Ernest Burden III Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 It looks like there having more trouble with the RC version than anyone thought Devin Did you join the avatar-of-the-month club? This is the third one in recent memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 I've had different ones on different sites and just decided to wipe the slate clean and just use one from now on. I think I'll stick with this one for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 So does anyone care to give a quick wrap-up as to what is happenign with MAXWELL? I really don't feel like going back through 38 pages of posts. An officially postponed release date? This year? Next year? Never? I like to keep up to date with this stuff, but the MAXWELL story is so convoluted that it's hard to keep it straight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 In a nutshell everyone thought maxwell was a cute little bunny. But then they got closer and saw IT'S HUGE TERRIBLE TEETH!! And someone said "awe it's just a rabbit" and Tim said: "Well, that's no ordinary rabbit. That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on." And then it attacked everyone and bit their heads off. And everyone shouted "RUN AWAY!!" Or maybe that was a movie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renato Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 Imagine the resellers who bought several licenses...The worst investment of their lifes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 So does anyone care to give a quick wrap-up as to what is happenign with MAXWELL? I really don't feel like going back through 38 pages of posts. An officially postponed release date? This year? Next year? Never? I like to keep up to date with this stuff, but the MAXWELL story is so convoluted that it's hard to keep it straight. In a nut shell Next Limit began advertising for its revolutionary rendering engine some time in 2004 and was selling pre-release alpha licenses of their software at a 60% discount. They had several intermediate release dates for the beta version of the software which I think they missed by a month or so but was still relatively on time. The big trouble started because they had been originally advertising that the full version would be released in June 05. This was pushed back to October and then November and now December, but apparently that date is no longer valid now that the RC has proven to be a total flop. To compound the problem all of the people who paid for the pre-release were not only supposed to be kept in the loop by NL but were also supposed to be receiving constant updates so to keep everyone as current as possible. Some time in July Next Limit decided to cut all communication with the users as well as stop giving us updates. This lead to all kinds of problems, no questions were being answered except to say we would be very happy with the final version which was supposed to be out in October. As it turns out Next Limit was working on a stand alone application called Maxwell Studio because basically the beta version could not be optimized the way it was and they had to start working on a new rendering engine. No one knew this at the time and the details of it are slowly being revealed while they try and fix all of the problems they are now having with the RC. That's basically it unless someone wants to add something I left out, or if I got any dates wrong which is entirely possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 An officially postponed release date? This year? Next year? Never? Yes! Meaning take your pick, we're all guessing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 ...As it turns out Next Limit was working on a stand alone application called Maxwell Studio because basically the beta version could not be optimized the way it was and they had to start working on a new rendering engine. The Studio is just an independent front-end for the render engine, which is a separate entity that can either be called from the GUI or from a plug-in. The RC engine is completely new because the beta hit a dead end, probably in July, when NL stopped talking to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 This is getting more and more ugly. Right now I'd be okay with beta's speed issues IF they could fix the sunlight/dielectric issues and clip mapping... Chuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 well chuck if they coud have fixed that wont they released the beta itself... thats where the problems started Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 I agree Chuck, I'd take the beta if they could get everything working and just have to deal with the speed issue. I really hope they give us some information on where they are going to go from here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 Devin, did you see Juan's post about the beta issues with clip maps and dielectrics being unsolvable? I'm sure that scrapping the beta and starting from scratch was not their first choice. I would be happy if they would put out a release consisting of the build they used to create the RC/beta comparison images. According to Tom, the problems started when they used the RC engine with the new materials, and that the comparison images were produced with the RC engine and the beta materials. It was the stupidest move ever made for them to release these RC's. When they couldn't get the RC to work with the new materials, then the new materials should have been back-burnered. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND IDIOTS! Even if sun/sky didn't work (which I suspect was also the case), it would still have been better than what they released. Idiots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 I hear you Fran, I guess they were under such pressure to get something out to use they just decided they could fix the material problems later, guess they were wrong again. I think the RC\beta build is the best they've come up with so far, but who knows what's wrong with it and if those problems can be solved. I feel like we've had a setback of at least 6 - 12 months, it's a horrible situation for NL and for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renato Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 The biggest problem for them, is that they are delivering the product on the fly, I mean, they started selling maxwell when they didn't even know that implementing such things like displacement, clipmaps, etc. on the current core, was impossible, then, they decided to start over again with a new rendering core. Then, again, they found it was also very difficult to make it work with sunlight, materials, etc., then, I'm sure they started to code new materials or whatever, but, all this it is being made ON THE FLY, when they already sold a product. They already charged us when they are still in the research stage! So, why in the hell they announced a big list of features, when they don't have a single clue in how to implement all that stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 The only reason I can see for doing this is to increase interest from potential customers to get them to purchase your software. NL has done a lot of things in the past year that I would consider false advertising or just flat out lying, or maybe they are just so inexperienced at the business side of software development that they just make a big mistake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 For all the crying now, it's important to remember that we made it all possible by buying maybeware. Speaking of which, it seems Virgin Galactic (not a joke, that's what they're calling it) has pre-sold many 'tickets' for their commercial spaceflights at $200K each. I wonder if that gets you to the moon or just to Earth orbit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 I think it's just to get you into LEO (Low Earth Orbit) because the space ships they will be using are only designed for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 Devin, did you see Juan's post about the beta issues with clip maps and dielectrics being unsolvable? I'm sure that scrapping the beta and starting from scratch was not their first choice. I would be happy if they would put out a release consisting of the build they used to create the RC/beta comparison images. According to Tom, the problems started when they used the RC engine with the new materials, and that the comparison images were produced with the RC engine and the beta materials. It was the stupidest move ever made for them to release these RC's. When they couldn't get the RC to work with the new materials, then the new materials should have been back-burnered. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND IDIOTS! Even if sun/sky didn't work (which I suspect was also the case), it would still have been better than what they released. Idiots. I think they basically went on supposition, and thanks to a ridiculously tight time schedule things got pushed to the brink of disaster. The beta was scrapped sometime last july/august. Clipmaps and dialectrics couldn't be fixed, and the culprit chosen was the existing materials (eg. -'traditional materials'- phong, blinn, lambert, etc...). So the new material system might not have even been a concious choice, but rather a necessary strategy, a kind of 'tabula rasa' for creating a new material system that would fix all of the inherent problems in a path tracing render engine. Probably they set up a new model for materials that *in theory* would have resolved the clipmap/dialectric problems. On the NL forum i believe it has been mentioned (in the last few weeks) that 'in theory' the new glass materials would work with sunlight. Curious answer. So maybe material settings such as attenuation for transparency came about not from the programmer's desire to actually have materials settings in that way, but rather, as the result of reverse engineering, in other words, maybe such a setting was made necessary by that fact that it was the only way that they could create a series of calculational algorithms that could fix the problem of sunlight with transparent objects... Sounds bizarre, but if something as simple as applying bitmaps to textures could not be achieved in 4 RC releases, something is seriously wrong...So, the question is, how much of the new material system is, in blunt terms, a work around for many of the problems encountered with the beta? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 16, 2005 Author Share Posted December 16, 2005 http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10185 Some good news from Victor, it seems that they have been developing multiple rendering engines in parallel and the engine they used on the RC's that were released was the least stable one. We may see a new RC5 within a few weeks that is totally stable and usable; I think this is good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 We may see a new RC5 within a few weeks that is totally stable and usable; I think this is good news. It's always "within a few days/weeks you will be amazed" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10185 Some good news from Victor, it seems that they have been developing multiple rendering engines in parallel and the engine they used on the RC's that were released was the least stable one. We may see a new RC5 within a few weeks that is totally stable and usable; I think this is good news. that's good news, indeed, also if believing to all of victor's words is hard, after the last months 'experiences'... but of course let's wait and see my main concern is into the question: how can different render cores (we experienced at least 2 of them in the beta and RC releases) be all 'unbiased' and physically correct, but with such differences in the resulting renderings? i invested into maxwell because these images where definitely different from those created by all other render engines, with that certain photographic look. the RC ones looked much less appealing and more 'traditionally' GCI like. the challenge for NL is now to get back that certain look - be it physically correct or not... my 2 eurocents markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted December 16, 2005 Author Share Posted December 16, 2005 I know...I know... but one thing that makes this announcement different from the others is Victor actually gave us an explanation of what has happened. If what he says is true it's completely possible that it could only be a few days before RC5 is ready. I truly hope they have learned their lessons and are realizing it's much better to simply tell the truth than to try and hide what is going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 Actually I think this is the most believable yet of the announcements - because it contains information I can directly relate to solvable problems in software development and an explanation for the gap between beta and RC quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 You know... if two rendering engines are both unbiased, both physcially correct, they should both give you the exact same result.... by definition. I don't know how much I would trust those terms if I was you guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted December 16, 2005 Share Posted December 16, 2005 What I don't understand is if they have many versions and 1 works... Why does everyone have the other one? Were RC's 1-4 the ones that were close but not quite right & they just wanted to make sure they didn't work until they whipped out the real working one? "Sorry guys we were just teasing here is the real one. I swear we had it all along - Ok what happened is the day we were supposed to launch I had it in my other jacket so we released RC1 and well we thought no one would notice. I then forgot my jacket was at the cleaners and it slipped my mind. Last night the wife & I went out to the Renderes Ball and there was the real file in my jacket. See I hadn't worn it for weeks. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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