To invest in or not to invest in Maxwell?

[MegaPixel]

So let me get this straight - With Maxwell, you don't work with your MAX files inside of MAX, but in a completly seperate interface (externally)? How well does this work if you need to make adjustments to your MAX scene on the fly (as does happen often) and maintain workflow efficiency?

 

Also, what's going on with the release candidate version and why hasn't it been released yet after many months of "hurry up and get it now at this low price" advertising and giving customers faulty release dates and such?

 

Can anyone debate my remarks and make someone who was once considering Maxwell, confident in considering it once again?

 

I'm currently an intermediate Mental Ray user and still not getting the unbiased - clean results I'm looking for in a high res. GI rendering. I'm trying to figure out wether or not Vray or Maxwell is my next move and like many others around here, am looking for some advice.

 

Thanks in advance for the comments - MegaPixel

[AJLynn]

Dave-

 

As somebody who bought Maxwell I wish I could say something positive, but I've got nothing. Maxwell does not yet work nearly as well as advertised and there are critical problems (the caustics and clipmaps problems and render times that have been discussed at length) that I don't see them solving in any reasonable amount of time.

 

My advice to you would be to become as expert as possible in mental ray or Vray and consider Maxwell a "maybe in a couple years" technology, and maybe the open-source one will overtake Maxwell's functionality before Maxwell becomes useful.

[Ernest Burden III]

So let me get this straight - With Maxwell, you don't work with your MAX files inside of MAX, but in a completly seperate interface (externally)?

 

At the moment that is how many people have to do it, to use the unexpected app 'Studio'. The plugins are supposed to make that unnecessary, and reduce the Studio to a materials editor (which is all NextLimit should have done to begin with).

 

Also, what's going on with the release candidate version and why hasn't it been released yet after many months of "hurry up and get it now at this low price" advertising and giving customers faulty release dates and such?

 

Who knows? NL will not set a release date or tell us how close they are or even say which of the features that were advertised will be in the 1.0 release. There are two core engines and one seems better (for our field) but the other will be v1.0

 

I'm trying to figure out wether or not Vray or Maxwell is my next move

 

Maxwell is a concept by which we measure our pain. (Appologies to John Lennon for twisting his words).

vRay is available today and it works. Maxwell isn't and might...or might not.

[angelo]

The introductory price was reasonable (if we ever get a product that can provide the quality of the gallery images they have up on the web site). I view it as something I'll have to sit on (and play with time to time) until it's a production acceptable software application.

 

If you need something right now to add to your production workflow, it's not going to be pretty. If you have a little cash and like to gamble, there could be something great in a year or so. Or it could all flop!

 

Maybe NL will get smart and provide a demo so the rest of the world has a clue as to how it works.

 

Good luck with your decision!

 

Angelo

[Trick]

You can compare Maxwell to Rembrandt. Both were exceptional renderers and both are not alive. And you can be too if you wait for a workable version. So save your money and use Mental Ray or give it to Chaos. VRay is an good plugin !!

[yog]

I'm trying to figure out wether or not Vray or Maxwell is my next move and like many others around here, am looking for some advice.

I own both, and without doubt I would whole heartedly say go with Vray.

 

I like to "play" with Maxwell in my own time as it handles natural looking light really well, but with 20 hours + not being uncommon for a single render, it is nowhere near production ready. There are a few show stopping problems at the momment (speed being just one of them), which show little or very slow progress in being resolved.

 

The reduced price offer looks really good initially, but in all likelyhood you could earn the price difference with another renderer in the time it takes Maxwell to become production ready.

[lambros]

I own both too. I use Vray for all production work, it is fast and reliable. Test renders, final high resolution renders, animation videos, it handles everything. Maxwell on the other hand is really exciting. As close to reality as it can get. I have used it in special cases, and it was magnificent. But for the time being it cannot be used in all architectural scenes, and requires a lot of patience. Studio sucks, I render out of the plug-in and it is ok. It is quite experimental at the point....

[martincg]

definitive not yet! it is not ready for stills and don't talking about animations

[4 hero]

Maxwell does work from with in Max apart from bump maps which can be quickly setup in Studio.

Yes long render times but lighting is very easy to set up which means less test renders to get the perfect light setup

Clipmaps not working as yet but weightmaps can solve this problem

So is $400 alot of money for a ground breaking renderer or money down the drain?

I believe in maxwell and can see the big picture as to where it is heading, so for me its maxwell all the way.

Just my veiws

John

[ecastillor]

Maxwell does work from with in Max apart from bump maps which can be quickly setup in Studio.

Yes long render times but lighting is very easy to set up which means less test renders to get the perfect light setup

Clipmaps not working as yet but weightmaps can solve this problem

So is $400 alot of money for a ground breaking renderer or money down the drain?

I believe in maxwell and can see the big picture as to where it is heading, so for me its maxwell all the way.

Just my veiws

John

wow!

[manta]

What do you guys who own both vray and maxwell think, is it possible to get similar results using PPT with vray, I've seen a comparison on some website, and they looked pretty close, so the question is, is maxwell even nessesary ?

[Ernest Burden III]

I believe in maxwell and can see the big picture as to where it is heading, so for me its maxwell all the way.

 

Nothing wrong with this picture. The only problem is NextLimit. Maxwell could be amazing, it might even be. But almost not if NL is still the owner of it. It's mind-numbing but that's where we find ourselves. Great potential product, worst company in CG history. What's interesting is that they could be seperate. May be seperate. Maybe. Or the company could get a shake-up and new people (with functioning heads) could take over.

 

But for now, Maxwell does not exist.

[AJLynn]

What do you guys who own both vray and maxwell think, is it possible to get similar results using PPT with vray, I've seen a comparison on some website, and they looked pretty close, so the question is, is maxwell even nessesary ?

 

I messed with PPT for a while, but, well, if anything it's even slower than Maxwell - but the glass and opacity maps work the way you think they should. But I've got to the point where I'm happy with the results I can get in regular Vray, at regular Vray speed, so I stick with that. But being a student my render needs are often very different from other people's.

[MegaPixel]

Could someone briefly explain to me what PPT is?

 

Also, does Maxwell currently support unlimited rendering cpu's or are there "per seat" limitations? Does it have support for linked cpu satelite rendering? Is animation work even feasable in Maxwell right now?

 

Thanks

[Ernest Burden III]

One licence of Maxwell will render to four cores.

 

Animation is possible, just slow. But if you throw enough money at it, it would work. If you use frames before all noise clears up you might have either a snow effect (better) or static noise. Cleared-up renders would take a long time in most cases, especially if you use glass-type materials in your scene.

[yog]

What do you guys who own both vray and maxwell think, is it possible to get similar results using PPT with vray, I've seen a comparison on some website, and they looked pretty close, so the question is, is maxwell even nessesary ?

That's the big question.

 

When Maxwell was anounced on the market, with it's estimated few months to release, it offered a lot of things that weren't widely available in other renderers (with hindsight, for good reasons), but as a few months have turned into several months, to over a year, Next Limit have slowly but surely lost it's edge.

 

Setting issues of render engine asside (MC vrs MTL vrs PPT), I have always felt that the biggest advantage Maxwell had over competing renderers was it's physically correct sky and the absolutely gorgous lighting it produced. Whilst Maxwell images have always had a certain realism, helped in no small part to DOF always being on and all "lights" having inverse square falloff (things that were optional in other renderers, and often got switched off to save time), the biggest difference has always been the natural looking light from the physically correct sky.

 

Now over a year later other renderers have integrated a path tracing option, and at least two companies have announced that they will have a physically correct sky option for the next release.

So I do believe that NL is coming close to missing it's own boat.

 

As to MTL (Maxwell) vrs PPT (Vray + others), I've heard it said that MTL is marginally faster because it is smarter/more optimised than PPT, PPT being as indiscriminate as a shotgun blast. The thing these people fail to mention is that in Maxwell you only have MTL, so you have to wait until it clears, however many hours/days it takes, whereas renderers like Vray will allow you to have PPT run for as long as you like, then combine it with another form of GI rendering to produce a much cleaner render in a fraction of the time and only sacrificing a fraction of the accuracy.

 

I might be being cynical, but when I see previously un-anounced features like interactive light mixing being touted as an up and coming feature, it does strike me as NL saying to themselves "we've lost a lot of ground on the features we initially anounces (and not yet released), so to bring back the wow factor we better add something else quick".

[Ernest Burden III]

This goes off in a slightly new direction, but I have been wondering why architectural artists really need 100% physical accuracy. Are we virtual photographers? I see that as a dis-service to our subject matter and clients. I have always thought of myself as an illustrator, and that still applies as I've gone digital. Illustrators have never been slaved to photorealism. There is supposed to be some interpretation involved. Its fine if a program like Maxwell can simulate reality, but its not as useful to me as it seems to be to others. frankly, I'm not sure its a priority for many CG artists. I think we're all wow-ed by the idea of that visual perfection, but when we want to show a building looking better than it really will, or need to engineer a visual effect or show a scientific process so laymen can grasp it, some creative license really comes in handy. Perhaps those artists doing product shots are the most likely to want a virtual photo studio. But for arch-vis it only takes you so far.

 

Art over science.

[yog]

This goes off in a slightly new direction, but I have been wondering why architectural artists really need 100% physical accuracy.

A very valid point.

I know for a fact that I stive for a greater level of realism than many of my clients expect, can appreciate, or in some cases even want.

 

At the end of the day, all architects want is something to impress clients or planners. They don't need the lighting or materials to be 100% accurate, just that it looks good. In fact I've had more than one client ask for the final render to be a bit "vaguer" (whatever that means for a 3D render), because they don't want to be locked into their clients expectation of my render.

[AJLynn]

I tend to lean toward using the computer as a tool for simulation, so Maxwell appeals to me as a light simulator. But most of what I'm doing now is not architectural illustration - for that I prefer a more flexible tool set.

[Maximus3D]

If you're looking for both positive and negative aspects of this then asking here is the wrong place for it since this forum acts as a sanctuary for alot of unhappy Maxwell customers where they can complain for free as much as they want without suffering for it. What i'm saying is that you will get mostly very one-sided replies of one sort or another.

 

I won't give you any type of recommendations at all, base the investment on your own personal judgement, that's all.

 

/ Max

[Sawyer]

Actually Max I think he was asking for recommendations I think that was the point and if you have something nice to say about maxwell you might want to contribute it instead of lamenting the fact that there are lot of people here who have nothing nice to say about a product they purchased. Especially as I haven't really found too many people saying nice things even at the maxwell forums.

[Fran]

I would not recommend Maxwell as a software, or Next Limit as a company you would want to deal with. If being a person who is disappointed in the software and the customer relations of Next Limit, disqualifies me from giving an opinion, then there is something wrong.

 

I whole-heartedly recommend Vray. I've used it in production for two years and have been very happy with it. I was also happy with radiosity, but bump-mapping and glossies were bad.

[4 hero]

$400 and you get this:)

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12299

[Fran]

That's $495 Jon. And hurry while the preorder price is still available!

[_PopArt]

Yes it is very strange that the preorder 'last chance' thing is on their site. On the other hand, this new interactive lighting feature is a huge leap ahead. Maxwell may still have signifigant problems, and Next Limit may not be the 'nicest' company out there (or most logical), but I think the low price tag on it makes it a justifiable purchase, 'last chance' or not. It's not the godsend that maybe everybody expected, just another tool for the cg artist, sometimes to be used, other time not.