noseman Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I am shocked, there are over 17000 members in the M~R forum! If we asume that many of them that have purchased more that one license, that means that NL may have selled over 18000 licenses. Isn't that over 7 million $? WOW P.S. OTOH they may be non VIP members (just to read the forum). That seems more reasonable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 The more revealing number would be VIP members - there are somewhat over 1000 (50 per page in the list and it goes 21 pages - if you're in VIP you can read the list). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I think it's fare to say that NL has definitely made some money on this little venture but well never know how much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus3D Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 There are obviously alot of registered Maxwell customers who aren't even on the forum and some of those own ALOT of licenses for renderfarms and such. It's not just us small normal users they have.. / Max Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 One things is certain. If i had bought 200 license they would be in courts already. That way or another, i think they will be punished. You cannot hope to stay in bussiness acting this way. And if you think that maxwell featurewise is very very very poor. Tom just posted a nice shot. Well. nice material. So what? Most renderers provide excellent material editor. Many, much more powerfull. We dont have procedural materials, and we wont have them (although they had promised for v1) until v2, that is at least what tom told at the forum. Maxwell is trying to sell quality, but that alone is not enough. They advertised x10 incease and low noise, but they took it back. Actually the 6 months we waited where in vain. It is obvious that the new material system (which is very very easy to define.. take my word for it) was created i guess late september, and they could not integrate it with RS2. and the funny question of the week. Do you expect rc5 to be released this week? How confindent are you?? :D:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Who knows....I'm so tired of this whole mess, every day some more bad news comes down the pike and NL never gives any explanation. I'm almost afraid to see what RC5 looks like, and I know no matter what shape it's in it won't live up to my expectations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I really loved the Pixel Artist's trick with the Vray picture. He really hit the nail. Unfortunatelly we are stuck in deep s**t Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I kind of like the idea of having a biased option in Maxwell until they can get the speed and features up to where they should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 At one job I worked we had a drafter who would never give the boss bad news. We would tell him when we needed the drawing done by and he would say Fine to that. Then the deadline would get close the boss would come in and say "I will need that in 1 hour". Drafter would agree. The deadline would come and pass and the boss would get really angry clients were waiting in a meeting and he needed to show them the drawings the drafter said 10 more minutes. Sometimes hours would pass and the meeting would be over and still nothing. I asked the drafter about this and he said that he did not want to tell the boss bad news so he always said he could do it and never seemed to consider whether it was possible just that he really wanted to. He was fired and really because of this. He was really slow to begin with and not being able to produce was what killed it for him. If he could have said "I cannot have the whole drawing done what is most important to show for this meeting?" he would not have been let go. He also thought he was impressing people by his words and not noticing that his deeds were letting all of us down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamT Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 All of this work on materials really has me mystified. The beta's material system provided almost everything I needed. Yeah, sure, it would be nice to have the fancy layer stuff, but it's SO less important than sunlight/sky/glass/speed/noise that it really doesn't make sense to be working on it for v1.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 All of this work on materials really has me mystified. Perhaps NL figured they have the arch-vis crowd in their pocket and felt like impressing those in other fields. In a TV news show I saw recently, they were talking politics. Someone mentioned 'the other shoe' was about to drop, and another guy said "well, it's going to be raining shoes here pretty soon". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Agreed, there are much more important features than a super nifty material setup. In fact I'd go as far as to say the Beta was good enough as it was with a few exceptions like speed, clip maps, camera correction, cooperative rendering, sunlight through glass etcetera. My point is they have tried to jazz it up by adding Studio and the Material editor when the real issues that needed fixing should have been the focus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus3D Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 It's not that easy, as i understand it the different parts of the core and the standalone editor with materials and all that are coded by certain persons and then pieced together into one big thing. They first need to weave together the core with the materials working as it's the basic foundation of Maxwell, everything circulates around those things. If they're not working properly nothing else will, then they cannot optimize it without huge core and material rewrites again as every little change they do ripples through the entire code. They just don't go into one place and change a few parameter or two, this goes like shockwaves through the entire code of the engine. So.. to cut it short, they shove in the parts coded separately, piece it together, testrun them, debug, rewrite, recode, test test and test agian and when all that's done optimisation starts. It's a long long process, a very tedious one at that. / Max Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Griger Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 All of this work on materials really has me mystified. .. it's SO less important than sunlight/sky/glass/speed/noise that it really doesn't make sense to be working on it for v1.0. I'm getting a sick, sinking feeling that this is the reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_game Thankfully many M~R users are more tuned in than I, keeping their eye on the elusive promises that lured us in long ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamT Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I think the problem with dielectrics and sunlight has to do with the core path tracing algorithms and not much to do with layered BSDF materials or a standalone gui. Maybe I'm wrong but it sure seems like they're putting the cart before the horse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I think the problem with dielectrics and sunlight has to do with the core path tracing algorithms and not much to do with layered BSDF materials or a standalone gui. Maybe I'm wrong but it sure seems like they're putting the cart before the horse. IIRC, when Vlado from Vray was commenting on the Maxwell forum, he was making the point that the render algorithm being used couldn't correctly handle glass/sun interactions... which would lead me to believe he was trying to do so himself. To look at PixelArtist's Vray rendering, it would seem that Vlado has solved it in their ppt algorithm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yog Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 IIRC, when Vlado from Vray was commenting on the Maxwell forum, he was making the point that the render algorithm being used couldn't correctly handle glass/sun interactions... which would lead me to believe he was trying to do so himself. To look at PixelArtist's Vray rendering, it would seem that Vlado has solved it in their ppt algorithm.I'm pretty sure that Vlado was refering to bidirectional path tracing, which is what Maxwell uses, and is currently a little different than the path tracing in Vray. Although Vlado did mention that bidirectional path tracing would be an option in Vray 1.5. I like options Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whiskey Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 i dont get the problem...light is light - right? (rhyming unintended) so why does it work with an emitter but not with the sun (a very large, very far away, tinted emitter ) i have the feeling the core is fine..it's just their sky system that's a bit banged up (although it has nice banding:p) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I'm pretty sure that Vlado was refering to bidirectional path tracing, which is what Maxwell uses, and is currently a little different than the path tracing in Vray. Although Vlado did mention that bidirectional path tracing would be an option in Vray 1.5. I like options Geez, ppt and bidirectional... wow. I'm really starting to think NL needs to focus on OSX users, because I'm not so sure I can see Maxwell competing w/Vray on the Windows platform. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Although Vlado did mention that bidirectional path tracing would be an option in Vray 1.5. Do you have a link to this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamT Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 i dont get the problem...light is light - right? (rhyming unintended) so why does it work with an emitter but not with the sun (a very large, very far away, tinted emitter ) i have the feeling the core is fine..it's just their sky system that's a bit banged up (although it has nice banding:p) I guess maybe it has to do with the difference between lights with converging (or diverging?) rays and infinite/parallel lights? Oh well, I won't pretend to understand the theory behind it all. In either case, they just need to get that sh*t working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whiskey Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 i see..i just hope the new moon option won't mean another rendercore. but i'm happy with mverta's statement that the new rc is as good (qualitywise) as the beta..i believe him..maybe they really just showed the wrong type of renderings and the rc can actually deliver much more glad also i'm not dependant of sunlight..sorry guys - me product design sissy:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yog Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Do you have a link to this? Slight adjustment. It seams that Vlado was saying should be after Vray 1.5. About halfway down the page. http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10323&start=75 Actually the whole page is worth reading, because back in Feb 2005 Vlado was saying the problem would be seeing caustics through glass. Which makes me wonder if it is indeed a material problem, or whether it is a problem intrinsic with Bidirectional path tracing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 back in Feb 2005 Vlado was saying the problem would be seeing caustics through glass. Which makes me wonder if it is indeed a material problem, or whether it is a problem intrinsic with Bidirectional path tracing. It seems to be the second. I was doing something this weekend with my son, his friend and his father. The father is a coder of general business and graphics software. I mentioned the maxwell situation, and that it is based on the MLT algo's, and even he had heard of it, and the part about it not being easily solved. I think we've entered some undiscovered country here. Maybe its just semantics, but there is something to the fact that no model is perfect. To say we are going to have an unbiased render engine is fundamentally rediculous, if you think about it this way--you cannot perfectly model a system. If you did, you would re-create the system. Anything less than an 'alternate universe' model is inherantly a reduction, a simplification...biased. So chasing 'unbiased' mathematical solutions is a path to failure. Until you acknowledge that some cheats and approximations are needed to find a usable solution. It's like people who claim to never lie. We know NextLimit can't say that, so maybe its time to give up on the 'unbiased', too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bricklyne Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 ........... Maybe its just semantics, but there is something to the fact that no model is perfect. To say we are going to have an unbiased render engine is fundamentally rediculous, if you think about it this way--you cannot perfectly model a system. If you did, you would re-create the system. Anything less than an 'alternate universe' model is inherantly a reduction, a simplification...biased. So chasing 'unbiased' mathematical solutions is a path to failure. Until you acknowledge that some cheats and approximations are needed to find a usable solution. It's like people who claim to never lie. We know NextLimit can't say that, so maybe its time to give up on the 'unbiased', too. ......hmmm. This is some deep stuff right here. So what you're actually saying is that one can't really claim to be 'accurate' without defining just how accurate that is? But just how 'accurate' is 'accurate'? Or in our case, how unbiased is unbiased? Are there different degrees of accuracy? Accurate compared to what? Is there an absolute standard against which to measure accuracy? And before you say reality is the golden standard, just how can one know how 'real' their perception of reality 'really' is? And let's not even let Heisenberg into the Lab when we decide to set the limits for that golden standard of reality. He's going to decide that we need to devise a way to measure reality without actually affecting reality in the process, which as he has already stated before, is frankly speaking impossible. Hhhmmmm indeed. A very strong drink would be in order right about now; either that or the blue pill. So before, I get lynched for frying people's noodles big time, I must hasten to point out that herein lies NextLimit's problem. Their major selling point is that their renderer, renders simulations of reality ( a contradiction of meaning if ever there was one) closer to reality than other renderers can. Except of course that the Sunlight/glass issue ( or clipmaps for that matter), has proven this to be a rather problematic selling point, seeing as other software developers and mathematicians have discovered that MLT-based systems will always tend to run into this sort of problem. Clipmaps for their part, ( and bump maps by extension) already lay waste the whole concept of 'unbiased-ness', since realistically speaking clipmaps have no equivalent in the real world, (and bump-maps are a "shortcut" to representing real world phenomena). Maybe early on they seriously believed that they could really solve this Sun-dielectric problem; unfortunately, it would seem to appear that, much to our expense, they are coming to grips with what the rest of the kids in the schoolyard already knew. I would also tend to believe that whomever, develops a processor-effecient solution to this ( be it NL, or Chaos, Cebas, or MentalRay,) before the rest, will earn folk-hero status in the render-community. As I said, before, chances are that they will be forced to "cheat" their way around this problem if they ever want to release a renderer before the next Summer Olympics; loathe as they may find concept of cheating. Has anyone else noticed that since the Beta, their new major 'selling point', became the 'revolutionary' Material layering and BDSF system, as opposed to the unbiased-ness of their engine? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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