To invest in or not to invest in Maxwell?

[Fran]

Agreed Lorenzo. But it is only a justifiable expense if you don't expect to be able to use it for production any time soon. As it stands, it has serious defects that prevent me from using it in production for interior stills.

 

My impression is that Dave is looking for something to use other than Mental Ray for production. Now. If it was a choice between Mental Ray and Maxwell, I'd recommend Mental Ray. If Vray is in the running, go Vray! Anyone who has gotten decent results from mr will run wild with Vray.

[Adehus]

If you're looking for both positive and negative aspects of this then asking here is the wrong place for it...

 

The positives of Maxwell is that it is useable for applications other than architectural visualization. The negative is that it's totally unuseable for archviz right now. We're on an archviz website, and are being asked about Maxwell's suitability for archviz production. The response is not positive. Go figure...

[_PopArt]

I agree Fran i guess i missed the point of the question. If you are looking for a reliable render engine for production, capable of doing complicated scenes with clean results in less than 20 hrs, Maxwell would not be a good investment at this time. Some of the new features and the Studio interface are very interesting, but so far there is little proof that the key missing features like glass/light problems, noisyness and long rendertimes are being fixed or are capable of being fixed. So if you want to avoid alot of headaches and mild depression it would be better to use another render engine for production right now. But if you want a interesting software with some really innovative things that one day *might* be entirely usable for production at a pretty low price (hurry its your last chance!) i would recommend it:)

[yog]

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

/ Max

This would be easier if Maxwell had a demo ... but it doesn't, so I guess MegaPixel only has peoples recomendation to go on.

Pity you felt unable to contribute.

[AJLynn]

Okay, I'll give it some positive feedback:

 

Under the right circumstances, it will make some really amazing images that are difficult or impossible to get in other renderers.

 

But the problem is, these circumstances don't come up very often in architectural work.

[OlivierC]

actually i own maxwell render, and i've done a lots of tests. some good, in my point of view, some really crap.... and i couldn't use it for now for architectural visualization.

 

I've never had the chance to test Vray, so i would like to know from those of you who use it, how it behaves with light ? are you able to put in many lights ? Light is, for me, the biggest problem... with mental ray, you can do nice things if you use some lights, but when you want some more lights, it becomes very heavy and unuseable.... so how is it with Vray ?

[ecastillor]

Ive had hundreds of lights with no problem....

[olbo]

Hi Olivier, I've seen a nice WIP at the Vray forum and will quote the posting ...

 

Something im working on, now I decided to render few nightshots. Still wip Rendering done with IES lights and progressive pathtracing.

 

 

 

 

rendertime about 3 hours @2240x1530 each image, on a x2 4800, 3850000 polygons, 507 lights with different ies data

 

 

Thanks

Randy

 

_________________

http://www.eldaco.net

 

Original Posting: klick

 

For 3 hours PPT in Vray this WIP not bad that is. ;o)

 

 

take care

Oleg

[Christopher Nichols]

I've never had the chance to test Vray, so i would like to know from those of you who use it, how it behaves with light ? are you able to put in many lights ? Light is, for me, the biggest problem... with mental ray, you can do nice things if you use some lights, but when you want some more lights, it becomes very heavy and unuseable.... so how is it with Vray ?

 

Vlado did a test with 1024 Area lights... sort of a toture test:

 

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13999&highlight=

[OlivierC]

that's really impressive... nice test. Sorry christopher, couldn't log into the chaosgroup forum to see your example. It's pretty obvious that vray can handle a lot of lights ... well, i did ask to be beta tester for Vray for Maya, but hadn't any response since these past weeks, so i suppose i won't get it...too bad. i'll try to keep updated with infos.... thank's for your infos

 

Olivier

[MegaPixel]

Thank you all for your shared experiences. I've got a much better perspective on the renderer options before me.

 

Competition in the marketing industry is growing at a frantic pace and typical architectural rendering does not represent the lionshare of available work anymore. We need a renderer that can create the entire range of realisim from far and away to up close and personal at reasonable speeds; consistantly and reliably.

 

Learning curves arn't a huge issue for me. Learning curves represent job security, but even that is difficult to maintain when software developers strive to create "one click instant pretty" features...

 

I'm at a point right now with Mental Ray where I could go either way. If I do decide to walk a different path, then based on the overwhelming majority of Vray positive opinions in this thread, I'd go Vray.

 

Thanks again - MegaPixel

[psv1]

a wise choice..........