Aksel Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 I did not follow that Maxwell thing for quite some time now, but getting the e-mail i downloaded the v1 - at least i paid for it so i wanted to give it another try In fact i was surprised - i appreciate NL went away from that mainstream how 'the' rendering engine has to be today and introduced several pretty original concepts workflowwise imho. Hats off to that, after all the pressure they must be under, from users and as well maybe from their banks, this is couragous and a few ideas are really nice. But thats all details, one could probably work oneself into the materials in a few days. The thing is Maxwell is still deadly slow, at least too slow for the wishes and ideas my clients have. Might be nice if you use the engine to render smaller 'studio setups' for your next university assignment, but i would be curious if anyone if really able to use this in production (ps: no, don't show off these outdoor-examples - i want really nice and heavy duty indoor stuff rendered in less than 3 hrs.) Cheers, Aksel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamT Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Err, you'd be lucky to get a clear indoor scene in three *days*, let alone three hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runrun Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 20h38m S.L. 19.59 w/Dual Core 2ghz Macintel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 20h38m S.L. 19.59 w/Dual Core 2ghz Macintel. I don't get it... I feel like the person that I crying the emperor has not cloths. Are you serious about those render times? It still has a LOT of noise. I think it would take 100 hours to get rid of all the noise, and that is a simple scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 runrun- are you running Maxwell in Windows or in OSX w/Rosetta emulation? Just asking because while Maxwell is damned slow, I didn't think it was quite *that* slow. I'm working on an exterior (which is rare for me) and tests with Maxwell are actually kind of promising. I may no longer be able to say 'I've never used it for production' sometime soon. Generally speaking I can imagine Maxwell being of some value for exterior work and product shots, at least once the material system is comprehensible and the plugin development rises above the level of 'utter garbage'. But for interiors (which are my bread and butter)... fuggedaboudit, way too slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 The only way V1 is going to be usable in production is through the cooperative rendering setup, and you’re going to need a bunch of machines and licenses to make it work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Chris - It's a light propagation issue, the light is coming from a window in the next room, multiple bounces involved and a lot of it is bouncing off a glossy surface. This is one of the things I find frustrating about Maxwell - it's the engine most likely to handle that situation elegantly, but it's also the slowest thing to get it to do. What would you use? Would this be a good time for Vray double light cache? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 What would you use? Would this be a good time for Vray double light cache? I don't know... this is an image from the gnomon website of an interior where I talk about bouncing light around a lot. I do infinit light bounces with the Lightcache. 14 mins seems more reasonable compared to 20 hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 I want to make sure and clarify that I have nothing against Maxwell. I like what they are trying to do. I just don't see those render times are anywhere near production ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runrun Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 runrun- are you running Maxwell in Windows or in OSX w/Rosetta emulation? Just asking because while Maxwell is damned slow, I didn't think it was quite *that* slow. Running it under XP Bootcamp. I can post my scene. Let me know what format is best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 14 minutes! Will Vray ever cease to amaze me... I got our architecture library to buy those DVDs, I should watch them after I finish all this annoying thesis stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aksel Posted May 1, 2006 Author Share Posted May 1, 2006 I want to make sure and clarify that I have nothing against Maxwell. I like what they are trying to do. I just don't see those render times are anywhere near production ready. exactly. same here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 its always been pretty obvious that maxwell would be painfully slow when compared to vray despite al the NL promises, but for still images you could have superior quality. One problem is that i am finding 1.0 to be even slower than the beta, getting to sl 12 or so is pretty difficult. The fact that with every release the sl system totally changes doesnt help. It must be the &£%"$£! complicated material system that slows thing down, but it looks like it moving backwords instead of forwrds still. RS2 to the rescue please:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesTaylor Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 I don't know... this is an image from the gnomon website of an interior where I talk about bouncing light around a lot. I do infinit light bounces with the Lightcache. 14 mins seems more reasonable compared to 20 hours. Chris, is image / tutorial mentioned found on your Interiors DVD or a membership part of the gnomon site? thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 its always been pretty obvious that maxwell would be painfully slow when compared to vray despite al the NL promises, but for still images you could have superior quality. One problem is that i am finding 1.0 to be even slower than the beta, getting to sl 12 or so is pretty difficult. The fact that with every release the sl system totally changes doesnt help. It must be the &£%"$£! complicated material system that slows thing down, but it looks like it moving backwords instead of forwrds still. RS2 to the rescue please:) Well I only have two comments on this one... Image quality better? Are you kidding me? It is filled with noise... that is pretty poor image quality. Second... I thought the whole idea about Maxwell is that it is easy and fast to set up. What is the deal with the material editor being so complicated? Are you telling me that there is a learning curve? Oh the horror!!! BTW... just being sarcastisc, and trying to being funny... Also realising that this debate is more politcal now than it is practical, so i will do my best to stay out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Chris, is image / tutorial mentioned found on your Interiors DVD or a membership part of the gnomon site? thanks It is on my interiors DVD... here is a link for those interested: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/cni02.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bond Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Just my two cents worth....once again being disappointed with Maxwell, I keep asking myself why I bother looking at any other products other than VRAY. I spend more time just playing around with all the hyped up renderers when I should be honeing skills in a solid product combination (MAX and VRAY). I purchased both DVD's from GNOMON (Christopher's) and it really helped me get a firm foundation with VRAY. I also took the 3 day class from Ted Boardman to reinforce my MAX skills...What an eye opener that was! Get productive and proficient, learn how to correctly model, texture and light in MAX or Maya whenever possible, instead of importing from other packages. This wastes time and could create many problems down the road. Pick good solid software to hone your skills with and stick with it. I still Don't understand Maxwell's thinking, when they handhold you into thinking; Just plug in a time and voila! Done! They need to make the default acceptable render presets for 16 hours just for a simple scene to start with. I personally don't like the guessing game after processing an image for 30 hours! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilky9 Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Would those dvds be useful for someone that uses LightWave and FPrime, or are they too specific to MAX and Vray? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 I still Don't understand Maxwell's thinking, when they handhold you into thinking; Just plug in a time and voila! Done! They need to make the default acceptable render presets for 16 hours just for a simple scene to start with. I personally don't like the guessing game after processing an image for 30 hours! Dave, I'm not sure I understand what you’re saying here but it sounds like you've never actually used Maxwell. The purpose of it is to take out the guessing game, the only real problem that people have with it is the time it takes to clear up the noise. I see no problem in creating a simple setup, why does a piece of software need to be difficult in order for it to be considered professional and good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxfm5bassistxx Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Would those dvds be useful for someone that uses LightWave and FPrime, or are they too specific to MAX and Vray? "Christopher focuses on the concept of digital sets and explores issues of interior lighting for GI, including the variety of light sources that can be used, as well as how space plays an important role in lighting. Christopher demonstrates the differences between regular light sources, environment light, IES lighting, area lights, and even how geometry and shaders can affect the lighting of a scene. Additionally, since bouncing light plays an important role in interior GI, this lecture looks at some special techniques such as using V-Ray’s photon mapping and light cache. Christopher also explores the idea of baking lighting into textures, which is a useful technique for some situations. With Global Illumination: Interiors, you will see the rendering of an interior space in a whole new light." 99% of what he talks about can be put to use in any rendering package as long as you can convert what they are saying from Vray into Lightwave and Fprime. I myself use C4d but I am going to purchase this soon. The purpose of it is to take out the guessing game, the only real problem that people have with it is the time it takes to clear up the noise But with Maxwell don't you just input a time for it to process and hope that it is enough time to clear up the noise? I haven't used Maxwell yet so I could be wrong. Brandon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 You can enter a time or a sample level for Maxwell to reach, given enough time it will render out a noiseless image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Bond Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Maxer, I don't want to get into an argument really. I never said that Maxwell isn't capable of producing nice images. In a nutshell I said that no one that is trying to make a living should even consider Maxwell in it's current performance state. It simply takes way too long. Try pumping out a million plus poly scene with all the optimizations you can use at a rez of say 8000 x 6000.....how long would that take in Maxwell?.....or should I just put in 60 hours (or high sampling) and it's done.....maybe noiseless, maybe not. Have fun, hopefully you don't have to use it in a crunch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Try pumping out a million plus poly scene with all the optimizations you can use at a rez of say 8000 x 6000.....how long would that take in Maxwell?.... thats an easy one...18 years! But I think Maxer knows more than any other maxwell user how long it takes to do hi res images with maxwell;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamT Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Actually it would be an infinite number of years, because Maxwell could never render out an image that size. But 18 yrs. is probably about right once they get the -HD switch back in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 given enough time it will render out a noiseless image. True, of course we also know that given enough time, apes and typewriters we can get Shakespeare out of a chimpanzee. But who wants to wait for that to resolve itself either? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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