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Maxwell for Rhino
The Maxwell for Rhino plugin has been designed to make using Maxwell with Rhino as seamless and efficient a process as possible. To
this end, the plugin provides fully-integrated Maxwell materials, along with a native-to-Rhino Material Editor which is built to work in a
way which is very similar to Maxwell’s own MXED MXM editor.
Supported Platforms
The Maxwell for Rhino plugin runs on all versions of Rhino equal or greater than Rhino 4 SR5. This includes Rhino 5 WIP releases, both
x86 and x64. Two versions of the installer are available; Maxwell for Rhino x86 and Maxwell for Rhino x64, and the architecture here
refers to the target version of Rhino, not the operating system architecture. Therefore, Rhino 4 and x86 versions of Rhino 5 should use
the x86 plugin installer, while x64 versions of Rhino 5 should use the x64 installer. This version of the plugin is designed for use with
Maxwell Render 2.6.0.
Installation
Installation of the plugin is accomplished as follows:
1. Download and unzip the plugin. When doing so, you should not use any special 3
rd
-party downloaders, and you should disable any
anti-virus software which may interfere with the download. Once downloaded, the standard Windows unzip function should be
used to unzip the downloaded folder to a location at which you hold permission to install programs. Using 3
rd
-party unzip software
or having anti-virus software running during download, unzip, or installation may corrupt the installer files and cause a failure to
install correctly.
2. Open the unzipped folder and locate the file setup.exe; double click this file to start the installer (do not use the file with the .msi
extension to install; it will be called by setup.exe after certain preliminary checks have been performed). Follow through the
installation wizard until the plugin has been installed. Rhino should not be running when you do this.
3. When you start Rhino next time, you should find a Maxwell for Rhino item in the Render > Current Renderer menu. Choosing this
item will load the Maxwell plugin and set it as the current renderer. If this item does not appear in the Current Renderer menu, you
should attempt to load the plugin manually using File > Properties > Plug-ins > Install and locating the file Maxwell.Rhino.rhp,
which will be located at the location you specified during installation. The folder containing this file should be located somewhere
similar to C:\Program Files (x86)\MaxwellDotNET\Maxwell.Rhino, unless you specified a custom installation location when installing.
The installer requires a minimum of Windows Installer version 3.1, and the plugin itself requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The
installer, setup.exe, will check for these prerequisites and prompt you to download and install them if required. Additionally, the installer
will install the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 C++ Runtime redistributable. The file which is used for this, vcredist_x86.exe
(vcredist_x64.exe for the x64 plugin), is included in the download, and in the event of a failure to install automatically, you should try
executing this file manually and then running the installer again.
What is covered in this plugin manual?
This manual includes all the information you need to know to use the Maxwell for Rhino plugin. It goes into the details of some general
Maxwell concepts, but it is not intended to replace the regular Maxwell Render manual, which may be found in your Maxwell installation
directory. If any non-plugin-related parameters are not explained sufficiently here, please consult the regular Maxwell Render manual
for further direction.
Special Note
This version incorporates an updated user-preference system. By default, it will have a color scheme similar to that of Rhino. If you
prefer the the previous color scheme, just go to Scene Manager > Options and click the Load UI Colors File button; a dialog will be
opened, in which you should find a file named classic.xml -- this is the default color scheme used in previous plugin versions.
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