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Maxwell 1.0 Release is pushed back again


Devin Johnston
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The Titanic had a 'ship' date too...

 

I do hope it is the best rendering engine ever times 10x. I hope it changes the world. I hope that it transforms the entire production model for all. However, based on the rendering times listed - why bother? Time is money. If it takes 50 hours to render a final image my kids won't eat.

 

Most importantly, no matter how good the product, no matter how revolutionary, no matter how 'WOW' it is -- this kind of mismanagment is just criminal. And pre-charging on top of the 'slips', well that is just amazing...

This reminds me of that guy who had all his friends drink kool-aid and put on their Nikes to catch that Comet... "It works off Photons" ... "You are getting sleepy"... "Send me money"..."You are getting sleepy"..."It is realistic"..."You are getting sleepy".

 

Those VRAY futures are starting to look really good. Anyone what to take a trip to Brazil?

 

The guys at ART-VPS (Renderdrive) look so good all of a sudden! Seriously, they created a custom renderer in hardware years ago that is lightening fast! Try a preview in 15 seconds... or a final render in 5 minutes... And the renderings really do look as good as you can make them.

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I agree 50 hours to do a final image is outrageous but I think we will be seeing a functional cooperative rendering setup so in theory if you have enough licenses and machines you can do print resolution over night. I have no doubt that eventually they will improve the speed of the engine; ask your self was Vray always as fast as it is now?

 

They have done lots to screw them selves but there are some different things happening on the forum right now. It seems that Victor is starting to become involved again in the form of answering questions, they have created a VIP forum for people who actually own a copy of Maxwell. They are also allowing their beta testing team to speak about the RC and what it will and won't do as well as maintaining that there will be a full version release at the end of December. I don't believe them about the final release coming out that quickly, but all these other things are a positive sign that maybe all of our bitching has had a positive effect, maybe they are going to try and make things right.

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Does anyone know if NL will allow selling licences? I bought two at US$400, which would be worth $2000 supposedly. I assume I will keep the product and use it. Afterall, it would only have to useful on one paying project to cover my investment. But if I don't end up using it, I could probably sell them to someone else for the $400 per, or maybe a bit more. But only if NL cooperates with a licence transfer.

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I think that the workflow will be: quick pre-render on your own rig, then you send the final rendering to a render farm, pay $300, which you client flips the bill for to get a 'truly accurate' rendering. If you have it chugging away on 40 dual procs it will take 15 minutes upload and 30 minutes to render. Boo-Hoo.

 

This workflow doesn't work with other 3rd party render packages because you have too many variable to tweak.... Maxwell has less variables therefore you can be more confident on the output.

 

If Next Limit has some sense they'd create there own render farm to further take advantage of Maxwell's computationally intense workflow. They could have a six hundred rig Unix based render farm for the cost of the hardware.

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I think that you've hit on it, Maxwell may be to slow for the average user but those who have access to even a small render farm will probably be able to make it work. I'll admit that this situation isn't ideal but the speed problem will almost surely be fixed as NL has more time to work out the bugs. Just think of the amazing animations that this program is going to be capable of, it's unfortunate that only a relatively small portion of the community is going to be able to take advantage of it.

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I think that you've hit on it, Maxwell may be to slow for the average user but those who have access to even a small render farm will probably be able to make it work.

 

My plan has been to have 8 cores to render on (which is why I bought 2 licences). If that isn't enough to make using Maxwell viable, I probably will not use it at all. Too early to tell, too late to actually care much.

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In order to animate you need completely grain free stills. This makes me skeptical as to if maxwell will ever be able to animate.

 

I think maxwell should be reserved for high end stills and I think clients should be made aware of the render times and charged for it. It would be nice if there was a plug-in for Revit where the model and texturing are inherent within the design process. that's probably two or three years off though.

 

-joe

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I don't know, I think some animations especially of exteriors could be done virtually noise free within an hour or two per frame. There's always the possibility that the noise might even be a desirable thing in some situations. It all really depends on how fast the RC is compared to the beta, for animations I would say it needs to be at least 3 times faster than it is now in order to make rendering anything feasible.

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The guys at ART-VPS (Renderdrive) look so good all of a sudden! Seriously, they created a custom renderer in hardware years ago that is lightening fast! Try a preview in 15 seconds... or a final render in 5 minutes... And the renderings really do look as good as you can make them.

I am sorry, but custom, proprietary hardware will never float the boat for me. Too much risk, too much potential of problems or late updates or unsupported features. Just look at something like the MAXtreme drivers from Nvidia - MAX8 has been out for like 1 or 2 months now and still no update. And in this case, the videocard still actually works - in something as proprietary as a rendercard, a major software upgrade could mean you are out of luck for a longer time - if the new version ever gets supported.

Not my cup of tea... too bad to, cuz the potential is huge.

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I remember looking at the render drives a few years ago, the speed was very attractive something like 10 or 20 times faster than a single PC but everything had to be done within their own software, lighting and materials and they didn't support radiosity. I suppose a new render package like Maxwell is turning out to be could be considered the same thing as using proprietary hardware but for some reason it doesn’t bother me as much.

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Ernest, I have found out that licenses are not transferable apparently you’re stuck with what you've got.

 

Ha! We'll see about that!

 

I doubt that I would want to sell the licences, but I'm not buyin' that bull from them. Of course, the software would have to be released and function for the licences to be worth anything. No way to know just yet.

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I am sorry, but custom, proprietary hardware will never float the boat for me. Too much risk, too much potential of problems or late updates or unsupported features.... too bad to, cuz the potential is huge.

 

You are correct, in concept and practice. I had trouble with RPCs in the Renderdrive usage for example. However, every system is a set of tools. Once you go out of straight MAX on a PC you are in custom territory. VRAY, Brazil, mental ray, and maxwell are all custom solutions. There is always a delay between the platform release and the full integration into the production tools and add-ons. I don't think this is the thread to discuss the Renderdrive's merits.

 

My main point is this: The ART-VPS guys did a custom rendering solution years ago in hardware with great lighting and capability. The main point is that they did it with quality AND speed.

 

If Maxwell really takes as long as some of the posts reference than it is really just a CG house (movies) type of tool. It would NOT be economically vaible in the production environment. Unless maybe it was only for the that last 'final' rendering.

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As i cannot post in the maxwell forum (you know why)

i wanted to share with you my first impressions of the product.

My god, i had a great laugh!!

I wonder how could they possibly be so amatuers!!

You open the program. Ok And now you want to import a 3ds an obj smthg!

Nonononono you cannt. It crashes and crashes and crashes.

And i wonder. They had a beta team. What did they check?

 

You try to define materials.

Well, they have a preview which cannot be turned of and when you try to change values it takes for ever!

Ofcourse there is no MANUAL.

 

How can they be so ********* i wonder

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