News
Plugin Manual Released
I've just finished putting together the user manual for this plugin. It is still incomplete, but covers most functionality that is currently available. You can read it here.
Posted April 23, 2018 - 3 comments
Note for Russian Users
It has come to my attention that most of AWS is currently blocked in Russia. I'm not sure whether this affects S3, which is where the downloads for this plugin are currently hosted.
To any users from Russia: please let me know in a comment here if you are having any problems with the download. If it is blocked I'll rehost it elsewhere.
If you find this inconvenient please direct all negative feedback to Roskomnadzor.
Edit: Actually, you should probably email me at contact@cyclesformax.net if you have any problems. I think ReCAPTCHA may be blocked as well and that would stop you from posting a comment.
Posted April 17, 2018 - 0 comments
Update on Comment Spam
Lately this news feed has had a bit of a problem with bots posting spam comments. I've just added some fresh anti-spam tech to the website which should help cut down on this in the future.
In unrelated news, work on the next version is coming along well. The next release will include support for Max 2019 among other things. I'm still not sure exactly when it will be ready, but it is coming eventually, probably within a month.
Posted April 15, 2018 - 0 comments
Beta 1.08 Release and Demo
I have just posted a download for version Beta 1.08. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes and is available on the download page.
Beta 1.08 is the first release to include the new shader exporter for Blender. This allow Cycles shaders created in Blender to be exported for use in 3ds Max. I've made a short video showing off how this works.
Posted March 4, 2018 - 3 comments
Beta 1.07 Demo Video
I've put together a quick video going over the major new features that have been added to this plugin in the last few releases.
Posted Feb. 19, 2018 - 2 comments
Beta 1.07 Release
I have just posted a download for release Beta 1.07. This release is largely focused on improving the node graph editor to allow for better interoperation with Cycles in Blender in the future. It also contains some bugfixes unrelated to the node graph editor.
Please see the download and changelog pages for more information.
Posted Feb. 7, 2018 - 0 comments
Beta 1.07 Delayed to Early February
I wanted to post a quick update about the status of the next release of this plugin because I'm going to miss the release date stated in my previous news post. My original plan was to get it out by the end of January, but implementing support for RGB/XYZ curves in the node graph editor has taken me longer than I initially expected. I'll be holding back the next release until I can finish adding support for curves. My best estimate now is that it will be ready in about a week.
Posted Jan. 31, 2018 - 0 comments
Roadmap for 2018
It has been a while since I have posted a roadmap, so here is a short summary of the features I plan on adding to this plugin before the 1.0 release. If all goes well, I should be able to finally get 1.0 out later this year.
Node Graph Editor Updates
Right now I am largely focused on improving the node graph editor. This consists of adding support for (almost) all of the Cycles nodes that are not in this plugin yet, including Object Info, Geometry, Wireframe, and more. I have also been working on some minor UI improvements including a new RGB color picker.
I expect a to make a release including these improvements near the end of January.
Shader interop plugin for Blender
Once the node graph editor has more complete support for all of the node types in Cycles, I will write a plugin for Blender that allows a user to import and export shaders in a format compatible with the Max plugin. This will allow you to easily send any Cycles shader created in Blender to Max and vice-versa.
Creating this plugin will be my top priority once the graph editor improvements detailed above have been released.
Shadow Catcher
This feature is a recent addition to Cycles that will be supported by this plugin in a future release.
More Lights
The plugin currently has very limited support for lights. I'll be adding support for more of Max's built-in light types including directional lights and spot lights.
Along with these new light types, I will also be adding support for light portals.
Physical Material
The approximation of Max's Physical Material currently used by this plugin has a few areas I hope to improve.
First, the current method used to convert the material's height map to a normal map can produce quite bad-looking results with some height maps. Instead of continuing with the current method of converting from height map to normal map inside of a shader at render-time, I plan on extending the texture baker to allow it to bake out a high quality normal map from a height map as part of the texture-baking phase.
Second, a number of parameters of the Physical Material are still unsupported. The approximation used by this plugin will be improved to support anisotropy, subsurface scattering, thin-walled transparency, and possibly cutout maps.
Render Passes/Elements
I will be adding support for using Cycles Render Passes as Render Elements in Max.
OpenCL
The plugin will be updated to support OpenCL for AMD users. This is near the bottom of my list for development priority right now, but I do want to get OpenCL support in before version 1.0
Maybe More
If there are any other features of either Max or Cycles that you would like to see the plugin support, let me know either in a comment below or by email at contact@cyclesformax.net
Posted Jan. 22, 2018 - 1 comment