Devin Johnston Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 I receaved this e-mail this morining from Next Limit, it looks very promising! Dear customer, Next Limit Technologies is pleased to announce the upcoming release of Maxwell Render 1.5. The release, scheduled for mid-May, will bring a great number of improvements, new features and enhancements for new and existing customers. Some of the features of this release which have already been published through newsletters and forums include: - Core enhancements: Key parts of the engine have been rewritten, resulting in many fantastic improvements, bringing the quality of rendered images to a completely new level. Memory handling has been greatly enhanced. This version uses much less memory than version 1.1, making it possible to render at very high resolutions (for example at 8000 x 6000 with less than 2 GB of Ram) without losing quality. High-res images are just a mouse-click away now. As a consequence of the core enhancements, memory-intensive tasks such as glare, Multilight with a lot of emitters, large geometries and a lot of heavy textures are improved. Additionally, MXI files can always be re-rendered and the size of the MXI files is around 3,5 times smaller in the new version. - Maxwell Studio and Maxwell Material Editor: Both have been rewritten resulting in massive improvements in usability, performance and better “look and feel” and workflow for the user. - 32 bits output: It is now possible to set the output image format to HDR directly inside Maxwell Render. - Network: Maxwell Render’s networking option has been vastly improved and optimized, making it more stable and faster, with the possibility for users to see a coop preview image and to select machines by name or IP. - Linux version: A Linux version will be available with 1.5. In addition, Maxwell Studio and the Maxwell Material Editor have been re-written from scratch to implement optimizations and improvements of the highest level. - Plug-ins: All our current plug-ins are compatible with Maxwell Render 1.5, and many of them have been further improved. Especially the Lightwave plug-in has seen major optimizations. Why 1.5 ? This is a significant upgrade to Maxwell Render 1.1 on many levels and this release deserves to be positioned accordingly. “1.2” just doesn’t underline the importance of this release. However, Maxwell Render 1.5 naturally remains a FREE upgrade for existing users to reward them for their support and loyalty. Many parts of Maxwell Render have been improved and re-written. The core Render Engine has seen key enhancements in some of the most important parts. Maxwell Studio and the Maxwell Material Editor have been re-written from scratch. The feature list has been extended and improved, including more innovative features for realism and render quality, and new plug-ins. Huge optimizations have been made in memory handling, and the performance, stability and usability have all been enhanced. Pricing has been maintained but we have radically changed the licensing policy to embrace current and future hardware trends. Collectively, these result in a significant upgrade from 1.1 and we are proud to name this version Maxwell Render 1.5. Next week we will follow up on this announcement, providing information about the new licensing policy and a more detailed feature list. In the meantime, if you have any queries, please feel free to ask me. All the best, Next Limit Team April 20th 2007 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHE Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 Many parts of Maxwell Render have been improved and re-written. The core Render Engine has seen key enhancements in some of the most important parts. Maxwell Studio and the Maxwell Material Editor have been re-written from scratch. The feature list has been extended and improved, including more innovative features for realism and render quality, and new plug-ins. Huge optimizations have been made in memory handling, and the performance, stability and usability have all been enhanced. Pricing has been maintained but we have radically changed the licensing policy to embrace current and future hardware trends. Collectively, these result in a significant upgrade from 1.1 and we are proud to name this version Maxwell Render 1.5. April 20th 2007 Great News! I am looking forward to this upgrade. However, it looks lile we are going to have to re-learn the software again. I wonder what changes in the licensing policy were made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 it looks very promising! Rather short on specifics, as usual. But no shortage of superlatives. Key parts of the engine have been rewritten, resulting in many fantastic improvements, bringing the quality of rendered images to a completely new level. High-res images are just a mouse-click away now. including more innovative features for realism and render quality, and new plug-ins. we have radically changed the licensing policy We have new features, and new licensing, which we will tell you about later. 6000 line hi-res is just a mouse-click away. Well, that's good. A click, a coffee break and a trip to Paris away, perhaps? Maybe they did speed it up, good if they did. With unbiased rendering, there should be one solution. The right solution. Maxwell is slow because its doing everything the right way, we've been told. So what is going to bring quality to a new level? What does that say about the level MWR does now, which was supposed to be so amazing? OK. Pardon my skeptical post. Soon, in some days, we'll be amazed. Maybe actually and for real. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 If they've managed to make it a lot faster (I've alreay written more than once on why I think that's impossible, aside from improving the efficiency of net rendering) that would improve render quality - a less grainy image in the same amount of time. Maybe that's the most significant thing about this - a better net render system and a license policy that allows more nodes (e.g., 4 computers per license, not 4 cores). If I were to use my 2 licenses to set up an 8-node farm with the new Core2 Duo boxes in the office, and it rendered at production quality overnight, that would be a vast improvement over what I've got now, though still not a "real" fix since it relies on my having a lot of computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 20, 2007 Author Share Posted April 20, 2007 I don't think they are going to be able to increase the speed by adjusting the code, they have already said that the only real way to speed it up is by using network rendering. So I'm guessing that the adjustment in the licensing is going to reflect their realization that without X number of licenses creating production work is to expensive for the average user. I was very involved in the development of the new Network rendering system, the preview image was my main push but I would think most of my recommendations made it into this release. I'm glad to see that they have decided to go with a 1.5 update instead of a 1.2 which hopefully translates into much more advancement and a better feature set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 Does Maxwell have displacements now, I saw that Fryrender does... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 It's worth recalling that the last time there was an announced 'speed increase', it was in the form of network rendering... that's right, add hardware, go faster. I wouldn't be surprised if they tout the revised licensing policy as a so-called speed increase as well- more cores per license equals more speed. Or something. The whole 1.5 deal is interesting... and gives me a sense of deja vu. It increases expectations tremendously. Will they deliver on the hype as poorly as their history would lead us to believe? I'm sure it comes as a surprise to nobody, but color me skeptical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 20, 2007 Author Share Posted April 20, 2007 Well they haven't actually released what any of the 1.5 features will be so it's anybody's guess as to what will be in there. I'm also tempted to agree with Adehus about how NL would define a speed improvement because in the past they have used Network rendering to speed up rendering instead of the software actually getting faster. Having said that though the e-mail does specifically say “Huge optimizations have been made in memory handling and the performance" which would lead me to believe that in rewriting the core render engine they were able to speed it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 Having said that though the e-mail does specifically say “Huge optimizations have been made in memory handling and the performance" My guess would be that your answer is right there- they've made performance enhances related to slowdowns caused by poor memory handling in the current release. Not sure how that nets out in the end, but I'm tempted to guess it'd only be of importance if you were rendering out a mega million poly model at huge resolutions (maybe related to the hd function?) Or... maybe they've added an alert that says, "add ram to increase rendering speed!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackb602 Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 They have certainly used a lot of superlatives in their announcement, but even Next Limit make absolutely no reference to speeding up the rendering engine. They are usually not shy in describing the virtues of Maxwell, so I think it's safe to assume there has been no improvement in rendering speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 I still think that you can't improve on what they've already done, speed wise, without introducing bias. Hence announcements like the one a while back that said something like "Network rendering is enabled! THE SPEED BARRIER IS BROKEN!" Which isn't such a bad thing, really. Clearly our computers haven't caught up to Maxwell to a point where they can handle, say, print resolution interiors - the only way to fix this is to wait until we have much faster computers. In the meantime, all Nextlimit can do is tweak what they have, address things like interface and memory management, and especially network and multithreading efficiency, hope their competitors don't gain too much market share, and wait it out. Maybe NL jumped the gun by bringing a product like this to market too early. Clearly the big players are positioning their products to be able to phase in this technology. Vray has physical cameras, physical lights and PPT and I figure the next step will be physical shaders, and even mental ray has a path tracing shader that demonstrates they'll be able to introduce unbiased lighting as a real option when they feel like it, but both those programs have fast, biased algorithms as their primary options. So they're good now, and it won't take much work for them to take advantage of the hypothetical 80-core Intel. Fry is probably in the same position in the market as Maxwell, but a couple years later, which gives them an advantage, and if they get the VR engine to work like they say it will, that will be a nice value added feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 20, 2007 Author Share Posted April 20, 2007 Which isn't such a bad thing, really. Clearly our computers haven't caught up to Maxwell to a point where they can handle, say, print resolution interiors - the only way to fix this is to wait until we have much faster computers. This is true for a single computer but that is why Maxwell has cooperative rendering. I use Maxwell about 90% of the time to do most of my still renderings, it takes a small farm of 10 dual core machines about 15 hours to render out a 3000x2500 interior image but an exterior could be rendered out in the same time with only one or two of them. I know that when compared to Vray or Mental Ray this it’s slow but in my opinion you shouldn’t be comparing Maxwell to these engines since there completely different in the way they operate. I've also used Vray's physical cameras and I have to say that it seemed to be extremely complicated and in the end the result didn't look any better than Vrays normal GI. These other engines might be able to do what Maxwell and Fry can do but I doubt if they will be any faster and I'm pretty sure the process is going to be much more complex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 Vray physical camera isn't really supposed to look better - it's just a part in a different workflow, but when you take what they've already got, you can see what they're going to hav to do next, and then where they could go from there... it's all conjecture of course, but clearly they're keeping their options open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mohamad Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 great, specialty in enhanced memory usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mario Pende Posted April 21, 2007 Share Posted April 21, 2007 The release, scheduled for mid-May, Cant wait to see this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choochee Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 Well for me speed is not the main issue (I'd like to have more of course, but) since I leave 1-2 computers in the office for the whole week if I need hi-res render, and for animation - well there you need 1000% faster and I think that's not logical right now with current hardware so you need a farm anyway. What I'd like to have is a better maya plug-in that doesn't crashes and accepts the correct texture placements' the current plug-in is not accurate and every now and then simply "forgets" it's native app (maya). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 Hi everyone. A long time since we actually had an NL announcement and guess what? Its still completely rediculous. Why??? Point 1. A few weeks ago we had the spring announchement that told us EXACLY the same things with the single difference that the product was named 1.2 A few weeks later they call it 1.5 and we see the usual "great news" comments on the forum. I wonder whats new!! Point 2 If they did bring new concrete features i am pretty sure they would be bragging about those all over the forum, so i dont expect any new features. Point 3 After such a long time the long list of promised features still stays long and the usual NL motto is the same... You will get them soon. Point 4 Making the memory footprint significately smaller is ofcourse a great feature but a 8Kx6K render is not for an average user but only for those with 50+ computers. Point 5 As you can remember 1.1 actually brought nothing new to maxwell. Now we are at 1.5. Watch out for 2.0 to get half of the features promised. There are a lot of ***** who would pay twice for things that were promised 2+ years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share Posted April 23, 2007 Hey Buffos glad to see you around again, it’s been a while! I know it's easy to look at this as another let down but we don't yet know what is going to be in 1.5 so there is still a chance we could be surprised. If it turns out that this is just a bug update with no new features I think NL is going to be in some serious trouble with some of its users. It has been a year since we got 1.1 so they have had more than enough time to fix all the bugs and introduce some of the missing features. Just out of curiosity does anyone still have that original features list that came out with the Alpha? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 I think the anti-maxwell forum did keep a copy of the list. The honorable company removed any thread related to promises ( well that is not odd) We will soon see, but i dont expect anything important The only thing that i expect is that time next year they will ask money for V2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 Just out of curiosity does anyone still have that original features list that came out with the Alpha? Not really. But here's the 'teaser' from May-08-05: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share Posted April 23, 2007 I'm sure that they want to move on to V2 ASAP but I don't think they have started working on it yet. The last time they talked about it they said they were shelving it until after V1 was fully functional but I realize that my definition of fully functional is probably a lot different than theirs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share Posted April 23, 2007 Not really. But here's the 'teaser' from May-08-05: Two years later and were still waiting for some of these features I found this list that I posted on what features would be in V1, apparently were still waiting on some of them as well. http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/15804-maxwell-v1-0-features-list.html#post108544 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted April 23, 2007 Share Posted April 23, 2007 As i said before, few weeks earlier the same version was named 1.2 Now 1.5. They can easily call it 4.5. They have a history with naming conventions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
numerobis Posted May 10, 2007 Share Posted May 10, 2007 a new sign of life in the maxwell forum: it seems that "mid-may" will be in june or july this year... Hello everyone, First of all: thanks for your patience so far……it’s been a long wait, but we’re almost there. Everything is going to plan, however, a bit more endurance is required. We are testing a complex release, for Windows (32 and 64 bit), OSX and Linux….for more than ten different plug-ins, with a new manual, with many new resources….. and that takes time. We hope to release it as soon as possible, but the fact remains that we will release it when it’s ready, when we are certain we are giving you the best new version possible, in every way. I understand that threads like the interesting “No news is good news?” one are used to make the wait bearable, but please understand that your pressure won’t add anything good to this release. So, early next week I will be revealing a cool new feature…. :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: Until then, here is a cool z-clip render from Nico…. 8) http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/7034/eagleclipofffulllu5.jpg z-clip off http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9295/eaglezclipfullcg8.jpg z-clip on http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3801/4funey9.jpg mix Cheers! Nicole ...and all renders have to be z-clipped in the future... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 10, 2007 Author Share Posted May 10, 2007 Yes, I was in the midsts of defending NL by saying how I think they have changed since the RC days when Nicole posted this. I'm blown away by their inability to stick to a deadline that they came up with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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