Mankua have updated their great free plugins Stress, ViewTools and PowerStamper for use in Max 2011 (32-bit and 64-bit).

This is exactly the same as the motion.dlc that ships with Max, except that it adds another 16 MIDI tracks to the controller.

You'll need to rename the file called 'motion.dlc' in the Max stdplugs folder to 'motion.dlc.old' and then copy the file you need from the zip file into the stdplugs folder.

Changes for v1.6.0.43178 are:
- Increased performance of particle loading, lighting, matting and rendering
- New Shadow Generation Workflow introducing OpenEXR-based Deep Opacity Maps
- Render Elements Support using the 3ds Max workflows
- MagmaFlow improvements including new Surface Operators for geometry data lookup
- New FumeFX direct rendering workflow via a dedicated PRT FumeFX object and FumeFX 2.0 support
- Improved UI startup performance
- Optimized user interface navigation
- MAXScript reading access to particle data
- Major bug-fixes
- Workflow improvements across the board

Krakatoa is available for Max 8 to 2011 and costs $995 plus support. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.01 are:
- Reloading a saved .max file with a point cloud now refreshes/loads the source cloud data
- Render LOD -> Custom LOD now works
- Render with Additive Volume no longer results in mental ray warnings and errors
- When Use Display Volumes is unchecked, point clouds no longer render with assigned volumes
- After multiple Display Volumes are deleted, point clouds no longer render
- Render Color -> Use Display Color now works
- All properties have been made non-animatable except LOD
- Color Leaves have been removed from the UI
- The PTS to PTSB Converter Utility has been removed from the UI

The Project Helix Technology Preview will be made available only for a limited time, so download Project Helix soon.

Changes for v2.4 are:
- Adds support for Max 2010 and 2011 (32-bit and 64-bit)

This is my monthly news entry to let people know that I am always available for 3D work (I don't just run this site, and I don't earn any money from it).

My main areas of work are commercials, industrial and technical animation, as well as programming and scripting. All of the relevant information can be found on my other site Animation Design, along with some videos of my work to give you an idea of what I can do. So if I can help out at all, just let me know.

If you are a developer of freeware plugins and are hosting your plugins on a site with restricted download traffic, then maybe I can help out.

I can offer a subdomain (eg: yourname.maxplugins.de) here with space to host your plugins and HTML stuff for free. There will also be a link to the hosted pages in the menu on the left. Interested? Just drop me a line at the email address at the top of the page.

You can also contact me if you have got source code for plugins that you don't develop anymore. I would be glad to recompile as many old plugins as possible. Just mail me to let me know what sort of stuff you've got.

Dave

The news from previous months can be accessed by clicking on the 'Plugin news archive' link in the menu.

Changes for v1.2.5.0 are:
- Adds support for .NET 4.0 assemblies while Autodesk.Max.dll can still be used in VS2008
- Fixes a crash when using IAnimatable.AddAppDataChunk(...)

MaxDotNet is available for Max 9 to 2011 and costs $675 for commercial use. For non-commercial use the plugin is free. A demo version is available here.

Siger Studio are offering a bundle of their Shader sets for the price of €50, a saving of €10 over buying the shader sets individually. The bundle includes SigerShaders VCarpaint2, SigerShaders VMetal2, SigerShaders VPlastic2 and SigerShaders VCeramic2.

mrProfiler is a profiling shader that is totally non-intrusive to the render process itself, and which produces as output a heatmap and a threadmap of the rendering process. This allows you to see the amount of render time spent on each individual pixel in the image, and shows clearly which parts of the image take a very long time or no time at all.

The threadmap which is stored in the alpha channel of the output image shows the distribution of different threads spanned by mental ray to render the image. The number of threads in the image does not necessarily correspond to the amount of CPU or hardware threads available on your machine. The mental ray message window also contains additional information produced by mrProfiler to further understand how many threads were used in the image, making it easier to understand the color coding in the threadmap.

Changes for v6.0.8 are:
- Fixes a client crash caused by processes allocating too much data for available memory
- Network operations have been optimized on POSIX platforms
- The Maya connector has been updated to work with Maya 2011
- The web server can now be disabled
- Logon detection on Windows Vista and 7 now works with weird domain settings
- You can now configure an image slicing job to remove the slices after a successful assembly
- You can now clear the entire log list either on a client or on the Dispatcher
- Kill and pause operations are now reported in the logs as intended
- Adds a field in the global job parameters to define additional environmental variables
- Various bug-fixes

Muster is available for Max 8 to 2011 and costs $85. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.0 are:
- Adds support for Max 2011 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Adds support for V-Ray v1.5 SP5
- Reduced the price from €22 to €15

SigerShaders VPlastic2 is available for Max 2009 to 2011 and costs €15.

Changes for v2.1.1 are:
- Adds support for previewing transparent materials in the viewport
- Padding and name format of image sequences can now be specified in a Maxwell Render bitmap node
- The warning window can now be minimized and shows up in the center of the screen
- Adds support for two-color sky dome
- The file browser for emitter MXI textures no longer defaults to the wrong file mask

The Maxwell 3ds Max plugins come with Maxwell Render, which is available for Max 7 to 2011 and costs €895. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.01 are:
- Adds support for per-vertex normals (specified via nx/ny/nz)
- Adds support for files that specify face vertices via 'vertex_index' instead of 'vertex_indices'

Changes for v3.17.3 Beta 2 are:
- Adds a 'toggle visibility' control to the highpoly context menu
- Fixes problems with some controls when themes are disabled
- Now you can render a new kind of map: the curvature map
- Fixes some problems with probabilistic model rendering occlusion
- Fixes some problems with bent normals and radiosity normal maps
- Solves some problem with the unattended batch mode
- Fixes the base texture map's background color being loaded incorrectly

Changes for v1.0 are:
- Adds support for Max 2011 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Adds support for V-Ray v1.5 SP5
- Adds a load of new presets
- Reduced the price from €22 to €15

SigerShaders VCeramic2 is available for Max 2009 to 2011 and costs €15.

Changes for v1.0.1 are:
- Fixes a load error on localized versions of Max and Windows (Japan)

SigerShaders VMetal2 is available for Max 2009 to 2011 and costs €15.

Changes for v1.0.456 include:
- Fixes 'rgb_unit_conversion' parameter for the physicalskylight, physicalsun and physicalsky shaders
- Fixes 'multiplier' parameter for the 'mia_physicalsun' shader
- Fixes 'sun_direction' parameter for the mr Physical Sky environment map
- Fixes 'horizon_height' parameter for the mr Physical Sky environment map
- Updated export of the mr_photographic_exposure shader
- Updated export of the 'max_NodeData'
- Updated export of the 'max_SceneData'
- Implemented different shader declarations for various Max versions
- Max plugin uses global render settings data structures rather than custom UI
- Changed network IP entry to prevent odd Max font error
- Max plugin now handles multiple geometry objects with the same name
- Max plugin supports universal geometry handling if optimized export fails

Rendition is available for Max 9 to 2011 and costs $395. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.6.1.27545 are:
- Upgraded to .NET 4.0
- Adds right click layer menu option to toggle layer lights on/off
- Adds right click layer menu option to enable/disable pflow sources
- Adds keyboard action to toggle state set recording

Zookeeper is available for Max 2009 to 2011 and costs $249. A demo version is available here.