very intrested in Maxwell but.....

[jtiscareno]

I work for a big architecture company and our standard is Vray, it is not the only thing but we all use it more than anything else. But like all of you I have seen the amazing images and claims that Maxwell promises and I have become very much intrested in looking into it, at this point it is not very expensive for the beta and since they promise a free upgrade to the complete version it looks like a good deal.

 

My main question is, what is up with it, some people praise it and some other just condem it, it defenetly stirs some emotions, love it or hate it. Now my question is, is it bad beacuse of the beta or what else? Is is fast or very very slow, it is great if it can produce great images but if it takes for ever then it is inefficent.

 

So would the users recommend into looking into it, or wait or not at all.

 

Thanks and hope to here from you!

[jackb602]

Maxwell does have the potential to produce stunning images, some of the most realistic I have seen. But it is by no means production ready in its current state. Check back in 6-12 months.

 

Jack

[JamesTaylor]

from what i've ready i'd agree with Jack, brilliant renders with an easy setup procedure (in relation to other renders) but very very slow.

 

I'd say the general consenous is that its going to the market leader, if they can get it performing at a decent speed. Also it sounds as if the producers aren't very good at sticking their promises on deadlines for new releases etc

[jackb602]

It's also important to note that many key features are not yet available. At the moment, this spectacularly realistic render engine cannot depict sunlight shining through a window into an interior. It is still not clear when or even if this problem can be solved.

[Devin Johnston]

My main question is, what is up with it, some people praise it and some other just condem it, it defenetly stirs some emotions, love it or hate it. Now my question is, is it bad beacuse of the beta or what else? Is is fast or very very slow, it is great if it can produce great images but if it takes for ever then it is inefficent.

 

So would the users recommend into looking into it, or wait or not at all.

 

Thanks and hope to here from you!

 

Hey Jorge, I'm in Texas to...Houston to be exact where are you and which firm do you work for?

 

It's to long a story to tell in a few sentences but basically NL hid the development problems they were having with the beta software and instead of telling the users they created one false release date after another in order to buy time. Currently we are using a "beta" software called RC5 which although somewhat functional is missing major features and still suffers from serious speed problems. It is unclear when we will see a full version of Maxwell but at the speed they have been going I wouldn’t expect it for at least 6 months. If your trying to decide between Maxwell and Vray I would have to say go with Vray for now. Maxwell isn't capable of producing production images unless you have very specific circumstances, and even then you would probably have to let it render for 20+ hours to clear up all the noise. My recommendation would be to wait and see what happens over the next 6 months before buying into it.

[Guest imanobody]

Definitely wait 6 months... better a year, before you even consider a Maxwell purchase. Like Max said, it's too long of a story to post here and has turned into nothing more then a big soap opera with not only the Maxwell customers, but lots of other people that don't even use Maxwell (like myself) watching like some sort of bad reality show. Basically these are not the kind of people that I would want to have my money and would avoid them like the plaque, but that's just my opinion.

 

There's a guy making a MTL renderer (the same tracing theory that Maxwell uses) himself and it look's like he's catching up to Maxwell. So who knows, maybe in 6 months his renderer will be open-source and you can have Maxwell like renderings for free. Plus there is no guarantee that the problems that they can't solve now will be solved in the future. They keep saying that everything will be fixed in the RS2 engine, but I wouldn't put much stock in that, they've said that many times before.

[Adehus]

I'd agree with everyone above, and add that if issues of honesty, reliability, and quality of support are something you look for from your software vendors, well... you may find NextLimit to be infuriatingly lacking in those departments.

[mbr]

Also, if you look at the features that the new Final Render and Vray have, they will be extremely similar to Maxwell's. At least some of the features (I have no idea about the technologies, just what developers have said on the Final Render site).

 

I have confidence in Final Render and Vray's production capabilities and believe that they'll end up coming out with better quality and even faster times (than they have now). This would make Maxwell too far behind the game to be reasonable.

 

This has been my opinion all along, though, so I could be completely wrong, but from the beta images on the fR site, it looks like the new version will be superb.

[leoA4D]

...I have confidence in Final Render and Vray's production capabilities and believe that they'll end up coming out with better quality and even faster times (than they have now)....

 

Regarding Final Render, I would be happy if Cebas would bring out fR2/Mac as promised months ago. No communications in quite a long time. "Communications"? That's a word that has been used in complaints with M~R a few dozen times.

[AdamT]

It's weird, isn't it? The Cebas guys were really good about answering questions for the longest time; then they just clammed up 3-4 weeks ago.

 

Regarding Maxwell, I second all of the above--but more so. Particularly forget about it if you do interiors. An interior with predominantly diffuse lighting can easily take over 100 hours to reach production quality.