First Maxwell Animation

[Devin Johnston]

This is the first animation sequence I've done with Maxwell and I thought I'd share it. The project was for a competition I only had about 2 days to work on it and it took a little longer than 24 hours to render out on my farm. A few interesting things are the MXS files took 17 hours to export out of 3D Studio and took up 180 GB of hard drive space. Ok here we go.

 

http://www.mega-file.net/video/view.php?video=eaa9f3edd94146e90c56265ff008f33d

[jophus14]

That seems like a ridiculously long time for a fly-around animation. I'm not sure if it's because you used Maxwell. I'm not familiar with Maxwell at all. It looks great though. The music fits the work.

[Ernest Burden III]

Gotta hand it to you, you're trying to make that Maxwell thing work.

 

What was your fps on that?

 

Was there ever talk about being able to do a 'bake' of the lighting, like a Lightscape solution, with Maxwell? For a simple arch-vis animation like this one you don't need to re-do the lighting for every frame. With the lighting file MWR creates, shouldn't it be a simple matter to re-use it?

 

Anyway, nice work! I see you running across a foggy field, sword drawn, yelling.

[Devin Johnston]

jophus14 Maxwell is very slow so these render times wouldn’t be considered outrageous.

 

Ernest, I used 30 FPS for this, I probably could have gone lower but I didn't want it to look to jumpy. The subject of baking has come up but I don't know if NL ever said whether or not it was possible, I'll ask again and see what they say. One thing is for sure they need to figure out how to simplify the export process.

[pal1]

could someone please tell me how to start a new thread

[pal1]

your work looks great

[Ernest Burden III]

could someone please tell me how to start a new thread

 

You click on the heading for the sub-forum, which gives you a list of threads to read, and at the top is a button for 'new thread'.

[manta]

wow 180GB's, that's like 30 full DVD movies, thats the insane part...

[pal1]

You click on the heading for the sub-forum, which gives you a list of threads to read, and at the top is a button for 'new thread'.

 

 

thanks Ernest

[STRAT]

i'd have stayed in max and rendered out a much better job to be honest.

[Devin Johnston]

i'd have stayed in max and rendered out a much better job to be honest.

 

Well I've got to hand it to you STRAT that the rudest thing anyone has said. Just curious why you even bothered to post that statement, I can handle legitimate criticism about my work but your statement doesn’t even qualify as that.

[STRAT]

i appologise, it wasn't meant ot degrade the job, as i think it deos look good, it was more meant to imply that for the time you had for the job you'd have been safer staying in max and got out an even better job with the time you'd have over maxwell's render time.

[AJLynn]

I agree with Strat that it's a very good animation, but that knowing how large your farm is, how long it took and how good your other work is (I'm thinking especially of some exterior shots of large buildings that you did a while back, I think using FinalRender, that were as good as this) you probably could have saved a lot of time. Still, if you had the time to spare and wanted to try Maxwell animation on a project, why not? It's a success.

[robertherrick]

I think what Maxer is doing is experimenting, and very bravely i must say 2 days to do a animation! Maxwell wouldn't have been my choice. But hey its definitely experimental. The music's great!

 

To be fair though im not really sure maxwell is up to animations yet, i think it’s more of a stills render engine. But great try all the same.

[ihabkal]

This indeed shows a lot of courage, especially that the maker of Maxwell says it doesn't support animation. I myself am experimenting at the moment with the new features of Vray 1.5, but not on an active project.

[robertherrick]

Hi ihabkal

 

Yeah im also experimenting with 1.5, i do think because of the latest features (skylight options) it really knocks the slow maxwell back into place.

 

Vray is so adaptive its very hard to beat, although some constant errors do annoy me e.g. overlapping

[Devin Johnston]

i appologise, it wasn't meant ot degrade the job, as i think it deos look good, it was more meant to imply that for the time you had for the job you'd have been safer staying in max and got out an even better job with the time you'd have over maxwell's render time.

 

No problem I understand, but what makes you think that by using scan line I could have gotten a better product? I'd like to know what you think could have been better, where I could have improved over what was already done. It's been my experience that using scan line to produce photo real imagery takes a long time and doesn’t lend it's self to tight schedules. Maybe you guy's are just better than I am, that's almost a guarantee, but I did the best I could with the time I had.

 

Maybe it's just me but I think there is a bias against Maxwell. I've noticed that people always point out the technical difficulties of Maxwell as the reason it shouldn’t be used. I agree that it has big problems but I'm just trying to work within the confines of what it's capable of doing. I realize that using a scan line process would have been easier, but I can say for sure that it wouldn’t have had the same feel and look to it which is exactly why I chose to use it.

[AJLynn]

You mean where overlapping polys give you GI errors? It's a problem in most GI systems, I think FinalRender added a check box to fix it. In Vray, try setting the Secondary Ray Bias to a low value, like 0.05.

[Adehus]

Maybe it's just me but I think there is a bias against Maxwell. I've noticed that people always point out the technical difficulties of Maxwell as the reason it shouldn’t be used. I agree that it has big problems but I'm just trying to work within the confines of what it's capable of doing. I realize that using a scan line process would have been easier, but I can say for sure that it wouldn’t have had the same feel and look to it which is exactly why I chose to use it.

 

My only bias would be against the time and resources needed to use Maxwell (as something distinct from NL, of course- my bias there is huuuge). Since I don't have the resources, it's less a bias than a statement of unsuitability to my needs.

 

If I had your resources, I'm sure I'd do the same thing you did. I think your animation looks very good, though I also think it probably could be done in a good bit less time without loss of quality in other packages.

 

That said, it's quite a technical achievement, and that's surely worth something. It's been interesting to see what you've been able to do so far with the network rendering, and it'll continue to be interesting going forward. I hope you aren't being dissuaded from sharing your findings here by any sense of irritation re Maxwell from other users.

[dave davidson]

maxer: i totally understand, some people see that you used maxwell and straight away go into attack mode. im starting to get a little annoyed by it to be honest. some of the people havent a clue really they just attack it.

keep working at it maxer mate

[Devin Johnston]

Thanks Dave, I'm glad that I'm not the only person who has noticed this. I know a lot of people feel like they were burned by NL and to tell the truth they were. The way I look at it is I made the decision to purchase Maxwell and even though it hasn’t turned out like I thought it would I'm going to make the best of it. If people don't like the software that's understandable but I don't see why not liking it should have any impact on the final product. I realize that using virtually any other method would have been faster and probably smarter but what's the fun in playing it safe all of the time.

[Adehus]

Well said, Maxer. My dislike of NL is huge, but I don't see why that should translate into animosity towards MWR or it's users.

[Guest imanobody]

I know that posting an alternate solution may get me labeled as an "anti Maxwell" type of person, but, to be honest, you will only end up frustrated and doing things the hard way (and I've never attacked Maxwell the software). I'm not saying that Maxwell is not useful, but there are tools and other methods that will provide really good results too, if not equal, in far less time - I'm talking about animation here. I understand why you're experting, I do it all the time also, but I hope that you don't mind taking input on alternative ways of doing things. Maxwell is good for stills, but it's not really meant for animation.

 

By the "Maxwell look" I take it that you mean unbiased. I can't speak for other renderers, but MR can bake a unbiased channel. Since the unbiased look is mainly to due to diffusion, you should only have to bake the diffusion layer and then the renderer can handle all the raytracing stuff during the animation. You have the inital bake time, which can be quite large, but then the animation times are really fast and you can retain the unbiased look. I've only played around with this feature because all my clients want animations that have deformed geometry, so it's pretty usless for me. Since you do archvis it may come in handy.

 

Just my opinion.

[manta]

I know that posting an alternate solution may get me labeled as an "anti Maxwell" type of person, but, to be honest, you will only end up frustrated and doing things the hard way (and I've never attacked Maxwell the software). I'm not saying that Maxwell is not useful, but there are tools and other methods that will provide really good results too, if not equal, in far less time - I'm talking about animation here. I understand why you're experting, I do it all the time also, but I hope that you don't mind taking input on alternative ways of doing things. Maxwell is good for stills, but it's not really meant for animation.

 

By the "Maxwell look" I take it that you mean unbiased. I can't speak for other renderers, but MR can bake a unbiased channel. Since the unbiased look is mainly to due to diffusion, you should only have to bake the diffusion layer and then the renderer can handle all the raytracing stuff during the animation. You have the inital bake time, which can be quite large, but then the animation times are really fast and you can retain the unbiased look. I've only played around with this feature because all my clients want animations that have deformed geometry, so it's pretty usless for me. Since you do archvis it may come in handy.

 

Just my opinion.

 

please elaborate on this baking theory that MR has...

[Guest imanobody]

Do you use Maya? Just so I know how to explain it and, if you have Maya, I can post the scene file. I'm baking an example right now, but it takes awhile.