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Hold on - Show Us The Money :O


Gattomanzo
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hehe..i like it where the developer says the usual 'nobody had any time do try and do a photorealistic render.' Funny:p

 

Wonder why the Modo beta testers are able to put out such sophisticated test scenes? I guess to be fair you have to remember that Modo doesn't take up to 60+ hours to render a single image...

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I'm guessing it's one of these:

 

-Their A-Team member(s) who is (are) in arch-vis was(were) too busy with other things to do a real piece.

 

-They were too excited over each feature to get any real work done, they just played with it for a long time.

 

-NL is doing the same thing as before - giving them components to test, not yet having all of them integrated into one package. They can't do real scenes because they don't have enough of the components in one place to pull one off.

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Yes, these days you're considered a complainer if your post doesn't begin with "Drooool!!!"

 

I'd like someone to ask whether the glare effect adds to render time and/or memory footprint, but I don't want to get anyone banned. :rolleyes:

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I must say that the new images for friday announcement look even more horrible than thursday, and i really dont give a crap about glare effects. The fact that yesterday it was a secret and the developer said it would been an incredible thing that will do things never seen before (the usual) just reinforces the way Nl does things. Crap. Crap.

 

Plus looking at the topic where all of the a team members are engaging in some sort of straange orgy of self celebration sucks. I want to barf. Sorry

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The fact that yesterday it was a secret and the developer said it would been an incredible thing that will do things never seen before (the usual) just reinforces the way Nl does things.

 

Truer words have never been spoken.

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Can't you guy's see how much more useful this glare thing is going to be than say being able to import IES data into lights, or having displacement.

 

There seems to be a strange relationship between what Next Limit can actually do and what they give us in features. Which is better for you to believe of NL - "We can't" or "We won't"?

 

I agree that this fluff stuff is all pre-release hype, and they are hoping to boost sales. They are feeding us this stuff on an IV drip just to keep us stocked with something to talk about. Yes, there are more impressionable users on the forum who think all this stuff is better than sex. I say let them be happy.

 

Some of these features are conveniences that I welcome. The idea of a completely interactive render history is kind of big, IMHO. I haven't been around the block as many times as some of you guys, so I'm easily amused.

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Actually Nvidia's sorbetto has been doing the same for some time now. Its not the same, of course, having a different gi system and all, but the concept of interactive lighting has been there. Not to knock Nl because the interactive lighting is a great feature.

 

What annoys me is this, though - it would be very nice to see a really convincing render, maybe a scene a bit complex, maybe an interior space. A money shoot render or whatever they call it.

 

Instead we keep getting bits and pieces of things which may be interesting in themselves (Fraunhofer Aperture Diffraction system), but the images they show simply raise doubts on the overall image quality of maxwell.

 

They have all the time in the world to do *1* image that could put all of the doubts to rest, they are more than 1 year late. There have been very few nice images in the gallery using RC5, if you dont count vases or things like that (which are very nice for sure) If they have 10 a team people, they could say to 1 - 'ok, the other nine are testing features take your time and do a really great image.' But no they dont do it, usual excuses.

 

They say yesterday they didnt have time to do photorealistic images, but after the 1.0 releases, the user gallery will be full of incredible stuff. Under normal circumstances i could believe them, but with past experience, i am really sceptical

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Yes Lorenzo, I agree that they've had plenty of time to put out a showpiece render. This troubles me. However, if Zuliban (who is no longer on the A-team) had produced a showpiece render, I wonder if the same quality could be achieved by us mere mortal users? :)

 

The renders I've seen have all been "product shots" - studio setups on ground planes with close direct lighting and mostly shiny surfaces. It's hard to tell how that quality will cross over to the more complex scenes and lighting that we have to deal with in arch viz.

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Its true Fran and soon we'll have the answers. I do like maxwell alot thats maybe why i get overheated why i see some of these 'cheesy' stuff, i just dont see the need, but it could turn out to be a useful feature. For example the render of the light fixtures could be interesting - but the eyelash candles i find in rather tacky.

 

I only mention this out of curiosity, because it seems to me that soemthing changed at a certain point with maxwell. Not only the program itself, but the management and marketing and everything.

 

For example, when maxwell first came out on the market there was already a series of renderings and animations done by keytoon studio which were really beautiful, and really opened my eyes. Things seemed logical, the program was clear and easy to use, professional images where shown, everything seemed to be normal, things were done properly, with good taste and stlye.

 

Every since the famous falling out and silence of last summer, it seems like everything is different - a weird stand alone that is throwing in tons of new stuff claiming it all makes it more photorealistic (cheesy eyelash lens effects thats weird), stories about RS2 that will fix everything but we cant talk about (this is pretty much without precedent), images which are not very reassuring, mass bannings of many of valuable forum members, some well respected artists resellers and ex employees having many negative things to say. I could go on a lot longer but i dont want to be more boring than usual.:)

 

In the beginning it was a classy act, now it looks a bit like a circus show.

 

Of course like you say, if 1.0 is a big improvement and turns out to be the great renderer that maxwell *could* become, it will all be forgotten. I'm just curious about why things have changed to much, but i guess we wont know for some time, if at all:)

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PopArt you've looked at this in a way I've not really considered and it's not a good scenario that you've laid out. We'll probably never know what political changes occurred inside NL but it's only a few days till the release where the rubber is going to meet the road as they say. I'm praying that we don't have a repeat of the RC1 odyssey, but Mike has posted some disturbing statements that lead me to believe that NL is still feverishly working on V1, there still assembling it.

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Seriously, they should not be scrambling around at this stage in the game. With a week left the release should be 99% stable and all efforts should be directed toward chasing down the last ellusive bugs. I get the uncomfortable feeling that they're adding the [surprise] features nearly as they announce them--when they should have reached feature freeze over a month ago, at minimum.

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........... I'm praying that we don't have a repeat of the RC1 odyssey, but Mike has posted some disturbing statements that lead me to believe that NL is still feverishly working on V1, there still assembling it.

 

 

If that happens to be the case, then the obvious question begged would be, why the frig would they then set April 26th as a fixed release date for the final version 1.0, when they couldn't even be certain that they'll be able to meet that deadline? This is what always frustrates me about these guys (NL), nobody places them in these ludicrous scenarios except themselves. Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to set the November deadline preceding the RC's fiasco; they set that deadline themselves. Just as nobody forced them into the June deadline last year when they prematurely released the Beta and then unwisely set the October deadline for the final version even while knowing damn well at the time that they would be pursuing a different direction with regards to the render engine. One might argue that they were forced by market conditions (losing potential clients/PR), and upset customer-base and a need to redeem themselves, but I would counter: who says they have to release a final version 1.0 on the 26th? They could just as easily release a PROPER Release Candidate with all the "surprise" features disabled. I mean, what prevented them from even releasing an RC6 or RC7, as opposed to painting themselves into a little corner which history suggests they are bound to be trapped in, and upset a whole bunch of peopel more than they already have?

 

What really gets me though, is the fact that even with all the crappy test images and fluffy "surprise" features, no one ( of the A-team) seems to be mentioning anything whatsoever about rendertimes and the speed of this new version. The question has been asked once or twice since the announcement and despite the fact that Tom responded with one of his usual cryptic non-answers (something along the lines of "the test images took as long to render as they needed to to take" or some such c**p), nobody seemed interested in pressing them on this issue. I know we shouldn't expect the final version to be significantly faster than the Beta or RC5 for that matter, but I clearly seem to recall being told over and over again, that the engine has yet to be optimized. If any of those test images are being produced with an optimized version of the final release version, then shouldn't rendertimes be something they would want to sing about?

 

From my perspective, it really doesn't matter if they show us a complex interior scene with all the bells and whistles (glare, AGS, etc etc) and Beta-quality light dispersion, only for us to discover later on that the 1000x750 image took 85 hours to produce. That's not particularly useful to anyone, anywhere. And IMO that's the primary reason we haven't seen a complex money-shot interior; because the very first and inevitable question that will be asked after the obligatory "droooool" comments, will be "soooo how long did that take to cook?", and NL doesn't do too well with those direct straightforward simple-answer questions as we all know.

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Bricklyne i'm sure the pressure to release 1.0 for the obvious reasons is why they are doing the usual silly scenario. Probably the fact that a reseller has said how he sued and how bad nl is means they need to move quickly. And we have seen stories about how the marketing department was been a negative factor in all of this so i think that this fluff stuff is probably coming from there. As Adam said the most optics effects images look like they were done in about 30 minutes so it might be that the usual marketing / development problems are still there.

 

The fact that no one is willing to talk about quality or render times is just more of the usual proven theory of nl - no answer means no resolution to the problem. Somebody asked if the 1.0 engine was any faster (after months of talk of how optimizable the engine was), and the answer was 'its very scene dependant' or something like that. If they dont give a yes, it means no. Period. If they answered 'no its the same as Rc5' i could respect that.

 

You are right about the render times - if they show a super image without render times is could be misleading, but seeing the way things are going and seeing the images they post so far, i ask myself if the are capable of producing such a super image (excluding R2D2's leg but I'm really bored of R2D2 and his leg). But i wont count my chickens before they're hatching (cheesy clichè):)

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...if 1.0 is a big improvement and turns out to be the great renderer that maxwell *could* become, it will all be forgotten. ...

 

All will be forgotten if v1 is a big improvment? I had no issues with most of what you have said here and after this post but found this a bit too optimistic if you are including NL, the company, along with M~R. As far as the company, I would recommend caution going forward until NL has repaired its reputation/credibility and has a proven and permanent set of professional business ethics that applies to every aspect of the company from the top to the mob – oops, sorry, mods.

 

All IMHO, of course.

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I would recommend caution going forward until NL has repaired its reputation/credibility and has a proven and permanent set of professional business ethics that applies to every aspect of the company from the top to the mob – oops, sorry, mods.

 

I completely agree. However, we must go forward believing that is possible.

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