Dynamic Reflections with Nitrous

The ability to see dynamic, real-time reflections in the viewport has been in Nitrous for a while but not exposed to the user interface. A simple maxscript can enable this feature. I have uploaded a pair of macros to enable or disable it You'll find them on the "Maxscripts" page of the DAS web site. Just copy the 2 macros to your Macroscripts folder (wherever that may be), restart Max and follow the instructions for activating and using the macros as described in the screen capture images in the zip download. A sample of the dynamic reflections in use is included and shown below. This is just a quick feature enhancement to the viewports. More powerful scripts are out there to help wrangle Nitrous to your liking.

Backburner running as service

If you're using Autodesk Backburner to control your network rendering and you have backburner set up to run as a service across your network, you've probably noted in Windows 7 that if you're using a local domain for your network, you need to use a login account for the service that has top level domain privileges. Otherwise, the service will have trouble talking to the manager.
What you may not have known is exactly which account 3ds max is using when it starts as a render service. You might have thought it was the login credentials you used to authorize the service or perhaps even the current user, but you'd be wrong. Backburner is using the account of the user who installed the software. Now if you have a well organized studio or even a small one of your own in which all this has been taken care of by a single individual, this probably hasn't been a problem. But when backburner rears its head and the log starts telling you about missing configurations this is a real difficult problem to nail down, especially with plugins, startup variables or map paths to network locations.
Happy Rendering! (OK, with backburner that's probably a lot to wish for...)