Yay, this renderer works like CRAZY

[Bongo51]

Frustrated with Maxwell I finally gave up trying to get it functional in any sort of 'work' capacity and bought fPrime.

 

MAN THAT THING IS FAST. I understand that it may be 90% 'there' compared to maxwell... but I mean... really.

 

this image took 2 hours.

 

It may be only 90% of the pinnicle of realism represented by maxwell, but 90% of my clients cant tell the difference.

 

[Ernest Burden III]

At least it does shiny balls, can't have an engine that won't handle that.

 

The image looks great.

 

Easy to set up, any hints of 'real world' features?

[antonio_frias]

That looks great, I'm curious to see some architectural models rendered with fprime!

[Bongo51]

I have some interior stuff to do, wondering how it will compare.

 

As for setup, there really wasn't any. Any lightwave users, it's really handy. The main limitation in my mind is the missing SSS and Caustics. For general purpose bread and butter stuff it's perfect. It's a task specific tool, not a replacement for Maxwell. Maxwell is like the enzo fararri, not so good for going to get milk, but if you wanna go fast.... momma.

 

Ok. fine, for the final I'll get rid of the shiney balls. I spent quite a bit of time on that stupid printer... what props go with a printer? you mean I need to build a display and keyboard now? sigh.

and maybe a steaming cup of coffee...

 

[warprat]

Hi Bongo, I tried Maxwell too could'nt see doing anywork with it never came up right, so went and got fprime, And well yup it's just great youshould come over to the lightwave thread once in a wee while. were doing a lot of discussions about fprime and stuff, at the moment glass it would be good too share. Here is some of my work done with fprime.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/16690-reception-wip.html

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/16689-kiosks.html

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/16613-fashion-kiosk.html

this was one of my first

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/15946-restaurant-interior-exterior-making.html

 

You can get sss with G2 from worley labs too. and caustics you can get too, just with fprime. For me maxwell is a great software but next limit has to do something about it, Vray seems to be working just fine. But vray does'nt take lightwave does it. So fprime is the choice and the realtime rendering is just magnificent.

 

Cheers all.

[Devin Johnston]

I think your right fprime can't be compared to a good Maxwell image but for the basic stuff it isn't to bad.

[IC]

FPrime shouldn't be compared to Maxwell. It's a LightWave plug in and it has no real world simulation features but, as with most GI engines, it can be pushed quite easily in the direction of realism and the output looks just like the LightWave/Renderman style of render.

 

And it is robust and really, really fast.

[Bongo51]

Yeah, perhaps I should be more specific.

-

I have seen a lot of people posting okie dokie stuff from maxwell, and producing work for clients which DOES NOT need the kind of realism that maxwell provides. In fact I can think of many situations where an inflexible 'reality' is not good at all.

-

Many of my technical illustrations actually would not benefit from maxwell or it's noise. In many cases I need to match a clients style or a 'toon' style already existing in their printed materials.

-

this is a good example:

http://www.iandavis.ws/display_image.asp?PictureID=454

-

I guess I'm thinking that for Lightwave users specifically fPrime is a more fundamental and useful tool then maxwell. For the people on here and on the maxwell forum which are solely focused on speed and noise, really, fPrime, Vray, and others would suit them better.

-

I don't think maxwell or any other simulator-type renderers will compete well with biased renderers for bread and butter work where speed and flexibility are required. It's not easy to get exactly what you want with Lightwave, Max or any other of the big packages, but it's possible. With maxwell it seems to me, to be a one trick pony, but this pony... man what a trick.

.

Problem is, you cant get mad at the pony for not being able to juggle too.

.

..

.

Observation: Maxwell vs. fPrime for large interior space -

Rendering Quality: Maxwell

-- Maxwell has MUCH more realistic shadows, reflection (insert all, no real suprise there...)

.

Speed: Tie

-- I found no real speed advantage (shock) in the scene I was testing. By the time the noise cleared enough in fPRime, maxwell had already almost completely cleared of noise. Though it must be noted that if you leave fPrime long enough ALL noise will clear completely, but with Maxwell, it's often the case to have noise patches never clear.

.

Setup and Materials: Tie

Materials in fPrime are exactly those from lightwave, so HUGE advantage to fprime in this department. rendering extremely complex materials is easier in Lightwave. I'm sure once the materials editor in maxwell stops with all the errors I will feel a little more comfortable, but long time lightwave users will be able to make fprime renders without changing ANYTHING from their existing models and that is worth quite a bit on a really tight deadline. However, Maxwell textures are based on real-world parameters and with things like 'thinfilm' and 'emitter' layers creating photoreal textures is clearly best in maxwell. Though, lightwave materials (even complex ones) are HUGELY less expensive renderwise.

.

Flexibility: fPrime

I can render any level of simplicity, even wireframe. Turn on and off various aspects of the surface, even render without shadows... more complex alpha channel usage, etc. I can make test renders without fuss and almost in realtime. (with radiosity turned off I get a 640x480 render in less then 1 second which progressively gets more refined) Thus, I can dial lights, move cameras or ojbects and see the results in realtime. All of these things are required (IMO) to do work for low end stuff... (the stuff that keeps most freelance people in food)

.

Animation: fPrime

The coolest thing about fPrime is it's progressive rendering, which stores all radiosity/scene information in a file for each frame (much like maxwell, except it's only a few MB instead of a few hundred MB). At any time one can come back to the animation and run more refinement passes. Which means, just like when you can send a grainy maxwell render to a client only minutes into a render, so can you send an fPrime animation to a client. Same situation. Only with fPrime it's as simple as setting a frame range and clicking render. Everything is taken from your current lightwave camera, objects, etc. Maxwell requires ungodly resources and time to complete any animation, AND it's very limited for the post process, which rules it out for most of my work.

.

remember, all this is only from my perspective (sounds obvious I know)

.

I'm a lightwave user of almost 10 years, so for me, I can't help it, I'm more comfy with LW and anything that departs from it too much I find difficult to work into my workflow. I'm sure there are several people who are in the same boat with any other package, like Max or Maya.

 

Observation: Obvious questions of my competency aside I found that for doing simple renders, like this:

http://www.iandavis.ws/display_image.asp?PictureID=128

I found it easier to get exactly what I need for a background plate from fPrime (previously lightwave itself) then from maxwell. I did render a few backgrounds with maxwell. I assumed reality would make my job easier... where in fact it didn't work that way at all. It turns out that reality sucks for illustrative purposes. I couldn't get the stainless just right, I couldn't get the background and foreground muted enough... It's an illustrative animation to describe how a user puts the card in the machine... with Maxwell the reality actually interfered with the job, and I scrapped it's use for this client. Turns out, hyper-reality sometimes is bad. Which is why most decent animated films have reduced the reality (like madagascar, bugs life, etc) to keep the viewer from being distracted from the story.

 

sorry, rant over.

[Msamir]

Now this is probably the longest post i've ever seen on the CGArchitect forums

[Bongo51]

 

the dangers of having a bit of spare time and a speedy keyboard.

 

he he...

[IC]

I think this argument has been done and dusted already but I really find it hard to get excited about Maxwell for architecture.

 

Putting aside the renders done by Keytoon, I haven't seen anything that couldn't and hasn't been done much quicker with other render engines.

The point there is that I'd imagine someone that talented could have produced those images using anything.

 

I've seen great stuff done by people like Zuliban and Otacon in Maxwell but the work they have done using other software is just as good.

 

The quality of Maxwell's output is obviously good but it's not nearly as revolutionary as we're made to believe in my opinion. The ease of setup could be a big bonus but, as said (at length ) above by Ian, it is also quite restricting.

[Fran]

Now this is probably the longest post i've ever seen on the CGArchitect forums

 

Do a Search for Brian O' Hanlon.

[IC]

And we all miss the posts of 'Garethace', don't we?

 

Don't we?

[William Alexander]

And we all miss the posts of 'Garethace', don't we?

 

Don't we?

 

I do... LOL but don't fall into the 'mean' of any catagory ;P

[felixkasumba]

lol samir

[keilam]

why i can't see the image?

[botchokoykolokoy]

1

[Sketchrender]

I know Brian very well and he is a very nice lad, but loves technology and architecture with a passion.