provides the speed and control they need in their complex pipelines and the demanding environments they work in.
1.03 Complete features list
For a complete overview of all features available in Maxwell Render, please see: http://www.maxwellrender.com/pdf/featureslist-v2.pdf For an overview of the new features and improvements in the latest version of Maxwell Render, please see: http://www.maxwellrender.com/pdf/whatsnew-v2.1.pdf
Maxwell Render 2.1 User Manual Chapeter 2. The Maxwell Render Reality. Understanding Maxwells Approach to rendering |
2 THE MAXWELL REALITY. UNDERSTANDING MAXWELLS APPROACH TO RENDERING
While Maxwell Render is uncomplicated and straightforward, it does make use of some concepts and functions that may be new or different to you. They account for Maxwell Renders superb quality and realism. It is important to understand these concepts and how they differ from more commonly used notions before you start working with Maxwell Render. Note that these functions are explained in further detail later on in the manual.
2.01 Lighting in Maxwell Render
Light sources in Maxwell Render are defined by spectral characteristics and a light source usually possesses a lot of information about the intensity of emission at any of the possible wave lengths. Maxwell Render does not use abstract lights typically used in traditional 3D applications (distant, point, omni, spotlights). Instead, Maxwell Render uses actual geometry with emitting materials. This approach to simulate lights emulates what happens in the real world and mimics real-world lights, producing a high degree of realism, outputting smooth shadows, providing a natural light distribution in your scene, and increasing the overall quality of your image. Maxwell Render can handle large numbers of lights in a scene without the performance loss sometimes experienced in other applications. Lights in Maxwell Render are created applying an emitter material to an object. You can adjust the color and intensity of the emitter using everyday terms like watts or efficacy, or you can look into more advanced definitions using lumens, lux, Kelvin degrees, and RGB. If you are new to Maxwell Render, it is best to start by selecting an emitter from the Presets dropdown.

2.02 Environment

Maxwell Render provides a complete Physical Sky system with a sophisticated atmosphere model that reproduces skylight conditions at different hours, dates, and locations. The Physical Sky system is a simple way to obtain extremely accurate lighting in your scenes. The atmosphere parameters allow users to customize the look of the sky and the resulting light in the scene, ranging from common Earth values to exaggerated fantasy skies. Users can also create presets of the sky settings to quickly load a new sky or share their presets with other users. Its also possible to save the current sky as an HDR map.

uu Important: When launching Maxwell Render from a plug-in, it will locate Maxwell by the OSX-preferred application for MXS files. You can check this by getting information from an MXS file.
If you use bash shell, add the this line to your.bash_profile: export MAXWELL2_ROOT=/opt/local/maxwell-2.1 If you use tcsh or an equivalent C-shell, add this to.cshrc or.tcshrc: setenv MAXWELL2_ROOT /opt/local/maxwell-2.1 In the above lines, change /opt/local/maxwell-2.1 to match your Maxwell installation folder. If you wish, append $MAXWELL2_ROOT to your $PATH so Maxwell Render can be run from anywhere.
3.07 Licensing Maxwell Render
The Maxwell license file is a license.txt file containing information about your license, and it was sent to you in an email from the Next Limit Sales department when you purchased Maxwell Render. After installing Maxwell Render, open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac) and go to Help> License Info. A pop-up screen will appear. Click on the Add button in the lower left corner, and copy your license key in the screen, then click Save. Make sure to not change the license text in any way. You have now licensed the software! Once you have licensed the software, your license key will be saved in your Maxwell user folder, for example in My Documents/Maxwell. If you are not sure where your license key is stored, then please open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac). The console window will display where your license key is located, stating License found in.
If you have more than one version of Maxwell Render installed on your system, make sure it has selected the correct one. Linux Get maxwell-2.1-Linux64.tar.gz. Uncompress it and untar it inside the folder of your choice, preferably /opt or /opt/local gzip -d maxwell-2.1-Linux64.tar.gz tar xvf maxwell-2.1-Linux64.tar This will create a folder called maxwell64-2.1 with everything you need to run Maxwell Render.
3.08 Minimum system requirements
The minimum system requirements for Maxwell Render are as follows: Windows (32 and 64) Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows Server GHz Intel Pentium4 processor, AMD Athlon 64 or better 1GB RAM minimum. 4 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended 400 MB available hard disk space for installation Accelerated OpenGL drivers 3 button mouse recommended Linux 64 x86_64 distribution with a 2.6 Kernel and glibc 2.GHz Intel Core2, AMD Athlon 64 or better 1 GB RAM minimum. 4 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended X server with accelerated OpenGL drivers 300 MB available hard disk space for installation 3 button mouse recommended Macintosh (32 and 64) Mac OSX 10.5 and up PPC or Intel CPU. Intel is strongly recommended 1 GB RAM minimum. 4 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended 400 MB available hard disk space for installation 3 button mouse recommended * PPC systems only allow Maxwell 32Bits

Alpha: Output the alpha channel. The alpha channel is a black & white image containing information about where a specific object exists and where it does not. It is useful as a clipping mask when you want to isolate an object and composite it with another object (for example: clipping a car render and pasting it over a photograph). It is also possible to render a completely white alpha for transparent objects with the Opaque option. If this option is unchecked, transparent materials will render with a transparent alpha. Z-buffer: Output an image representing scene depth within the two values specified in the Z-buffer range. The range is in meters. For common usage, you should specify the range from the camera to the farthest object in your scene. This is useful to create a depth of field effect as a post process in an image editor that can use a Z-buffer image to extract depth info.
The icons represent: R: Render channel A: Alpha channel S: Shadow channel M: Material Id channel O: Object Id channel M: Motion vector channel Z: Depth channel R: Roughness channel F: Fresnel channel

8.06 Tone Mapping

Burn: Parameter to control the highlights in a render. Lower burn values will decrease the intensity of the highlights to avoid burned out areas in the image. In most cases this parameter should be left at default. Lowering it too much may produce unnatural looking images.
8.08 Illumination and Caustics
These controls allow you to deactivate certain aspects of the rendering calculations, such as Indirect Light or Reflected Caustics. This is useful in special cases where you want to see the effect of just the indirect light in the scene, or for compositing purposes.
F.01 Tone Mapping F.01 Illumination and Caustics
Monitor Gamma: Maxwell Render 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 darken the image, higher values lighten the image. Note that you can control this parameter interactively while rendering in core rendering application. Color Space: Choose your desired color space for the rendered image. Available color spaces are sRGB, Adobe 98, Apple, APL and NTSC.

8.07 SimuLens

This section allows you to set the Maxwell SimuLens parameters. Detailed information about these parameters can be found in the core rendering application section in Chapter 9 on page 40.

using IOR files. Naturally, a BSDF with an IOR file loaded can still be mixed with other regular BSDFs to create material variations. When to use regular BSDF or IOR files Suppose you work in jewelry and would like to render gold (and only gold in its pure form) and you do not 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 color as it would if a real gold object was present. In this situation the use of a complex IOR material is recommended. On the other hand, suppose you are 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 look a bit redder and you might want it to reflect some blue light in some areas. In this case the extreme accuracy of an.IOR file is not needed. Instead, you can opt for a regular BSDF material and adjust the parameters until you get something that resembles gold in many respects. Your custom-made gold follows the physical laws of light for accuracy, while still being entirely customizable and production-friendly. As a general rule,.ior files that describe metals will not render much slower, but.ior files describing transparent materials involve the calculation of dispersion, increasing the render time. When using.ior files, dispersion cannot be turned off; it is built-in in the.ior file data.
will represent 0 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 0 roughness. It is important to understand how roughness controls the falloff between the 0 and 90 colors, i.e. which of these colors will be most visible. When roughness is low and ND is set to a higher value (Nd 5 or higher), the 90 color will be more visible. As the roughness increases, the 90 color will gradually lose its influence and only the 0 color will be visible. This will happen even with higher Nd values. Anisotropy This parameter controls how directional the surface reflections should be. Anisotropic reflections occur on a surface with micro grooves or details that run in one dominant direction. Like an old music LP with grooves that run in an organized circular pattern. These types of surfaces reflect light back in a specular way in the direction of the grooves, and in a more diffuse way in the direction perpendicular to the grooves. Many common materials that have been polished show anisotropic reflections instead of the usual isotropic reflections (that blur equally in all directions when increasing roughness). You can specify the anisotropy strength (0 for isotropic surfaces 100 for full anisotropy). You can also set a grayscale texture to control the anisotropy strength. Brighter values in the texture specify higher anisotropy. When using a texture, the numeric control has no influence. Angle Specify the anisotropy angle; the main direction of the reflected light. You can also set a grayscale texture to control the anisotropy angle. Brighter values in the texture specify a larger angle. When using a texture, the numeric control has no influence. An interesting way to use an angle map is to create the type of anisotropic reflections seen on surfaces that have grooves running in a circular pattern. The map should have a circular gradient that gradually increases in brightness.

A normal map is a RGB texture, not grayscale. Each channel specifies an angle and the strength for the bump. Most modeling applications have an option to create a normal map from a detailed model, and there are also applications that allow you to convert a grayscale bump map into a normal map. When loading a normal map in the texture picker, the options Flip X, Flip Y, and Wide specify how the normal map was created. The most common standard is Flip Y, so this is selected by default. Consult the application you use to create normal maps to find out which of these options it uses to generate the maps.
10.04.03 SubSurface Properties
Subsurface Scattering (SSS) simulates the effect of light entering a translucent object and scattering inside it. Some of this light is absorbed and some is scattered back to the surface. SSS is a crucial component that allows you to accurately simulate many kinds of materials including plastics, marble, milk, skin etc.

Scattered Ray

Intern al Refl

Incoming Ray

ection

F.01 Surface Scattering

Particles
F.02 Sub-Surface Scattering
F.03 SubSurface Properties panel
Maxwell Render has a highly sophisticated set of parameters designed to simulate both surface and subsurface scattering. You will find Subsurface Properties for each BSDF as a collection of parameters under a collapsible rollout. These parameters are:
Scattering: Scattering color is the reflectance of inner particles causing subsurface scattering. This means that the incoming light will be reflected/ scattered in this color. Coef: This coefficient defines the amount of particles inside the medium. Coef=0 (default) means there will be no subsurface scattering. In other words, the rays will pass through without hitting a particle. The higher the coefficient value, the more opaque/ less translucent the medium is. For example, lemonade is more translucent while marble is more opaque. Asymmetry: Asymmetry defines the isotropy of scattering. Asym=0 (default) means that light rays will be scattered equally in all directions. A negative value will let the
light rays go through while a positive value will send the rays backwards. Besides the volumetric subsurface scattering just explained here, Maxwell Render also has a Single Sided mode which helps you simulate thin translucent materials like paper, leaves, and lampshades. The remaining parameters under this rollout only control Single Sided scattering. Single Sided: When this checkbox is ticked, Maxwell Render will disregard the volume of your object and consider it a hollow polygon surface with a virtual thickness. The aforementioned SSS parameters are also valid in this new mode. The value sets the virtual thickness of your surface in mm. You can also use a thickness map for more complicated effects. Min/max: These values define the minimum and maximum virtual thickness and are only available when a thickness map is used. The thickness map will be treated as a grayscale map using this given range. When this checkbox is ticked, Maxwell Render will disregard the volume of your object.

Step 1

Step 2
1. Step 1. It is always a good idea to start by turning off reflectance, setting the reflectance to black and roughness to 0 to avoid creating reflections or specular effects on the surface. This will give you full control over SSS without introducing other effects. Now, set the transmittance, attenuation and Nd as if you were creating a typical glass material, but avoid setting a high attenuation. This will give you a darkcolored glass material as seen in Figure 1.
2. Step 2. Put particles inside the medium so that subsurface scattering occurs. Leave the scattering color set to grey or set another color, and increase the coefficient to 150. This will give you a material similar to the one in Figure 3: you have already created a simple translucent material. The incoming white rays are filtered when they hit the surface with the help of Step 1 and the green rays travelling through the object are being scattered with the given particle reflectance color and particle quantity. Figure 2 was rendered using a de-saturated transmittance color with the same settings to show the subtle subsurface scattering effect.

F.01 Transmittance

F.02 SSS (isolated)

F.03 Transmittance + SSS

Step 3

Step 4

3. Step 3. Now that we have set the main parameters, we can adjust the speculars on the surface. Temporarily disable transmittance (set the color to black) and scattering (set coef to 0). This will help you to better visualize/ adjust the speculars. Now, set reflectance and roughness as usual and render to make sure it is looking like the material in Figure 4. As you can see, we can control the reflectivity of the surface without touching SSS. Keep in mind that a high reflectance may block the incoming rays more and may reduce the translucency.
4. Step 4. Go back to the transmittance color and the scattering coefficient settings from Step 2. The render will look like Figure 5. Notice that the speculars you set in Step 3 (Figure 4) are added to Figure 3, creating a complete material with its surface and subsurface. You do not always have to follow these same steps. With some practice, you will be able to set speculars and subsurface settings at once without going back and forth all the time.
Additionally, you can add a Coating to the BSDF and the material will turn to a shiny Jade as seen in Figure 7. To avoid color interference in the coating, set it to 5000 nm or higher for a thick result. You can obtain a similar effect without using a coating, simply setting roughness to 0 in the BSDF.
F.05 Transmittance + SSS + Speculars F.03 Transmittance + SSS F.04 Speculars (isolated) F.05 Transmittance + SSS + Speculars

F.06 Thick Coating

F.07 Shiny Jade
One of the most important parameters in subsurface is Asymmetry. By default the value is set to 0. This means that when a ray hits a particle, it is scattered randomly in all directions. It is useful for wax materials and common low-translucent plastics. Positive or negative values change the direction of scattering, as illustrated below. Positive values scatter the rays back, resulting in a more solid look, while negative values scatter the rays forward, resulting in a more translucent look.

10.08.05 Material examples
In Appendix I you will find practical examples and tips to help you better understand the material parameters and create your own MXMs. We strongly encourage you to take a look and experiment with the material system.
Maxwell Render 2.1 User Manual Chapter 11. The Network System |

11.01 The Network System

The network rendering system was created to distribute the rendering process among various CPUs to reduce render times. The Maxwell Render network system offers a solid and stable performance and is easy to set up. The network system allows you to: 1. Launch a cooperative render with several machines working together to render the same image. The contributions of the machines are merged in a single image. 2. Launch a non-cooperative render queue, distributing the scenes among the available CPUs, but every CPU renders an independent image. Each machine works on its own frames. 3. Launch an animation, distributing the frames among the CPUs in the farm to get the whole frame range. The network system (mxnetwork.exe or mxnetwork.app in Mac or mxnetwork in Linux) is composed of three components: 1. The Manager: distributes the jobs between the available render nodes. It also merges the images in a cooperative render. 2. The Render Nodes: the computers that actually render the frames. 3. The Monitor: Interface that allows you to add jobs, assign jobs to nodes, stop a network render, display info about the current job and show a merged preview of a network render in progress.
You can choose to start the Manager, a Render Node or the Monitor on a computer by clicking on the appropriate shortcut (mx_manager, mx_node, mx_monitor). Please note that a computer that runs the Manager and/ or the Monitor can also be used as a Render Node at the same time. The Maxwell network can render across a mixed network of computers running Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is also possible to start the Manager, Render Node or Monitor through the command line, using: mxnetwork manager mxnetwork node mxnetwork monitor Type in mxnetwork help for more information about advanced command line flags to connect a Render Node or a Monitor to a specific Manager if there is more than one in the same network

F.01 The Manager

Only one instance of each type (manager/ monitor/ node) can run in the same machine at the same time. It is not possible to run two Monitors, two Managers or two Render Nodes in the same machine simultaneously.

11.03 The Render Nodes

The Render Nodes are the computers that actually render the frames. To add a computer as a Render Node to the network, double-click on the mx_node shortcut. The node interface will display information about the status of the render. You can only run Maxwell Render in network if you have more than one license, for example 2 Standard licenses or 1 Standard license and 1 RenderNode. You can then use the Standard license to run your main machine, where you set up your scenes and the Manager to distribute jobs. The RenderNode license can be used to run an additional machine for rendering only. Always make sure that all the machines in your network have access to the Maxwell installation folder where your license file is located.

11.06 The Merging process
Cooperative mode is a special mode that allows selected nodes to work on the same frame individually and to merge the images they have created at the end of the rendering process. You can activate Cooperative mode by selecting it in the Wizard panel when a job is submitted. While rendering, multiple nodes will render the same frame with a different starting 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 while rendering by selecting the job tree and pressing the Preview button.
11.07 Common Network situations and tips
If you are working in Windows and want to run more than ten Render Nodes simultaneously, all the 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. Make sure you always check the send textures option. If you are in Linux or Mac this problem does not exist. When rendering animations, make sure that you have plenty of free hard drive space. Each MXI file can easily be 100+ MB in size, especially if Multilight is enabled, and will quickly fill up a small drive. MXS saved with local texture paths Unless you use the send textures option when adding a network render job, both the MXS file and textures used in the MXS should be placed in a shared folder that all nodes have access to. An easy way to accomplish this is using the Pack & Go feature in Maxwell Studio which will copy your MXS and all the textures used in it to a folder of your choice. Otherwise you may get a texture paths error. Alternatively, you have two options to make sure all nodes find the textures: 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 is shared. Your computer name is renderbox1 which is part of the Workgroup named farm. Browse from My Network Places> Microsoft Windows Network> farm> renderbox1> my textures. The path for the texture will then be \\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.
11.06.01 Merging Manually
If the network fails or crashes at some point and the merging of MXI files is not completed (you can check the Monitor nodes and manager for error messages), you can manually merge the cooperative MXI files created during the render process. All the Render Nodes save the current MXI file in their temp folder (accessible through Menu > Open temp folder). The Manager also stores all the MXI files from the nodes in its temp folder, creating a subfolder for each job so it is easier to find the set of MXI files you are looking for and merge them manually. In order to make a cooperative render work, each MXI file 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 himself.

* The Ctrl key in Windows corresponds to the Cmd key in Mac OSX, so wherever the Ctrl key is used on a shortcut, Mac users should use the Command key. Additionally, there are quick navigation options when right-clicking on a 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 in the viewport without changing the position of the viewer or the camera zoom. Center Selection centers the current selection (objects and/ or groups) in the viewport. Center Scene centers the entire scene in the viewport.
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 appears listing the available cameras and perspective views. The Shaded option will change the display mode of the window. Please see the Display Modes section below for more details. The 3D button 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 change the viewport to an orthographic view: T for top D for bottom L for left R for right F for front B for back
options are available in the Preferences> Viewport section. Adaptive grid will automatically re-size the grid as you zoom in and out of the scene. The grid size indicator will change, providing information about the current grid size. The number shown is the distance between two bright lines in the grid. Absolute grid allows you to set a fixed size for each grid square and will not change when you zoom in and out.
uu Note: 2D grids will still show an adaptive grid.
Pressing the I key on your keyboard will enable/ disable the information text displayed in the viewports. Shading Modes Maxwell Studio provides different shading modes in the viewports. You can choose the appropriate mode by clicking on the display mode menu in the viewport title bar. The following shading mode options are available: Bounding box: Only bounding boxes of the objects are shown. Wireframe: Only wireframes are shown. Hidden 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. Texture Blend: Textures are blended together with opacity values and previewed in the viewport with shading.

Function: void setCpuThreads( int value ); Description: Sets the CPU ID for the current scene. Parameters: INT value: New CPU ID. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: void setResY( int value ); Description: Sets the vertical resolution for the current scene. Parameters: INT value: New vertical resolution. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: int cpuThreads( void ); Description: Returns the CPU threads for the current scene. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: INT: cpu threads
Function: bool lockAspectRatioEnabled( void ); Description: Returns whether the lock aspect ratio flag is enabled or disabled. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: Bool: True if lock aspect ratio is enabled, False if it is disabled.
Function: void setCpuID( int value ); Description: Sets the CPU threads for the current scene. Parameters: INT value: New CPU threads. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: void setLockAspectRatioEnabled( bool state ); Description: Sets the lock aspect ratio flag to enabled or disabled. Parameters: Bool status: New lock aspect ratio state. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: int resX( void ); Description: Returns the horizontal resolution for the current scene. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: INT: horizontal resolution.
Function: bool overrideMaterialEnabled( void ); Description: Returns whether the override material flag is enabled or disabled. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: Bool: True if override material is enabled, False if it is disabled.
Function: void setResX( int value ); Description: Sets the horizontal resolution for the current scene. Parameters: INT value: New horizontal resolution. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: void setOverrideMaterialEnabled( bool state ); Description: Sets the override material flag to enabled or disabled. Parameters: Bool status: New override material state. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: int resY( void ); Description: Returns the vertical resolution for the current scene. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: INT: vertical resolution.
Function: string overrideMaterialPath( void ); Description: Returns the current override material path. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: String: override material path.

Function: void setFresnelChannelEnabled( bool state ); Description: Sets the Fresnel channel to enabled or disabled. Parameters: Bool status: New Fresnel channel state. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: int zBufferMax( void ); Description: Returns the maximum Z depth value of the Z buffer channel. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: INT: maximum Z value.
Function: void setFresnelChannelEnabled( bool state ); Description: Sets the Fresnel channel to enabled or disabled. Parameters: Bool status: New Fresnel channel state. Returned Value: Nothing.
Function: void setZBufferMax( int value ); Description: Sets the maximum Z depth value of the Z buffer channel. Parameters: INT value: New maximum Z depth value. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: bool diffusePassEnabled( void ); Description: Returns whether the diffuse pass is enabled or disabled. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: Bool: True if the diffuse pass is enabled, False if it is disabled.
Function: bool roughnessChannelEnabled( void ); Description: Returns whether the roughness channel is enabled or disabled. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: Bool: True if the roughness channel is enabled, False if it is disabled.
Function: void setDiffusePassEnabled( bool state ); Description: Sets the diffuse pass to enabled or disabled. Parameters: Bool status: New diffuse pass state. Returned Value: Nothing
Function: int renderChannelType( void ); 0 = DIFFUSE + REFLECTIONS 1 = DIFFUSE 2 = REFLECTIONS Description: Returns the active render type. Parameters: Nothing Returned Value: int: Active render type. Function: void setRenderChannelType( int type ); Description: Sets the render channel type. Parameters: int type: New render type. Returned Value: Nothing
Event: renderWarning Description: Event emitted when Maxwell Render emits a warning message during the render.
Event: renderError Description: Event emitted when an error happens during the render. Event: renderWarning Description: Event emitted when Maxwell Render emits a warning message during the render.

17.02.06 Render Events

Event: renderError Description: Event emitted when an error happens during the render. Event: renderWarning Description: Event emitted when Maxwell Render emits a warning message during the render. Event: samplingLevelChanged Description: Event emitted when the sampling level changes. Event: renderFinished Description: Event emitted when the render finishes.

17.03 Examples

17.03.01 Render queue example
// // // // This script gets all the MXS files located in the folder input and its children Opens them, changes their SL and resolution and launches each render The output of all the images is stored in the folder output The script also shows how to handle render events

powerful allowing you to produce many different lighting combinations from just one render. MXCL: Refers to the Maxwell render engine, which is command line controllable. Users can connect to MXCL via one of the supported plug-ins or through Studio. MXED: Stands for Maxwell Material Editor. It is a standalone material editor within the Maxwell Render software, with powerful, layered, physical materials and a material browser. MXI: Stands for Maxwell Image. It is Maxwell Renders high dynamic image format which stores all the lighting calculations. This powerful image format allows for resume render and Multilight adjustments. MXI/HDR: (Maxwell Render parameter) This option allows us to light the scene with a HDR or MXI map. In this box there is an option for selecting the type of lighting for the channels that are disabled. With this option you can, for example, insert a background into your image if you apply the map in background textured. MXM: Stands for Maxwell Material. It is the Maxwell material format. MXS: Stands for Maxwell Scene. It is the Maxwell Render scene format. MXST: Stands for Maxwell Studio. It is an independent application within the core components of Maxwell Render. MXST allows users to import objects in different formats, create/ edit/ apply materials, and set up lights and textures. MXST can then send the scene to MXCL to be rendered. MXST is not a modelling application. Offset: An integer indicating the distance from the beginning of an object up until a given element or point, presumably within the same object. OpenGL: OpenGL stands for Open Graphics Library and is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that display 2D and 3D computer graphics. Graphics cards that take advantage of this library will speed up the display of 3D objects in the viewport. Physical sky: Simulates the physical sky in an image for any time of day, any day of the year.
Polygon: A polygon is a closed plane which is bound by three or more line segments. A triangle polygon has three sides; a Quad had four sides and an N-gon can have more than four sides. Maxwell Render transforms all types of polygons into triangles when rendering. RGB: Stands for red, green, blue. Red, green and blue are the 3 colors that are used by monitors to display images. They are called additive colors because the more of each RGB color is added, the brighter the resultant color. 100% of RGB will produce white. Scattering: Lens Scattering, more commonly known as bloom, is caused by the imperfect focus of a lens, causing light scattering inside the lens before it reaches the film. This produces artifacts of fringes of light around very bright objects in an image, making is seem as if the image of the bright light bleeds beyond its natural borders. SDK: Short for Software Development Kit, used by developers to create their own Maxwell Render plug-ins or applications. Shutter: In photography, a shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time to expose photographic film to the right amount of light to create an image. The shutterspeed is usually denoted in hundreds of a second, for example 1/100, which will keep the shutter open for one hundredth of a second. Shutter angle: Film cameras use a rotating disc with an adjustable pie-shaped cut-out in it, which controls how long each frame is exposed. The width of the cut-out is called the shutter angle, and is expressed in degrees. The shutter angle controls the amount of motion blur in animations. 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. In the Maxwell camera settings, the shutter angle you set 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. SimuLens: A collection of lens effects that mimic how a real optical device interacts with light. These effects include lens scattering, vignetting and diffraction. These effects are a post-process that can be applied to a render inside Maxwell Render. Sky Dome: This is a virtual dome which encompasses your entire scene and can be used for uniform lighting. You can choose the color of the sky dome.

SL: Stands for Sampling Level. In Maxwell Render, this value controls the quality of the render. The higher the sampling level reached, the more accurate the image. Specular: Specular reflection is the perfect, mirror-like reflection of light from a surface, in which light from a single incoming direction is reflected into a single outgoing reflection, for example with a mirror. Specular reflection is the opposite of diffuse reflection. SSS: Stands for sub-surface scattering, an effect whereby light penetrates the surface of a translucent object, is scattered by interacting with the material under the surface, and exits the surface at a different point. Inside Maxwell Render, SSS is important for the realistic rendering of for example marble, skin and milk. Studio: Previously known as Maxwell Studio or MXST. It is an independent application within the core components of Maxwell Render. Studio allows users to import objects in different formats, create/ edit/ apply materials, and set up lights and textures. Studio can then send the scene to Maxwell.exe to be rendered. Studio is not a modeling application and needs existing geometry to work with. Turbidity: Turbidity is a cloudiness or haziness of water (or other fluids) caused by individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye. Unbiased Rendering: The method of rendering which, contrary to biased rendering, does not use interpolation or guessing of the samples taken to render the image. Unbiased rendering avoids the typical interpolation and aliasing artifacts associated with biased rendering. This is the method of rendering used in Maxwell Render. Vertex: In geometry, a vertex is a point formed by the intersection of the segments of the object: a vertex of a polygon is the point of intersection of two polygon edges. Plural: vertices. Vignetting: In photography and optics, vignetting is a reduction in image brightness in the image periphery compared to the image centre. It can be controlled using Maxwell Renders SimuLens parameters. Wide-angle lenses (with a focal length of around 24mm) will produce more vignetting compared to larger focal length lenses. After a certain focal length (around 80mm) the vignetting effect is no longer noticeable.
Watts: The Watt is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule per second. Watts specifies how much electricity a light source consumes.
Maxwell Render 2.1 User Manual Credits |
Cartoon Network by Meindbender Markus Otto Vinamilk Balloons. VFX produced by Giantsteps for Douglas Avery Images page: 1 Benjamin Brosdau, Pure | www.purerender.com Images page: 4 The Scope Digital Studio | www.the-scope.net Images page: 5 Oliver Wende | info@sideshowmedia.de Images page: 7 Oliver Wende | info@sideshowmedia.de Images page: 10 Tom Rusteberg | Wanderplay Studio www.wanderplay.com Images page: 16 Markus Otto, Winzenrender | www.winzenrender.com Production Company Muddville Stack! Studios | www.stack-studios.com Images page: 17 Stack! Studios | www.stack-studios.com Images page: 21 Rudolf Herczog | www.rochr.com Images page: 25 Stack! Studios | www.stack-studios.com Images page: 31