E FORLEFT R FOR RIGHT T FOR FRONT B FOR BACK oT SS Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual DISPLAY MODES Maxwell Studio provides different display modes in the viewports You can choose the appropriate mode by clicking on the display mode menu on the viewport title bar The following shading mode options are available Bounding box only bounding boxes of the objects are shown Wireframe only lines are shown H
123. n and therefore reveal the transmittance colour The attenuation is ruled by an exponential curve therefore the thicker the object the more attenuated the light will be as in the example on the right Blue transmittance colour Attenuation distance 18cm No roughness 1 To better understand the concept of attenuation consider sea water When the water layer is very thin like water in the palm of your hand you don t see attenuation and get rather transparent water when you have enough water thickness you see a typical sea colour dark or light blue green depending on deep or shallow waters The transmittance colour represents the colour that you want to get approximately at the attenuation distance Beyond this distance the light is more and more attenuated it loses more and more energy and the view eventually turns black Blue ADHERE distance 18cm Medium roughness 40 Transmittance map Attenuation distance 18cm Medium roughness 40 aN ANS NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 43 CUSTOM Nd Nd AND ABBE INPUT FIELD The Nd and Abbe input fields can be found in the Material Editor PAGE 44 Custom Nd Simply put Nd should be regarded as the IOR index of refraction of the material The name Nd is used because it is the common way to denote an index of refraction that has been measured at the wavelength of 583nm Before explaining further how Nd influences the loo
124. ncluding those that are not assigned to any object NOTE To keep your MXS files tidy and clean we recommend you to Remove unused materials before rendering This way MXCL won t expend time looking for textures of unassigned materials If a material has already been previewed in the material editor a smaller version of the preview thumbnail will appear next to each material If the material has never been previewed an icon with a red X will appear next to it A material can also be dragged from the Material Browser panel into the Material list panel New Material Create a new material New Emitter Create a new emitter material import MXM Imports an MXM Maxwell material file into the material list Clone Material Creates a clone of the currently selected material Rename Material Shortcut for this command is F2 Remove Selected Removes selected materials from the scene Rightclicking in the material list reveals the following above menu Remove Unused All materials that are not applied to any object are removed Remove All Removes all the materials from the scene aN ANS NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 77 MATERIAL BROWSER PANEL Sey blegne ple cWgicmony pues ri css Sages peo egee cmngegiossy pla EIER Ep b erri Dees Ser y p Material browser showing a selection of preset m
125. ncy Controls the frequency of colouring in diffraction effect Higher values will make the patterns denser Scattering Commonly known as bloom and happens when the light is scattered inside the lens before reaching the film Vignetting Vignetting is an artifact darkening the image through the edges due to camera optics now you can partially or completely remove it by dragging the slider from 1000 to O A The obstacle map and the aperture map must both have the same resolution The render resolution and the maps do not necessarily need to have the same resolution but the more similar they are in resolution the less diffraction distortion The obstacle map should have the inverse colours of the glare map so for example if you have a white hexagonal aperture for the glare map and the rest is black the obstacle map should be all white with some lines small scratches etc in black oo SS NSI eae Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MULTILIGHT TAB Multilight is a very useful feature that allows you to interactively adjust the intensity of the emitters in the scene and to alter the ISO and shutter after rendering is finished The adjustments can be keyframed and animated over time and a sequence of images can be saved This makes it a very powerful tool as it allows you to save different images of the same scene under different lighting conditions and even make lighting animations from only a single render The Multilight tab cont
126. nd all the wavelengths except those that give red light are absorbed by the material Only the red portion of the spectrum is reflected back NIN EZ Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 25 PAGE 26 DIFFUSE SPECULAR amp REFLECTED LIGHT We see an object because light is reflected from its surface into our eyes That is ALL light is reflected light This may sound confusing at first because it has become common in renderers to refer to reflected light as specular or sharply reflected light In the real world light doesn t have a separate diffuse or specular part So what makes a surface look dull or mirror like It is the smoothness of its surface A surface which is not very smooth has tiny imperfections which scatter the light in all directions thus creating a very diffuse reflection of its environment A surface which scatters almost all light in a chaotic diffuse way is called a lambertian surface such as the red ball in the above image Asmooth surface however reflects light uniformly and creates a very sharp or specular reflection of its environment It is important to note that because very smooth surfaces perfectly reflect they reflect much less of their own colour This is visible in the in the render on the left where the ball is still tinted red but since it is virtually a tinted mirror its own colour shows much less There are a few exceptions however and one of them is metals
127. network Running MXCL exe with d switch on a computer is enough to bring up the viewer interface Network settings can be found under the Network tab in the viewer Right after launching servers for every node and launching a single manager session on one of your nodes you can start the viewer and hit the button to start rendering on the network Hitting the Connect button will automatically scan the network for a running manager and the servers You can run viewer on as many computers as you wish even at the same time but not on the same node in more than one session RENDER FARM Right after automatic detection of the manager on your network the viewer will list the servers in the Render Farm window If they are available and ready to render their state will be Ready You can make server groups by selecting multiple servers from the list and hitting the button Thus you can send a job to a group of servers and another job to the others JOB QUEUE Job Queue window will list the running queued jobs you ve sent to the renderfarm You can more jobs stop or remove them It s the heart of network jobs management where you can monitor every single detail about the ongoing progress oat d TN Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual JOBS ADDING JOBS Hitting Ada button will bring you the Add Job panel which allows you to define several parame
128. ng buttons on the right VIEWPORT RENDERING Depending on whether a camera or perspective mode is active the render will cover only the camera BLOW UP REGION frustum or the full window Also the render can be launched from an orthographic view RENDER REGION To cancel the render process click anywhere in the viewport RENDER VIEWPORT BLOW UP REGION This rendering command allows you to draw a render region in the viewport and render that region at the full resolution set in the camera settings The ratio of the render region will be kept For example if you draw a render region 200x400 pixels a ratio of 0 5 and the camera resolution set to 500x500 the rendered blow up region will be 250x500 pixels BLOW UP REGION SENDING THE SCENE TO MXCL RENDER VIEWER Press the render W icon in the top row of icons This will send the MXS to the MXCL Viewer and start the render More info on the MXCL Viewer options can be found on page 102 Render options for both viewport rendering and rendering via MXCL are found in the Render Options Panel A detailed explanation of each option is found on page 82 Shortcuts CTRL P Preview CTRL SHIFT P Render Preview Vs Render Both commands render the scene but the preview render uses the Maxwell preview render engine called RSO while the Render command uses the main render engine called RS1 Preview rendering will be faster but of worse quality It can be useful however for ch
129. o display in the grid ex if Spacing is set to 1m and Lines to 10 the entire grid will be 10m big Major lines frequency How often a thick grid line should appear ex if set to 2 every other grid line will appear thicker CREATING A CAMERA By default Maxwell Studio has a perspective visualisation mode that acts like a camera but without all the possibilities of a real Maxwell camera You don t have to necessarily create a camera to scene but we do recommend it This is so that you have more control over the final image look SN SN Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Use the viewport menu Rightclick on viewport and choose press CTRL C This will add a camera with the point of view of your current perspective view You can create as many cameras as you want In the Camera list panel Rightclick and choose Once a camera has been created the camera frustum is displayed in the viewport To switch to a camera viewport click the viewport switch button icon in the upper left corner and choose the desired camera or double click on the camera in the Cameras List Panel Camera trustum YELLOW FRAME The camera frustum is adapted according to the resolution of the image set in the Camera parameters panel When the render is launched from the camera view only the region inside the frustum is rendered The same applies when you launch a viewport render Selecting any camera in the Camera list panel will display that ca
130. o render lime Set the maximum render time in minutes for the render Sampling Level Maximum sampling level required This value controls the quality of the render As with the render time parameter the higher the sampling level reached the more accurate the image obtained Render Options Tab Threads Shows the number of CPUs available to render Priority Set Normal or Low priority for the render Use Low priority when you want to work at your computer while rendering With Normal priority your computer may become less responsive when performing other tasks The difference in render time between using Normal or Low priority is very small For this reason it is recommended to use Low priority when rendering in case you want to come back to the computer at a later time to work in other tasks Camera Let you choose the camera to render from among the cameras existing in the scene Id Cpu This parameter is initialized to a random value each time an mxs is opened It is useful for rendering the same mxs file on different computers that are not networked together The resulting mxi files ga of each render can then be manually copied to the same computer and merged in MXCL using File gt Merge The mxi files need a random seed value for the merging to work properly OUTPUT SETTINGS image Path and file type of final image Resolution Size of the final image Lock Aspect Ratio To maintain the propor
131. option will not allow to change the camera parameters Hide Checking this option will hide the camera in the viewports POSITION Camera X Y Z world coordinates of the origin of the camera larget X Y Z world coordinates of the target of the camera Focal distance Distance from the camera to the camera target Roll Angle Rolling angle of the camera in degrees OPTICS Shutter The shutter speed specified in 1 n of a second t Stop Controls the aperture of the lens Focal Length The focal length of the lens RESOLUTION res The X width resolution of the image Y res The Y height resolution of the image Keep image aspect check box Keeps the image aspect ratio when changing the width or height of the image resolution and or the film back width height Pixel aspect Width height proportion of the pixels Useful when the rendering output will be displayed on devices which have non square pixels such as television sets 1 16 Academy Artworks NSN NS NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 79 FILM BACK Width Camera film width Height Camera film height ISO Sensibility of the film Higher ISO number means the virtual film is more sensitive to light DIAPHRAGM Diaphragm type Choose Circular or Polygonal This controls the shape of the bokeh effect caused by bright spots in the image that are out of focus DIAPHRAGM PANEL Blades Number of blades for Polygonal diaphragm Angle Angl
132. ot of emitters large geometries and a lot of heavy textures are easy to handle for an average computer The MXCL interface is easy to use and intuitive Command Line Maxwell render has the possibility to make the render via console This results in a faster render as no application is launched and provides versatility as well Resume Render MXI files can always be resumed allowing users to refine the render even after it has been stopped as many times as you want Log 5ystem Log system with more information warnings and error messages to keep track of your renders You can view full log in the console window of Maxwell Viewer Memory Handling Maxwell Render s efficient memory handling makes it possible to render at very high resolutions for example at 6000 x 6000 with less than 2 GB of RAM without losing quality High res images are just a mouse click away now File Management System The efficient File Management System within Maxwell Render manages external files needed for the render such as images IOR files r2 files MXI etc It includes options for default paths automatic handling of missing paths and files detecting low size on disk to save MXS and MXI files and more Pen RE NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Lights in Maxwell Render are defined by applying an emitter material to an object This innovative approach to simulate lights emulates what happens in the real world producing a higher degree o
133. powerful now It allows users to Resume and it is compatible with SimuLens and Multilight Its size is around 3 5 times smaller than in previous versions indirectly enhancing other features like Networking Other formats Of course Maxwell Render can export to most common formats like JPG PNG TGA and also in 32 bits and HDR as well Supported texture formats These have been greatly expanded to allow many different image formats to be used as textures The following table describes which formats are supported we mes _ e ens _ mo NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 21 Render Channles Maxwell Render can export different layers for compositing purposes Render Alpha Shadow Material ID Object ID ZButter Among the enhancements in this area we can highlight the new Shadow Layer which simulates the cast shadows of the materials with the Shadow Flag enabled a TF am Uu a Pg Paaa a ur i been on LATE i m Eug Yr ru eon 1 A il Eia Hi nisa ore b T REEL eee ka a ALTI ores a NETWORK RENDERING The Maxwell Render Network system allows jobs to be sent individually to each machine the net rendering animations and frames It is even possible to let all machines render the same frame individually and merge the i
134. ppear almost only at the edges of the object Increasing the roughness would make this effect less visible but it would still show up 85 100 the 90 color would be visible only at the very edges of the object and increasing roughness until 99 would make the effect virtually disappear ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Dispersion will raise the render time therefore it is disabled by default In order to enable dispersion click on this button Spectral dispersion In the image above the O color was blue the 90 color red and the roughness set to 99 You can see how the 90 color is still very visible even with roughness set to almost lambert and it starts appearing once the viewing angle increases to approximately 45 PAGE 45 THE COLOUR CHIPS of the cylinder no map was used for the sides of the cylinder PAGE 46 In the above image the following angle map was used for the top Load full IOR data As an alternative to the Reflectance Nd and Abbe values you can use an ior file which provides Maxwell with the exact index or refraction for each wavelength Complex IOR a k a Full IOR data is collected from precise measurements in laboratories and describe the optical properties of a material to the highest degree of accuracy These materials have the advantage of being extremely realistic with two drawbacks
135. properly unless the MXS and MXM files are accessible to all render nodes You must set up a shared folder in which to save these files that each node can see and read the data from You will also need a shared folder that each node can write its data to NOTE If you have more than ten render nodes all of these folders need to be set up on a machine that is running Windows Server because any other version of Windows will only allow ten simultaneous connections at any given time When doing animations make sure that you have plenty of hard drive space each MXS file can easily be 100 MB in size and will quickly fill up a small drive MXS saved with local texture paths Both the MXS file and textures used in the MXS should be placed in a shared folder which all servers must have access to The servers will look in the folder of the MXS for the textures An easy way to accomplish this is using the Pack amp Go feature of Maxwell Studio which will copy your MXS and all the textures used in it to a folder of your choice Alternatively you can keep your textures in a shared folder and when building your scene you load the textures from this folder starting from Network in the File Browser so that the texture paths are in UNC format For example your texture folder may be c mytextures which you have shared Your computer name is renderbox1 which is part of the Workgroup named farm Browse from My Network Places gt Microsoft Windows Network g
136. properties can be added to each BSDF Transmittance must be set to any value other than black for SSS to have an influence on the material Higher transmittance values will result in brighter and more transparent subsurface effect When adding an SSS component to the BSDF the attenuation distance of the BSDF is not taken into account and it is the absorption unit of the SSS component that will control the amount of absorption attenuation of light inside the material An Nd of about 2 3 should be used for subscattering effects Lower Nd can be used if a very clear material is desired Absorption Defines the amount of light to be absorbed through the object surface When raised the surface For the above images transmittance was set at RGB 200 100 100 will absorb light quicker or in HSV 0 150 200 The left image has the default SSS settings of absorption 0 5 and scatter 0 5 The right image has absorption Scattering set to 30 Defines the amount of light to be scattered through the surface When increased it has the effect of increasing the spreading of light in the surface Increasing the transmittance and keeping the absorption high BOTH IMAGES HAVE AN ABSORPTION RATE SET TO 0 1 can create materials that make the SSS effect more sensitive to thickness variation in the model For example THE LEFT IMAGE HAS A SCATTERING SETTING OF 0 1 THE RIGHT IMAGE HAS SCATTERING SET TO 0 5 Both images have absorption set to 30 Left im
137. py to All button in the Background Channel section This lets you copy all the settings including the map from the Background Channel to all the other channels RENDER OPTIONS The Render Options panel shows the different controls related to the rendering process GENERAL Time min Set the maximum render time in minutes for the render The longer the time is the cleaner and more accurate the image you will obtain Sampling Level Maximum sampling level required The render will stop when this SL is reached As with the render time parameter the higher sampling more accurate the image you will obtain CPU Threads Number of threads dedicated to the render By default 0 threads means that all available CPUs are used In special situations you may require less threads if the machine is working on other tasks Note that one core in a multi core CPU is considered 1 CPU thread Low Priority Enabling this option gives the Maxwell render process a low priority Useful if you wish to work on your computer while rendering Maxwell will finish the rendering process when one of these conditions Render time or Sampling level is met If you want to finish at some specific render time set a very high sampling level and conversely if you want to reach a specific sampling level set a very high render time oT SS NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual OUTPUT MXS Specify a name and path for the current scene to
138. r 1 6 wind eC 2664 7607 Hext Limit Technologies SYHIAX mxe name anination A B C D Etfreamec f ideputid camera 1 l autput path ol L bitmapz path bl L hitmaps H i res xRes yRee F tinme minutes Ff t priority low lou threadzinunihreadz oth B for autodetect 1 display d 1 gl f 31 ml ml off f multilight multilight off J wignetting valueC lLOBBo u L L server servcr nmanagerll L manager L silent J channele y a a0 n 0 2 min max mxitpath recume p Example mus a LE mcs rez 6d8x4d8B8 3 th 2 d 3 17 32 wiSAA chir zt ALD 2 4 jpg medic tS file PAGE 114 Following are the MXCL Command Line Options mxs name animation A B C D a A B C D idcpu id camera name output filename NSN NSIS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Specifies the full path and name of the scene file to render MXS Specifies a sequence of frames to render This can be provided in the form of individual frames separated by a semicolon 3 5 7 or a range in the form A B from frame A to frame B or a combination of both Example mxcl mxs scene mxs 3 17 32 By default initialized to a random value when rendering starts It is useful for rendering the same mxs file on differen
139. re because using a very large resolution texture to represent a simple detail will result in unnecessarily long render times Smoothing Similar to the objects smoothing angle setting this parameter controls whether the displaced surface should render smoothly continuous shading or render facetted It is generally suggested you leave this setting to On unless you aim to render very sharp detailed displacements Please note that the objects smoothing angle will still override the smoothing used for the objects base mesh faces so if the objects smoothing angle is set to Flat making the object render facetted and the Smoothing parameter is set to On in displacement parameters a smooth displacement surface will be rendered over a facetted base mesh surface Important Tips Impact on Render Time The render times can vary greatly and it depends mainly on 3 factors The base mesh vs precision value see below for details The height of displacement more height will increase render time How much of the rendered image contains displaced objects For example a common usage of displacement may be a brick wall seen from far away which takes up 30 40 of the rendered image in which case low height and precision values can be used and render time impact will be minimal vs a close up render of a displacement object taking up the whole image space and high precision values need to be used Base Mesh vs Precision The more polygons you hav
140. roperties Parameters to control surface properties of a material The material components area also contains six buttons to control various aspects of the material and material editor O NORMAL ADDITIVE BLENDING MODE 9 DISPERSION ON OFF MATTE ON OFF REFRESH MATERIAL PREVIEW J SET ACTIVE VIEWPORT TEXTURE SHADOW ON OFF aN ANS NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 29 FILE MENU FILE MENU The File menu in the material editor has the following options New MXM Creates a new material Open material Lets you load a mxm file Maxwell material file The material will be loaded into the material editor as well as added to the scene material list if Studio is used Export material Lets you export the currently loaded material as a mxm file Maxwell material file Extract materials trom scene Lets you choose a MXS file and extract all the materials in that scene to a folder of your choice BASICS MENU This is a helper for creating materials similar to the Maxwell beta style material creation You can create five types of basic materials Diffuse Emitter Metal Dielectric Plastic Note You must first Daffuse create a new material using File gt New Mxm for the material to be added to the material list then you can use the Basics button to adjust the material BSDF Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function is a mathematical function that describes how light is scattered by a
141. ropiate adjustments in Camera Tone Mapping MXI and Simulens Once these adjustments are made you can save out an image file by selecting File gt Save Image or an file by File gt Save MXI NIN EZ Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual A MAKE SURE You don t have firewall restrictions prior to initializing the Maxwell network AT FIRST Make simple and successful tests on your network prior to attempting final rendering ALWAYS USE Networked paths for everything possible especially for output files PAGE 123 RENDERING AN ANIMATION Maxwell Render is capable of rendering animations There is no problem of flickering in contours or textures The only thing needed is a sequence of MXS files that can be obtained via the specific plug in you are using Once all the frames have been exported into individual MXS files from your host application you have to add a job to the job queue please refer to page 118 choosing any of the files of the MXS sequence Make sure you display all Render Options and type the sequence of frames you want to render otherwise you will only get the selected MXS rendered Remember you can also render single frames from the same sequence by using a semi colon when typing Example 1 10 12 20 23 This will render frames 1 through 10 frame 12 and finally frames 20 through 23 OPTIONS This panel provides options for handling servers For some reason disconnection
142. s Select the material in the Material list panel and drag it over the faces selected in the viewport Alternatively you can drag and drop a material over an existing triangle group in the Triangle Groups section of the Object parameters panel The material will appear next to the triangle group ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO INSTANCES By default an instance inherits the material from it s parent object but you can apply another material to an instance by drag and dropping a material from the material list to the instance in the Instance Panel The object containing the instances must first be selected for the instances to appear in the Instance Panel RENAMING A MATERIAL The material name can be changed by pressing F2 with the material selected in the Material list panel ENABLING DISABLING TEXTURES Textures can be enabled or disabled using the check box to the left of the texture icon Please see the Material Editor Panel section on page 29 for more options ADDITIONAL TEXTURE OPTIONS Options for tiling and offsetting the texture are found in the texture picker For details on these options please see the Material Editor panel section on page 28 SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual ASSIGNING MATERIALS TO TRIANGLES You can easily drag and drop all your materials within a window PAGE 95 gt MAXWELL STUDIO MXST RENDERING VIEWPORT RENDERING Rendering can be done directly in the 2D 3D using the followi
143. s object producing caustics will produce blurred caustics and even volumetric blurred caustics if a participating medium exists wT PAGE 12 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual Unbiased Rendering Maxwell Render is an unbiased render engine Unbiased means that with sufficient render time the rendered solution will always converge to the correct result without the introduction of artifacts Other render engines based upon widely known techniques such as photon mapping radiosity light maps irradiance maps or other interpolation methods always produce biased renders Consequently they cannot guarantee convergence to the correct solution no matter how much time is expended on the rendering process TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS Multiprocessor Maxwell Render can exploit all of the processors available on your system and can make them work simultaneously on the same render to provide faster renders For example on a E multiprocessing platform with eight processors a user can expect up to an eightfold increase TE X tr 1 in render performance speed Voxelization is also multithreaded making the engine 100 multithreaded in this last version Multiplattorm Maxwell Render is a standalone application compatible with Windows 32 and 64 bits Mac OSX UB and Linux 64 bits Cross platform There are also a series of plug ins connecting Maxwell Render to the most popular 3D applications including 3dsMax Maya Cin
144. site of key reducing the selection to the inner neighbor faces Key SLASH will expand the selection to contain all the connected faces Key ASTERISK will invert the current selection Key F8 F9 FIO F11 switch amongst different triangle selection modes Set expand to facet selection mode will select facets instead of triangles Set raycast polygon selection mode will select both front and back faces of an object Set polygon selection mode will select only front facing triangles Set paint polygon selection mode allows you to drag the mouse to paint the selection over the surface Use the SHIFT key to select more triangles while dragging the mouse JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual SELECTION MENU Render Window Help 8 Objects D Triangles Materials gl UV Sets Instances Select All Select by Keyword mern Shading Mode Hide Unhide Unhide All Polygon Selection Mode Expand to Boundary a Collapse Invert triangles Render Window I Objects v Uf Triangles B Materials am Uv Sets Instances Select All Select by Keyword Invert Shading Mode Hide Unhide Unhide All Polygon Selection Polygon Selection Mode Polygon Selection Expand i b You can expand your selection by navigating through the drop down menus or by using the keyboard short cuts PAGE 91 WORKING WITH GROUPS HIERARCHIES
145. slower and more accurate the preview Priority Set the CPU priority of the viewport preview rendering HISTORY The History panel records almost all edits you make in Studio and lets you step backwards or forwards through the list of changes Simply select one of the entries to move through the history You can purge the history list from Edit gt Purge History INSTANCES This panel lists instances tor the selected object Instances can be generated via plugins Please note that not all the plugins are able to generate instances so please check the specific plugin manual to know more Instances are a memory saver for making multiple copies of an object You could have for example 10000 instances of an object and during rendertime MXCL will use the same amount of memory as if you were rendering 1 real copy of that object Examples of uses can be trees bricks stones furniture etc Maxwell Instances have got some specifications that are worth knowing to use them correctly Instances cannot emit light so if an emitter material is applied to the initial object the copies will be automatically transformed into real geometry when the MXS file is saved Meaning this you won get advantage of the memory savings because you ll have real copies of the initial object Instances will inherit the material applied to the Initial object unless otherwise specified Each instance can have its own material different from other instances You can
146. so switch layouts from Window gt Layout and choosing from the list of available layouts Make sure to save your custom layouts in the Maxwell layouts directory on your computer so that they appear in the list You need to restart Studio for a newly saved layout to appear in the list Setting a custom layout as default Saving any layout as defaultiayout stlay will make it the default layout when Studio is launched It is recommended first that you rename the defaultlayout stlay file in the Maxwell folder if you later wish to reload the original default layout A set of layouts are available under the layout folder on the installation These layouts are focused on different tasks like mapping rendering or editing 1NI N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual QUICK SWITCHING BETWEEN LAYOUTS defaultlayout You can always access different layouts quickly form the Layout menu PAGE 61 Panel Types Maxwell Studio provides different panels for different functions The panels can be accessed by switching an existing panel or using the menu command Window to open a floating panel 3DVIEWPORT Perspective or camera viewport 2DVIEWPORT J Orthographic viewport MATERIALLIST Listof materials available in the scene MATERIAL EDITOR Advanced editing of the selected material MATERIAL BROWSER Browse material libraries ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS Physical sky sky dome HDR lighting options RENDER OP
147. surface The BSDF basically represents the optical properties of the main volume of the object whether diffuse metallic dielectric Pen mb d PAGE 30 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual WIZARDS MENU This feature is a step by step guide to creating several types of common materials such as Wood WIZARDS MENU Concrete Bricks Clipmap etc The Wizards will ask you for textures bumps reflectance maps and material values such as roughness and colour Note You must first create a new material using File gt New for the material to be added to the material list then you can use the Wizards button to adjust the material NSN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 31 MATERIAL LAYERS Keep in mind that a BSDF can be any kind of material dielectric diffuse metal and that coatings are always transparent as they are very thin Also any of these layers can not only be a BSDF but only a coating or SSS component for example Very complex materials can easily be created this way ADDING REMOVING LAYERS PAGE 32 MATERIAL LAYERS Maxwell materials can contain several layers and each layer can include one BSDF component one coating component and one SSS component MAXWELL MATERIAL Basic Layer 1 Coating BSDF 555 BASIC LAYER 2 Coating BSDF Layers can be controlled through a general strength factor or a weight map and can be set normal or additive mixing mode More detailed info about thes
148. t computers that are not networked together The resulting mxi files of each render can then be manually copied to the same computer and merged in MXCL using File gt Merge MXI Each resulting must have a different starting seed for the noise pattern to be slightly different in each MXI otherwise the merging of MXI files will not work correctly The user does not have to specify this parameter unless they want to render with the same idcpu on all computers in which case all the MXI files will have the exact same noise pattern useful for testing purposes and comparisons Specify the camera name you want to render from in case it does not match with the active camera in your MXS scene file Specifies the full path and name of the image file By default Maxwell always saves a file default tga in the output folder of the installation path The file name can refer to any of the multiple graphic formats supported tga jpg tif png etc In case of sequences the output files will be numbered with a four digit suffix Example mxcl mxs scene mxs o c images scene jpg bitmaps path Set an alternative folder path for bitmaps location b path If path is 0 bitmaps 0 Maxwell will discard all the bitmaps res WxH Specifies the resolution of the render in pixels W width TOURS H height Example time M Specifies the time M minutes that Maxwell is allowed t M to use to render every frame This is a very interestin
149. t farm gt renderbox1 gt my textures The path for the texture will then be renderbox mytextures texture jpg renderbox1 mytextures texture jpg you can also type directly in the File name input of the File Browser renderbox1 and your mytextures folder will appear in the list of shared folders In this case it is not necessary to also move your textures to the same shared folder as the MXS Using a mapped network drive In the case you are connecting to a folder as a mapped network drive make sure you have added this folder as a mapped drive to all the servers using the same drive letter NSN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 125 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Next Limit would like to thank everybody who has contributed to this manual with content images or proof reading Special thanks as always to the members of our A Team and many thanks to those Maxwell Render users who have allowed us to use their images in this manual and elsewhere BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P03 BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P02 KEYTOON ANIMATION STUDIO WWW KEYTOON COM P01 KEYTOON ANIMATION STUDIO WWW KEYTOON COM P06 MIHAI ILIUTA WWW ILIUTA COM P05 KEYTOON ANIMATION STUDIO WWW KEYTOON COM P04 BENJAMIN BROSDAU WWW PURERENDER COM P11 MIHAI ILIUTA WWW ILIUTA COM DAVID DE YARZA DYARZA SEANET COM P10 HERVE STEFF WWW INSIDEKO COM P14 REAVEROOO YAHOO COM P12 W
150. ters about the job to be added First of all you need to select the scene to be rendered Priority value lets you set a queue priority which helps you insert jobs prior to the ones which have already been sent to queue The priority parameter can be set from 1 to 65536 1 being the lowest priority The Render Farm window will show you selected servers to be used for the job You can still select The All Available checkbox and send the job to all available servers waiting to render Render Options button will let you redifine the detailed scene parameters such as save options or resolution etc Hitting OK will add the job to the queue and if the assigned servers are available the manager will immediately distribute the information silently in the background and the rendering process will start During distribution of jobs you can monitor every single action per node in realtime DISPLAYING JOBS One of the most powerful functions of the Job Queue window is the Display function While servers are rendering you can select any of them and when you hit Display button it will automatically reveal the image being rendered on that node Display button also supports instantaneous viewing of a cooperative job as merged during the render progress To do this select the job tree instead of just one server and hit Display A green dot will help you identify a display tab which has recently had an update from the remote node To learn more abo
151. the I key to disable or enable this information in the display ACC SNL N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual DEPTH OF FIELD DOF Beyond far plane red out of focus Before near plane blue out of focus THE NUMBERS NEAR THE FOCUS INDICATOR REFER TO FD Near Far DoF Focal distance Distance from camera to near plane Distance from camera to far plane DoF distance Far Distance PAGE 69 FOCUS INDICATOR Focus indicator showing focus and out of focus areas Focus is set on the third closest sphere For the Auto focus and Focus options to work correctly make sure you are not in Bounding Box or Wireframe shading modes PAGE 70 Focus Two additional functions Auto focus and Focus to are very helpful to control the focus of the camera You can find these options by Rightclicking in the viewport Auto tocus Automatically focuses to the target point what the focus indicator sees in the viewport 5 key Focus to Choose this option and then click any point of the viewport The clicked object will be in focus NSN NSI NI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual SHIFT LENS The Shift lens functionality of the Maxwell camera allows you to shift the lens of the camera in order to move up down left right the image that falls on the virtual film plane This is useful for architectural type renders where you want to keep some lines of the building parallel making a
152. tions of the image ANIMATION user specifies a range of MXS frames to be rendered For example 5 8 9 will render frames Maxwell will finish ime Tendering process when one of these two conditions Render time or Sampling level are met If you want name0005 mxs name0008 mxs name0009 mxs To render frames 1 through 10 write 1 10 fo shae renderai ima Seba veni hight candele level and conversely if you want to reach a specific sampling level set a very high render time NSN NSI NIS Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 107 RENDER OPTIONS TAB PAGE 108 MXI Load Save When loading scene in MXCL to be rendered for the first time you can specify an output path for the MXI file If you do not specify an MXI a default mxi file will be created in the Maxwell install directory If you are loading a mxs scene that has been rendered before the MXI path for the previous render will appear in this path You can either leave it as it is or specify a new MXI to be created In case you are loading an MXS file that has previously been rendered on another computer and you wish to resume the render the path to the MXI will no longer be correct so you need to browse to the new location of the previously saved MXI select it and choose Yes when MXCL asks if you wish to overwrite the MXI Make sure to then check the Resume option Resume Check this to resume a previously rendered scene
153. ts you load a previously rendered MXI to resume rendering Please note that the MXS scene must be in the same location as for the previous render Alternatively you can use the Open MXS command to load the MXS instead and check Resume in the Render Options tab to resume rendering Merge Lets you manually merge a group of MXI files generated in cooperative render mode Select several MXI files at once in the file browser click open then MXCL will ask you where to save a merged MXI JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 105 Load Image FILE MENU Load a bitmap file You can load both LDR jpg tif etc and HDR EXR files You can adjust their mu _ brightness using the intensity slider in MXCL and then save them as an MXI HDR EXR image to use for Image Based environment lighting or for Image Emission the emitter settings ma Open 5 KO Save Image Load MXI Save a bitmap of the render view You must specify a suffix when saving for example G S myimage tga to save the render as a tga format Currently supported output formats are bmp Resume MXI jpg png tif and hdr Merge MXI Load Image Recent MXS Save Image Shows a list of the most recently opened MXS files for quick loading NS Recent SEE Shows a list of the most recently opened files for quick loading Exit Exit MXCL viewer RENDER STATUS
154. turers website However a more efficient energy saving bulb which is also rated at 40W will have an efficacy of perhaps 17 3 lumens watt so for the same amount of energy consumed it will emit more light The watts efficacy way of specifying the emitters intensity is useful if you want to mimic common lightsources when the manufacturer provides the watt rating and the efficacy rating Luminous power Lumen Im Lumens is the SI International System of Units unit for luminous flux It is a common way to specify how much light is emitted and light manufacturers usually supply this data JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual TEMPERATURE OF EMISSION Emitters at different K temperatures MXI TEXTURE PAGE 53 E E Pee LU Illuminance Lux lum m 2 Lux is the unit for specifying illuminance It is defined as one lumen per square meter This is a useful setting when you want to increase or decrease the size of your emitter and have it emit more or less light with the changed size of the emitter With the previous setting luminous power if you scale up your emitter for example the amount of light emitted will be the same giving the impression that the overall light is dimmer But in fact the same amount of light is emitted just over a larger area thus giving the impression that the emitter is weaker Luminous Intensity Candela cd Candela is considered t
155. two point perspective X Offset Defines the offset in X side side movement Values can go from 100 to 100 Y Offset Defines the offset in Y up down movement Values can go from 100 to 100 Z CLIP ZClip planes allow you to cut away parts of the geometry in a render by specifying the near and far clipping planes of the camera This allows you for example to move the camera outside a room and cut away the wall facing the camera so you can still get a render as if the wall didn t exist although the actual render will take into account the wall and produce proper lighting ZClip check box Enables ZClip Z Near Define the near clipping plane Anything before this plane will be clipped Z Far Define the far clipping plane Anything after this plane will be clipped The ZClip planes can be previewed either by looking through the camera in the viewport you will then see the object being clipped as you move the ZClip planes or looking in a perspective view and seeing the red near plane and blue far plane rectangles SEEING THE PLANES THROUGH PERSPECTIVE VIEW Vs SEEING THE ZCLIP DIRECTLY THROUGH THE CAMERA JN N NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual ROTARY DISC amp ZCLIP PANEL Resulting ZClip planes and a ZClip render PAGE 71 wT PAGE 72 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt PANEL TYPES OBJECT LIST Object list showing groups objects and their materials OBJECT LIST The O
156. ty and Learning MATERIALS INTRODUCTION What is Light Diffuse Specular amp Reflected Light Transparency The Fresnel Effect MATERIALS MATERIAL EDITOR Material Editor File Menu Basics Menu Wizards Menu Material Layers Layer Weighting Matte Material Shadow Channel Material Preview Texture Picker Colour Picker MATERIALS COMPONENTS BSDF Properties Coating Properties Displacement Properties Subsurface Scattering Properties E Emitter Properties MATERIALS TIPS 12 Common Glass 13 Plastic 15 Shiny Wooden Floor 16 When to use BSDF or IOR files 17 Clipmaps 18 19 MAXWELL STUDIO MXST INTRO 5 Introduction 23 Customizing the Layout 23 Using the Viewports and Cameras Navigation 2D 3D Viewports Display Modes 25 The Viewport Grid 26 Display Preferences 27 Creating Camera 27 Moving a Camera Depth of Field DOF Shift Lens 29 ZClip 30 a MAXWELL STUDIO MXST PANEL TYPES 39 Panel Object List 34 Penal Object Parameters 35 Panel Material List 36 Panel Material Browser 37 Panel Camera Parameters 38 Panel Camera List 39 Panel Environment Settings Panel Render Options Panel History Panel Instances 41 47 NASAS SS Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 7 MAXWELL STUDIO MXST WORKING WITH OBJECTS Importing Objects Renaming Objects Replacing Objects Using Preset Objects Libraries Selecting Objects Move Rotate Scale Selection Modes Working with Groups Hierarchies
157. ul when you have a material which reflects one colour when viewed straight on but at sharper viewing angles reflects another colour such as tafta silk velvet etc Think of the Reflectance 90 colour as the object s specular reflection How much influence the reflectance 0 colour Vs the reflectance 90 colour has on the look of the material depends on the Nd setting of the BSDF and the roughness setting More on these two parameters in the following pages For most materials reflectance 90 colour is white however materials like metals usually have tinted reflections Changing the reflectance 90 colour allows different reflected colours at the edges of the object like in the samples on the right Different combinations of reflectance 0 and 90 are shown in the next figure SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PAGE 4 Transmittance Ad For transparent materials this parameter controls the colour of the light which passes through an VN object Choose a transmittance colour by clicking the colour picker or specify a texture by clicking ZS in the texture gf button The transmittance colour represents the colour of the light when it has Avoid setting the Reflectance 0 colour very high especially RGB 255 reached the attenuation distance since that would mean all the light that falls on an object is reflected back Such a material does not exists some energy absorption always occurs Maxwell intern
158. unction in Maxwell Render 1 6 This manual has been set in Futura BT and Arial regular and bold type faces Manual Design by Solid Design and Next Limit Manual Release Edition 1 6 1 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual is published exclusively by Solid Publishing WWW SOLIDPUBLISHING COM tT SS NS N PAGE II Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual gt MAXWELL SOFTWARE PACKAGE Maxwell Render includes three different applications the render engine MXCL EXE the standalone graphical application Maxwell Studio MXST EXE and the standalone material editor with browser MXED EXE for the plug ins The software distribution also provides a set of plug ins for the supported 3D CAD applications available on the download page There is specific documentation included for every 3D plug in available The plug ins take care of collecting the scene information applying Maxwell materials to objects and sending the full scene to Maxwell for rendering gt INSTALLATION AND LICENSING INSTALLATION Windows Run the installation file maxwell exe and follow the installation procedure The Maxwell executable files will be added to the system path A user environment variable named MAXWELL_ROOT pointing to the installation folder will be added If this variable doesn t exist or is not created properly the application will fail Mac OS X Unstuff the installation package and drag amp drop the contents into the Applications folder
159. ustum 6 Camera List 62 CAMERA LIST PANEL 81 Camera Parameters 62 Clone 81 Creating a Camera 66 Delete 81 Depth of Field 68 FPS 80 Hide Unhide 81 Icon Size 81 Items 81 Make active 81 Moving a Camera 6 7 New Camera 81 Offset PAGE 129 Rename 81 Rotary Disc Shutter 80 Shift Lens 1 Shutter 109 Shutter Angle 80 Z Clip Planes CAMERA FRUSTUM 67 CAMERA LIST 02 67 CAMERA LIST PANEL 81 Block Unblock 81 CAMERA LIST PANEL 81 Clone 91 Delete 8 Hide Unhide 8 Icon Size 8 Items 81 LIST PANEL 8 Make active 81 New Camera 81 Rename 81 CAMERA PARAMETERS 62 67 CAMERA PARAMETERS PANEL 79 Diaphragm 80 Optics 9 Position 9 Resolution 9 Shutter Angle 80 CAUSTICS LAYERS 86 CENTER SCENE 63 CENTER SELECTION 63 CHANNEL 38 Channel ID 93 UV Set 93 CHANNEL ID 93 PAGE 130 CHANNELS 108 CLIPMAPS 7 58 Transmittance 58 CLONE 3 77 81 COATING 32 47 COATING 47 COATING PROPERTIES 48 PROPERTIES 47 Thickness 4 COLLAPSE ALL 92 COLLAPSE SELECTED 92 COLLAPSING A PANEL 61 COLOUR 28 39 46 52 53 Correlated Colour 53 Display Preferences 66 Set Colour 81 COLOUR AND LUMINANCE luminance 55 Load Preset 55 Luminous Intensity 55 Temperature 55 COLOUR AND LUMINANCE RGB 53 COLOUR CHIPS 46 COLOUR PICKER 39 41 42 53 COLOUR PICKER 39 COMMAND LINE 85 COMMAND LINE FLAGS 113 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS 114 COMPASS 83 COMPONENTS 41 BSDF PROPERTIES 41 CONSOLE 9 62 106 CONSOLE
160. ut render options please see the chapter on MXCL at page 82 SN IN NINI Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual DISPLAYING JOBS PAGE 121 PAGE 122 COOPERATIVE RENDER MAKING A COOPERATIVE RENDER Cooperative mode is a special mode that allows selected servers to work on the same frame individually and to merge the images they ve created at the end of the rendering process Activating cooperative mode is as easy as selecting the Cooperative checkbox in the Add Job panel Max Servers will let you limit the amount of Maxwell servers to be engaged for a single frame While rendering multiple nodes will render the same frame with a different entropy seed When the job is finished the manager will collect these results and merge them into a single output file It is possible to preview cooperative jobs during the render by selecting the job tree and pressing the Display button NOTE An output MXI must be specified as this will be the final merged file If the network fails or crashes at some point and the merging of MXI files is not completed you could try to manually merge the cooperative MXI files created during the render process In this case some of these cooperative MXI files could give an idcpu warning just ignore the message and continue merging the rest of the files The file that gave an error should be ignored because it was merged before the crash and therefore taken into the account Locate each coop
161. was set to 3cm which is a good value to use for common low grade glass Remember from the material section that attenuation distance is the distance the light travels through a material before losing half its energy This means that for a glass panel 1 5cm thick for example the light passing through it and reaching the other side would have lost a quarter of its strength For high grade glass the attenuation distance can be much larger even more than five meters Setting a higher attenuation distance means you ll get clearer glass since light can easier pass through it Remember that attenuation distance and transmittance are parameters that work together For example you can have a low value transmittance ex 220 210 200 and starting with an attenuation distance of 3cm you will get a pretty heavily tinted glass Raising the attenuation distance now will cause the glass to clear up If instead you raise the transmittance values but keep attenuation distance at 3cm the glass will become less colour tinted but will still be relatively dark Roughness was set to 0 for a perfectly smooth glass oT SS NS N PAGE 56 Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual PLASTIC A plastic material can be made by using a two BSDF material It s best to set the blending mode to Additive in the case of plastics see Additive Vs Normal mode on page 35 for more The first BSDF is the plastics base colour The refl 0 colour was set to 210 210 65 The
162. well scenes MXED Maxwell Material Editor Standalone Material Editor with Material Browser for plug ins It is also used for creating material libraries Maxwell Render provides two alternative workflows One method allows you to use your existing 3D package and the provided Maxwell plug in for it to send scene data to MXCL The other method allows you to import objects into MXST where you create edit assign materials set up lights and cameras and MXST then sends the scene to MXCL Below is a description of the basic steps involved in each method A FROM THE 3D APPLICATION USING THE PLUG INS The plug ins allow you to create edit apply materials to your object adjust camera parameters sky environment settings and all other Maxwell relevant options Initiating a render from your 3D application creates a Maxwell scene file mxs which can either be rendered directly or imported into MXST for further advanced editing It is recommended to check the documentation of the plug ins for specific usage Documentation for each of the plug ins can be found with the installation package of each plug in Pen RE NS N Maxwell Render 1 6 User Manual MXCL can also be called from the command line by providing a valid mxs file The most basic command line method to use MXCL is by providing a mxs scene in the form mxcl mxs scene mxs A path to the scene can be added mxcl mxs c scenes scene mxs By doing this MXCL will start in no GU

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