NextLimit Maxwell 5 Studio version 5.0.2.21

Next Limit has released Maxwell 5.0, the next major update to its physically based renderer, adding multi-GPU support, integrated cloud rendering, and a V-Ray scene importer. The release also updates the user interface to display better on modern Hi-DPI displays.

A performance-focused update, for both preview and final-quality rendering
Performance is a key focus of the update, with speed increases in both preview and final-quality rendering. Fire, the software’s interactive render preview, is "now faster and optimized to update instantly".

Support for multiple GPUs in Maxwell GPU
In addition, Maxwell GPU, the CUDA-based GPU render engine introduced Maxwell 4.0, now supports multiple GPUs, for a "more than 50x speed-up compared with a high-end CPU". The benchmark on the product website, reproduced above, suggests that you’d need to be using at least three GPUs to see that kind of speed boost, but that performance scaling is relatively close to linear. Maxwell GPU can also now handle additive materials, although there are still a number of Maxwell features that the engine doesn’t support, including procedural textures, coatings and SSS.

Other changes: light grouping in Multilight, UI scaling on Hi-DPI displays
– Other changes include the option to group lights and treat them as a single emitter in Multilight, Maxwell’s toolset for adjusting the colour and intensity of light sources in an image after rendering.
– The interface has also been reworked to display better on modern high-resolution displays "4K or higher".
– Workflow improvements include support for nested references, making it easier to work with complex scenes; and the option to search for scene dependencies in file paths with up to three levels of subfolders.
Check in this video how the new VRay importer feature works in Maxwell 5

In Maxwell Studio only: built-in cloud rendering, new V-Ray scene importer.
Users of the standalone edition of the renderer, Maxwell Studio, also get built-in access to a new cloud rendering service, Maxwell Cloud. As with Chaos Cloud, the equivalent feature in V-Ray, sending a render to the cloud is a one-click operation, although currently, you can only render using the CPU engine. The Studio edition also includes a V-Ray scene importer, which automatically converts V-Ray materials and lights into their Maxwell equivalents for rendering. Similar importers are "coming soon" in the application-specific versions of Maxwell.

Maxwell
Changes
– License files are now saved into a "v5" folder to avoid license conflicts with previous major versions of Maxwell Render and demo or expired licenses (for more information, check this page, bullet #8:

https://nextlimitsupport.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/maxwell/pages/22681242/Licensing+FAQ

)
– Update license: append by default.
– Updated RLM server to version 13.0BL2.
Fixes
– Maxwell and Studio did not evaluate referenced MXM textures correctly.
– Triangle ID channel was not saved in embed channels mode if the format does not allow for layers.
– Crash in OSX rendering meshes with the subdivision modifier.
– Infinite loop using MaxwellScatter extension with an object that also uses MaxwellScatter (now the second level of scattering is ignored).
– Maxwell Render took a long time to start rendering.
– LDR images used in IBL looked washed or with wrong colors.
– Reference loader loaded instances from the main scene instead of referenced scene when there were original objects with the same name in the main and the referenced scene.
– Linux installer distributed .so files that could conflict with user system libraries.
– FIRE crashed (CPU and GPU) changing displacement from Flat to Catmull/loop.
– Crash in OSX in multithreaded voxelization.
– Crash rendering Light Groups + Color Multilight. Now it changes to Intensity Multilight mode if there are Multilight groups involved.
Improvements
– Support for HDPI monitors has been improved. You’ll notice crispy text and icons and other general improvements.
– Console warnings for bad material map configuration created by plug-ins.
Known Issues
– Wrong data issues with TIFF images and LZW compression in Linux platforms (including Maxwell Cloud nodes).
– MaxwellScatter extension ignores the MaxwellScatter modifier applied to the scattered objects (if they have) to avoid infinite loops.

Maxwell GPU
Fixes
– Some channels (alpha, material, object, position, z-buffer) could show artifacts.
– Procedural textures could crash on GPU and produce wrong material assignments.
– Texture properties (Brightness, contrast, saturation, hue) did not work as intended in GPU.
– Crash rendering scenes with unsupported procedural geometry extensions (grass, volumetrics, particles).
Improvements
– Object transformation changes with FIRE GPU don’t re-voxelize the whole scene, making FIRE GPU more responsive to scene edition.
Known Issues
– Dielectrics materials don’t behave as intended in some scenes.

Maxwell Studio
Fixes
– FIRE window saved a corrupt image to disk.
– Studio didn’t save a thumbnail (for the MXS saved file) when the user launches GPU FIRE.
– Studio crashed after the quality of FIRE was risen by the user.
– The MXS files were generated with a corrupted preview image.
– Studio crashed when saving the file after FIRE has been launched with quality 7 or higher.
– The viewport selection, drag & drop, focus tool, etc. didn’t work properly with HDPI monitors.
– Crash moving Studio between HDPI / non-HDPI monitors.
– Scaling objects could crash Studio.
– Studio crashed on Mac when right-clicking on an MXS file in Finder > Open with… and choosing Studio.
– Local browser blocked and force-closed when we chose "outdoor ies" folder in Studio.
– FIRE GPU vignetting was always "on".
– When opening Studio through CMD with -mxs, the viewport got overexposed.
– Studio didn’t read the defaultlayout_v5.stlay file from the installation folder "layouts".
Improvements
– No need to save the current scene to disk before sending it to Maxwell Cloud/Network (it now exports to a temporal mxs file).
– Support for HDPI monitors has been improved. You’ll notice crispy text and icons and other general improvements.
Known Issues
– Resources Browser may crash Studio on widget resize.
MXED
Improvements
– Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.
– Added two new material preview scenes: attenuation (specifically for testing the attenuation distance of the transparent materials) and drapery 2 (intended to test fabrics).

Network
Changes
– Cloud job/render IDs are now shown in the jobs list in the same column. The cloud job name is shown in its own column.
Fixes
– The Network Manager could not find the mximerge tool in OSX.
– The preview showed a white overlay in OSX
Improvements
– The "Buy cloud time" link points to the Maxwell Cloud area of the webshop, instead of the global webshop page.
– Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.
– User panel close button added
Python Editor
Improvements
– Support for HDPI monitors has been improved.

Maxwell Render is an unbiased spectral ray-tracing designed to simulate light and materials exactly as they behave in real world. Maxwell Render makes perfect images, films and animations from 3D models and scenes. It is the complete solution for anyone who demands immaculate results on a deadline. Maxwell Render offers maximum quality, speed, and compatibility for architects, designers and VFX artists.
Maxwell 5 includes several new features and improvements: procedural textures, multi-GPU rendering, Maxwell Cloud, 4K compatibility and much more.
Maxwell Studio is a sophisticated independent scene editor with a full 3D environment, offering an alternative workflow for those Maxwell Render users that work with 3D or CAD applications that we do not currently offer a plug-in for.
This release is the first significant update to Maxwell in some time: Maxwell 4.0 came out in 2016, and the last bugfix update was over 18 months ago.
Check in this video how the new GPU fire feature works in Maxwell 5

Next Limit was founded in 1998 by engineers Victor Gonzalez and Ignacio Vargas with a common vision of developing cutting edge simulation tecnologies. RealFlow was the first product released. In the following years new products came to life, such as: Maxwell Render, CaronteFX and XFlow CFD. In 2018 Victor Gonzalez became the sole owner of the group, expanding the company portfolio toward new markets and industries. Since then the portfolio has been updated with three new solutions: Anyverse, BeGraph and RoomBox.

Product: Next Limit Maxwell 5 Studio
Version: 5.0.2.21
Supported Architectures: x64
Website Home Page : https://maxwellrender.com/

Language: english
System Requirements: PC *
Supported Operating Systems: *
Size: 787.2 mb

The minimum system requirements for Maxwell Render are as follows:
– Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 7, 8, 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016.
– 2 GHz Intel Core2 processor, AMD Athlon 64 or better
– 1GB RAM minimum. 16 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended
– 1.7 GB available hard disk space for installation
– Accelerated OpenGL drivers
– 3 button mouse recommended