All versions of Maya starting with 6.5 are supported.
> GEOMETRY EXPORT
Suppported geometry types:
- Polygonal meshes
- NURBS surfaces
- SubD
NURBS surfaces are tessellated using the "advanced tessellation" options in Maya. In order to see the rendering tessellation you need to check "display render tessellation" and "enable advanced tessellation" on the NURBS object. The ModeU and ModeV attributes are ignored; internally we always use the equivalent of "Per span # of Isoparms". We always enforce this tessellation mode because if we want motion blur to work, we need to have constant tessellation between frames.
Fast; exploits the new Maya8 geometry API, so i is up to 5 times faster in Maya8 than in previous versions.
Supports per-face material assignment.
Fetches instanced geometry only once from Maya and writes it multiple times. This avoids calling the expensive geometry retrieval functions more times than needed, and paves the road for when Maxwell will support instancing.
Only exports visible objects and their materials; hidden objects have virtually no impact on the export time.
> SUPPORT FOR MAYA NATIVE MATERIALS
Automatic translation of Maya native shaders:
- Lambert
- Phong
- PhongE
- Blinn
- Anisotropic
- Layered
Automatic translation of Mental Ray shaders:
- Car paint
- Dielectric
Custom attributes added to the native Maya nodes give the user some control over the translated materials:
- Fresnel color
- Absorption distance
- Roughness
- Light dispersion and Abbe number
- Anisotropy
The native shaders can be converted into equivalent Maxwell materials using the shader type drop-down in the Attribute Editor.
We have overriden Maya's default behaviour for that operation, so that the Maya shaders are converted using the same presets as those used "behind the scene" during scene export.
Maya file texture nodes are correctly translated when encountered. We take into account all their attributes that have a Maxwell correspondent: invert, tiling factor and offset. We use Maya's internal logic for locating a texture file from its relative path, so Maxwell will always use the same texture files as the Maya software render would.
Bump connections are also translated. We take the "bump strength" value from the "bump depth" attribute of bump2d nodes and we support normal mapping in the Maya versions where it is implemented (from 7.0 and up).
> MAXWELL-SPECIFIC MATERIAL NODES
Custom shader node that exposes all the attributes that you can edit in Maxwell's Material Editor.
Support for light emitters, which can be enabled on any material.
We duplicated the material wizard and the light presets from Maxwell Studio.
Hypershade and Attribute Editor swatches are rendered with Maxwell, so the user gets a nice preview of the material.
The quality of the swatch renderer can be controlled from the UI.
Maxwell materials are displayed in the viewport. The colour and transparency channels of all BSDF layers involved are blended together using the weight values or textures that are set in the UI. The resolution of the hardware texture can be controlled from the Attribute Editor, just like for native Maya shaders.
Users can browse the Maxwell material library from within the Attribute Editor.
Multiple materials can be merged into a single one (by combining their layers).
Material files (.mxm) can be imported and exported.
> SUPPORT FOR MAYA CAMERAS
Custom Maya attributes augment the Maya camera model to account for Maxwell's more complex camera.
We have implemented rotary shutter simulation for movie camera motion blur. The plug-in replaces the camera shutter speed with a value derived from the rotary shutter angle and then adjusts the ISO film speed to arrive back to the same exposure as with the initial shutter speed / ISO settings. This is far more intuitive for users than to let them compute the shutter speed from the shutter angle and then adjust the film speed to strange values.
> TIGHT INTEGRATION AS A MAYA RENDERER
Maxwell is selectable as the current rendering engine; the render current frame and batch render commands can use it.
Batch render scenes and files are named using the rules set in the Render Settings window.
Maxwell has a Render Settings window tab that allows users to set up general rendering options, sky settings, environment etc.
HDR Sky / Environment support
Command line batch rendering using Maya's "render" utility.
> FILE EXPORTER MODE AVAILABLE
Scenes can be exported as .mxs files.
The exporter can handle animations, writing one .mxs file per frame.
Exported files are named using the rules set in the Render Settings window.
