New email today

[AJLynn]

Why am I not surprised...

[jona loewe]

i never get any emails by NL...even after having complained about it. they confirmed i would get emails in future, but, that never happend :-)

 

seems to be normal...

 

jonathan l.

[Devin Johnston]

I know sometimes it takes a day or two before I receive some of Maya's e-mails.

[tecton3d]

Personally, I'm weary of trying to deal with NL, and I think I'm alone here in that I still have a choice of how to address the situation and until July to decide - bottom line is I don't have nealy as much money in this as a lot of people do, $190 will buy me 2 full Maxwell licenses if I want them, or I can cut my ties with NL and write it off as a loss. One of the nice things about being able to buy student versions. I'll wait and see how this 1.0 situation pans out.

 

Andrew, will those two full lics get you access to 4 processing cores?

 

Also, did you purchase your MW licences from NL themselves or from a retailer ... just wondering if there even is such a thing and if it's a better deal.

 

thanks

[AJLynn]

I guess I should get around to actually paying them again. Considering how long it took them to reply to my series of emails saying "I want to give you money, please give me instructions" I didn't feel a pressing need to get around to it.

 

With 2 full licenses I'd get 8 cores worth - a student license is 2 cores, full license is 4. I don't know if retailers have student licenses - they're subscription based - but the deal I got wouldn't be available anymore, it includes the free second license they gave as compensation for our (many) troubles. Also I'm not sure if the student pricing is still the same - when I bought in, full licenses were $495 and student licenses were $95 x3 ($285 total), now full license prices have doubled but I can't imagine students are paying $570.

[tecton3d]

geez, that was a nice deal... getting the 2nd for free!

 

Thankfully, the student version is still $95/yr but the 2core rule totally stinks considering 1)how cheap rendering systems are to build and 2)how slow MW is 3) how many computers I have : )

 

just to go ahead and throw this out there - from the Maxwell forum:

"Yes, we do have an educational license program for students, tecahers and schools.

 

The Educational Program consists on signing up for 3 years for only $95 a year. During this period, you will receive all updates to newer and better versions of Maxwell Render. There is no time limit to the license. The only difference between the educational license and a standard license is that the educational version is valid just for 2 CPUs, as opposed to the standard 4.

 

After those 3 years, you will get a full license with no technical limitations. It is available for Windows, Mac OSX or Linux. If you graduate before those three years are completed, you can buy a commercial license for a greatly reduced price."

 

I've emailed them to see if I can purchase more than one student lic in order to use more cores for co-op rendering and I'll post back what I find out... hopefully they get back to me before I defend and graduate

[AJLynn]

Are you in your last year of grad school? I wouldn't recommend buying in now unless either you want the license later and think the $285 is too good a deal to pass up, or you can allow another 2 years for the technology to mature and computers to get faster.

 

Maybe you have enough studio discipline that you can have your modeling done and ready to render a week before you need to present it, and a thesis idea that is going to require the most photographic renders you can get - and I'd be curious to know what your work is. I did mine this last spring, in an area where design and modeling were very close to being the same thing (parametrics), and the graphics were highly representational. For rendering I stayed in C4D with FR2, abused FR2 and its shader trees as much as I could and had my final renders taking 20-60 minutes, so I could keep working up until the end. I tried realistic renders for a while, but the combination of time requirements and the limitations of realism made it very ineffective. I think if I had it to do again I'd use strictly NPR graphics, if only to confuse the undergrads.

[tecton3d]

Are you in your last year of grad school? I wouldn't recommend buying in now unless either you want the license later and think the $285 is too good a deal to pass up, or you can allow another 2 years for the technology to mature and computers to get faster.

yeah, I'm finally in my last year hoping to finish things up by december:D

 

$285 does seem like a good deal but the lack of cores is kinda silly considering the nature of MW. I'd pay the "greatly reduced price" (assuming that it is a decent price) to get the commercial version early but I haven't heard back from NL yet and I'd still have to purchase 2 lics to use all of my hardware.

Maybe you have enough studio discipline that you can have your modeling done and ready to render a week before you need to present it, and a thesis idea that is going to require the most photographic renders you can get - and I'd be curious to know what your work is. I did mine this last spring, in an area where design and modeling were very close to being the same thing (parametrics), and the graphics were highly representational. For rendering I stayed in C4D with FR2, abused FR2 and its shader trees as much as I could and had my final renders taking 20-60 minutes, so I could keep working up until the end. I tried realistic renders for a while, but the combination of time requirements and the limitations of realism made it very ineffective. I think if I had it to do again I'd use strictly NPR graphics, if only to confuse the undergrads.

discipline ~ I'd like to think so : )... In reality, I tend to wait too long before starting to actually moving into production mode but that's knowing that I don't need photoreal imagery, which my thesis doesn't require (but would be nice). I need the light to be correct and/or give an idea of what I'm invesigating and love modeling to the point of obsessively "constructing" the building [1] ~ so if I have to wait longer for MW to do its thing, I'd just have to plan for it...

 

The sticking point for me, that's keeping me from just jumping into MW, is that I have these 4 HT dual xeon rendernodes in addition to my workstation and won't be able to use them with Maxwell without purchasing additional lics., which is a definite strike against MW.

 

I am currently using Final Render for Max, and although I haven't completely wrapped my head around its complexities, am getting good general results and I can use DR with all my machines and can render just about anything I'd want to in a more than reasonable amount of time... truly a godsend given the nature of studio and when working up to a deadline.

I'll try to get around to posting some of the "meat" of my thesis soon though it'll probably be in a fresh thread. It's titled: House for an Anvil

 

lol ~ NPR graphics... enter morphosis, e o moss, and company U-grads - they take everything so literally : )

 

[1]...of course for rendering, the model gets thinned down dependant upon the view

[AJLynn]

Do everything in Final Toon

 

4 Duals, you'd need 2 full licenses (HT doesn't take and extra license). The "greatly reduced price" means buying out the rest of your subscription, so you could get 2 licenses and use it on 4 CPUs then pay the rest when you need more power. Keeping in mind that Maxwell sales can be very, very slow. You could run your renders on your 4 nodes and reserve the workstation for modeling, or buy a third license for that, it's a dual-dual, right?

[tecton3d]

Do everything in Final Toon

 

4 Duals, you'd need 2 full licenses (HT doesn't take and extra license). The "greatly reduced price" means buying out the rest of your subscription, so you could get 2 licenses and use it on 4 CPUs then pay the rest when you need more power. Keeping in mind that Maxwell sales can be very, very slow. You could run your renders on your 4 nodes and reserve the workstation for modeling, or buy a third license for that, it's a dual-dual, right?

 

funny ~ I'm playing with Final Toon now (1st time!) ... though I don't want stuff to look like sketchup but the ability to have edged geometry and full GI is just downright fun : )

 

yeah, workstation is a dual-dual and buying 3 lics ($855 worth) of MW seems like a lot of money but knowing that, by the end of subscription, I'd have 12cores... (3lics x 4 cores each ~ right?) is enticing : )

 

thanks for the help;)

[Guest imanobody]

Why don't you just use Indigo? It's works with 3DS files, close to MW, you can renderer on as many nodes you want, and it's free.

[tecton3d]

Why don't you just use Indigo? It's works with 3DS files, close to MW, you can renderer on as many nodes you want, and it's free.

 

hmmm.... though the idea of it being free is always tempting ~ I could be wrong, but I don't think it can do what Maxwell can.

 

nonetheless, when I get some free time I'll try to play around with it a while and see what comes of it;)

[Guest imanobody]

Well, I won't say Indigo is not as good as Maxwell. It may lack some cool features and GUI, but it's still a very good renderer and, IMHO, could take on Maxwell with the right artist. I think Indigo's main problem is that it hasn't been able to entice any of the really good artists. When Maxwell first came out there was a ton of hype so some of the best artist started trying it and made many of Maxwell's best images. Since most of those artist have left, Maxwell seems pretty barren as well lately. When Indigo came out there was no fan fair, so none of the top artists even tried it. Not knocking the artist that use Indigo because there are some pretty damn good ones, but I'm talking cream of the crop (and No, I don't consider myself in that bunch ) One thing is for certain - Indigo is just as slow as Maxwell and will give you a good idea if you really want to invest all that time in one frame.

 

Just because a software is free doesn't mean it's not good. I've been playing around with an open source renderman compliant renderer and it has a lot of features that my mental ray doesn't. For those of you that think mental ray is hard, just try rendering with RIBs and shaders that you have to program. It makes working with mental ray look like childs play.

[tecton3d]

Well, I won't say Indigo is not as good as Maxwell. It may lack some cool features and GUI, but it's still a very good renderer and, IMHO, could take on Maxwell with the right artist. I think Indigo's main problem is that it hasn't been able to entice any of the really good artists. When Maxwell first came out there was a ton of hype so some of the best artist started trying it and made many of Maxwell's best images. Since most of those artist have left, Maxwell seems pretty barren as well lately. When Indigo came out there was no fan fair, so none of the top artists even tried it. Not knocking the artist that use Indigo because there are some pretty damn good ones, but I'm talking cream of the crop (and No, I don't consider myself in that bunch ) One thing is for certain - Indigo is just as slow as Maxwell and will give you a good idea if you really want to invest all that time in one frame.

 

I'm not sure that the lack of success of Indigo is a lack of marketing hype... kinda like the cream rising to the top type of thing...the reason a Ford is not a BMW ... etc. Indigo seems (from what I can gather in a rather short amount of time) like a good renderer and may well produce decent images but, regardless, still doesn't have as big a following as Maxwell. You may be right in saying that most of the "talent" that generated many of the original images (and following hype) for M~W has left which probably, as much as anything, is a result of NL's promises going unfulfilled which has annoyed everyone.

 

Your mentioning of the speed is a good point... Sure M~W, at the moment, is incredibly slow and comparable to Indigo but knowing that it's a software with financial backing and therefore, continued support and progressive development in the quality of the product (albeit NL seems to be rather poor at this) I have some level of confidence in thinking that things can only get better for M~W... and I don't think I'm alone in this mode of thought.

 

Just because a software is free doesn't mean it's not good.

 

indeed ~ I totally agree! ...but there is a certain amount of truth in getting what you pay for.

[Guest imanobody]

Maxwell and Indigo pretty much use the same process to do their GI calulations. This is true for most other renders and how they do various things. It's just the same formula's, written by the same research groups, getting used over and over. MR can do what Maxwell does (that's already been proven), it may lack some things, but it also has many things that Maxwell doesn't. Indigo is nothing more then a stripped down version of Maxwell. You could even say that Indigo is now what Maxwell was when it was in Beta. Some might say that it's better then the Beta.

 

Just trying to save you some money. It would be shame for you to spend all that money just to find out that it's not what you need or want.

 

indeed ~ I totally agree! ...but there is a certain amount of truth in getting what you pay for.

I don't think the Linux people would agree with you on that one.

[AJLynn]

I'll take this opportunity to mention that a student version of Vray is something like $250 (and covers all your render nodes) mental ray is free with Max, Final Render is already paid for... and any of these would be better to have than Maxwell when there's a deadline.

[tecton3d]

Just trying to save you some money. It would be shame for you to spend all that money just to find out that it's not what you need or want.

I realize that and truly am thankful for your help and input : )

 

I'm still more up in the air more than it probably sounds here, so before I purchase Maxwell for $285/lic I'll give Indigo a go and see what comes of it. In the end, it's probably the better decision since I won't be needing to do most of my renders for at least few more weeks and that should let me play with having Indigo a part of my pipeline... if it turns out that the time factor is not going to be much of an obstacle but I'm still not getting what I want out of Indigo, I'll buy Maxwell.

I don't think the Linux people would agree with you on that one.

... too bad Acad, Max, and FormZ can't run on linux... or I'd be one of those "linux people":p

[AJLynn]

Maybe you should just get the Maxwell demo and give it a try - if you took our word for it, it's an inefficient, unstable monster with a material system that's far too much work and it's too slow to do reasonable interior shots. Maybe what it needs is somebody with 4 render nodes, a fresh perspective and some time to experiment without clients or finals to worry about.

[tecton3d]

Maybe you should just get the Maxwell demo and give it a try - if you took our word for it, it's an inefficient, unstable monster with a material system that's far too much work and it's too slow to do reasonable interior shots. Maybe what it needs is somebody with 4 render nodes, a fresh perspective and some time to experiment without clients or finals to worry about.

lol... dammit AJL! I finally start to make sense of this and you go and bump my compass

 

That's what I thought in the beginning as well, but am still a little hesitant/confused... better head to the pub to meditate:D

[AJLynn]

Good idea. Of course, my comments could have something to do with the fact that I had just got back from getting drunk at the PS1. Wait until tomorrow and I'll tell you if I still think it's good idea to try Maxwell

[tecton3d]

hey ~ has the fun from the PS1 worn off yet:D

 

Well, I'm going to go ahead and dive in and buy one license and see where that gets me as I don't feel the rendertime will be too much of an issue since i have some nodes to just sit and give maxwell some love

 

I wonder though, with a student copy ~ will they give me the plugin for Max or the freestanding Studio? Should I prefer one over the other?

 

cheers ~ it's time for my meditation... again:D oooooooohhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm

[Maximus3D]

With the studentlicense you will get all plugins for all programs and you will get Studio too, just like any other customer will. There's no limitations like that for studentlicenses.

 

/ Max

[tecton3d]

With the studentlicense you will get all plugins for all programs and you will get Studio too, just like any other customer will. There's no limitations like that for studentlicenses.

 

that's great!... then I can even tool around with the Form-Z plugin!

 

Thanks Max : )