First Maxwell Animation

[Devin Johnston]

imanobody I can't disagree that Maxwell's track record for doing animations is virtually zero but that can be said for every render engine when they first come out. In reality Maxwell is still in some kind of RC stage and really shouldn’t be labeled a "full version", there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out. I haven't mentioned this to anyone yet but I am working with NL to try and resolve the network rendering issues that Maxwell has, partly for selfish reasons but also because I want Maxwell to be a robust product capable of standing on its own.

 

Doing animations with Maxwell is not something that the average freelancer is going to be able to do simply because it requires a lot of power. Perhaps this is where the prejudice comes in, I believe that most people see Vray as the end all be all of render engines and everything must me measured against it. When they see an engine that is 10 times slower naturally they say that the faster engine is superior and it's stupid to use something that slow. For the most part that is a true statement except for those who have the time and resources to make something like Maxwell work. Will I use Maxwell for every project....no, but there are certain things that I think given the right circumstances it's capable of handling.

 

As for Vray and Mental Ray don't they have a MLT engine of their own and if all of the features that Maxwell uses like DOF, motion blur, SSS and all the others were used on those engines aren't they just as slow as Maxwell?

[manta]

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.

 

 

yes I use maya, anything done in maya with MR, should also work in Max with MR, post a file please...

[Guest imanobody]

Well there has been some great animations done with Maxwell - the Toonkey being one. But I tend to see Maxwell as an archViz tool for doing stills only. You CAN do animations with it, but just because you can doesn't mean that you should. There are several problems that popup with using ANY commercial software while freelancing. This is usually in the form of the customer changing their mind, moving the deadline, or project explosion. To work in this environment you need a renderer that is flexible and fast to counteract these situations. This is where Maxwell fails big time because it's a closed system and you don't have the flexiblity needed to get yourself out of problems. Lets say that a client comes to you wanting a house with a tree in the front yard. You do up what he asked for, but then he likes it so much he wants TONS of trees AND for all of them to be animated AND a minute of animation of flying through the set. You do the math and find out that the scene would be far too heavy for you current system to handle. If you're with a closed system, you're stuck with work-arounds, but if you're with an open system (such as Renderman or TRUE Mental Ray) then you can work yourself out of these problems without sacrificy quality or time. This is one reason that I'm leaving MR because I only have a license to use the Maya version; I can't render mi files, so I can't tap into it's real power.

 

I am trying to make a point here, so be patient. The point that I'm getting to is that Maxwell is good for stills becuase you can include a bunch of cheats to make things work if those problems arise in stills, but animations are a totally different story. Once the camera starts to move and objects are seen in reflections and refractions, these cheats really don't work that good and you need a system that gives you ability to get yourself out of the fire. I understand why people love Maxwell; it looks damn good, but when you break down why Maxwell looks good it comes down to mainly one thing - diffuse lighting. Maxwell will never be a good animation system because, even if you could bake the diffusion lighting, it doesn't have a raytracer to handle the reflections and refractions during the animation, so it would still be really slow. The thing is, you don't need unbiased reflections and refractions; those can easly be done with a standard raytracer.

 

Now what would be really cool would be if you could bake the diffusion channel to a texture map. Then you could take that map and use it in a more open format, such as RIBs, so then you have the flexibility without loss in quality. It's just been my experience that you can't have it all - for ease-of-use and speed you usually trade of power and flexibility.

 

I went on a long time, but I hope that explains what I'm trying to say. And just so you don't think I'm bashing Maxwell - I found a bug with MR while baking the MTL textures in my Maya (they forgot to hook-up the pathtracers sampling level to the bake function, so it's stuck at -2 0). If I was working with the real MR, I could go in and edit the mi file so it would work, but since I'm on the MRforMaya, I have to work around the problem. So it's just not Maxwell that I talking about; it's a problem with most closed system renderers.

[Guest imanobody]

Here you go manta - Path Baking

 

You can clearing see the Maya bug I'm talking about in the images that I have with the file. But I'm still using Maya 6.0.1, so it should be fixed by now. If not, someone should start screaming at them to hook up the sampling to the baked channels. I can understand why it was missed - nobody hardly even uses it.

[manta]

its very interesting Richard, thanx, tell me will it work with moving objects, I use Vray and use view dependant methods that cannot be used with moving objects ie people, cars, whatever...they only work with the camera moving through the scene, otherwise I have to use brute force, which of coarse takes a long time, and I don't think there is a way to save that GI in vray...

[Devin Johnston]

Well there has been some great animations done with Maxwell - the Toonkey being one. But I tend to see Maxwell as an archViz tool for doing stills only. You CAN do animations with it, but just because you can doesn't mean that you should. There are several problems that popup with using ANY commercial software while freelancing. This is usually in the form of the customer changing their mind, moving the deadline, or project explosion. To work in this environment you need a renderer that is flexible and fast to counteract these situations. This is where Maxwell fails big time because it's a closed system and you don't have the flexiblity needed to get yourself out of problems. Lets say that a client comes to you wanting a house with a tree in the front yard. You do up what he asked for, but then he likes it so much he wants TONS of trees AND for all of them to be animated AND a minute of animation of flying through the set. You do the math and find out that the scene would be far too heavy for you current system to handle. If you're with a closed system, you're stuck with work-arounds, but if you're with an open system (such as Renderman or TRUE Mental Ray) then you can work yourself out of these problems without sacrificy quality or time. This is one reason that I'm leaving MR because I only have a license to use the Maya version; I can't render mi files, so I can't tap into it's real power.

 

All of these are good points and your right Maxwell does need some kind of texture baking process. However your saying that the only benefit that Maxwell provides is it's diffuse lighting and I don't think this is correct. Maxwell automatically uses DOF, motion blur, spectral dispersion, SSS, and anisotropy automatically every time it renders anything, and that is the reason it's so slow. You could argue that not every scene needs these features and that is true if your goal is biased rendering. Let me ask you how fast would both render time and setup time be for Vray or Mental Ray if all of these options were turned on? My guess is they would be at least as slow if not slower than Maxwell and that's really my point, were comparing apples to oranges here. Maxwell doesn’t want to be another Vray or Mental Ray it's a completely different animal and comparison between them shouldn’t be made unless all factors are considered.

[Guest imanobody]

Yea, you can move the camera, and objects, as much as you want. The whole UV map gets baked, so it's not baking to the camera. The ball was never baked, so those reflects are showing the baked mapped behind the camera. You can cast moving objects shadows on to surface that is already baked. If you have a diffusion object that is moving in the scene, you can bake only it's diffusion change over time, but then that kind've defeats the purpose because you could just keep the path material on the object and mix the MTL and raytracing. You pretty much don't want to bake reflections or refractions (though you can if you really want to) because they change when the camera moves. You also have an option to skip shadow baking so you can change the shadows that would normally get baked. There's tons of things you can do, but it's all manual.

 

Let me know if they ever fixed the Maya bug. I'm assuming that you're using the latest version of Maya.

[Adehus]

Maxwell doesn’t want to be another Vray or Mental Ray it's a completely different animal and comparison between them shouldn’t be made unless all factors are considered.

 

I guess my feeling is that Maxwell should allow themselves to become more comparable to Vray and Mental Ray. As you said, in some situations only diffuse is needed from the MLT solution... so why not allow for that option? Why not allow for bounce control? Interpolation?

 

Believe me- I hold no disrespect towards you because of the setup you have or your choice to use what you have. That's only natural, and entirely sensible. I just wish that MWR didn't require your setup to be useable... no other render app out there requires it as a bare minimum for getting work done on time. As you said, MWR is not comparable to the other apps. But it's worth bearing in mind that this is not in MWR's favor- it makes it too easy to dismiss it altogether as a novelty. If we're honest, that's essentially what it is for most people... a curiosity and a plaything.

 

It would be in the best interest of the app for it to become more useable for a broader userbase- I can't see how it can continue to be developed and supported if most users can't use it due to time constraints.

 

With all that said, I'd hope you wouldn't take any of this personally- it's not intended that way. The geek in me is quite interested to see how you're able to make your setup work for you and push the limits of the app. I'd encourage you to keep posting your work, and I'd encourage NL to make Maxwell work so that more of us can post our MWR imagery.

[kippu]

and all said and dusted .... its a nice animation ...good job and an extra round of applause for it being in maxwell,,,, take a bow maxer

[Guest imanobody]

Maxer,

I'm not arguing with you on a stills bases, but rather an animation bases. SSS in MR is fast, so fast that it, and occlusion, are pretter much never thought of when factoring in render times. DOF and motion blur make the render times X2, so it does have a big effect. On the path example I did for manta the render time was 24 minutes MTL and 2 seconds baked. If it wasn't for that damn Maya bug, they would've looked the same. If I turned on motion blur and DOF it would've went up to 96 minutes MTL and 8 seconds baked. If you did a 100 frame animation it would take 6.5 days MTL and 13 minutes baked. Is the fast setup time worth that much? I used to think that it was, but I'm begining to change my tune and think that spending a few more hours setting up a render is more important then having a computer tied up for a week on one rendering, because that is a week that I can't spend on another project making money. I've been hearing a lot of TDs preaching that processor time is far more important (and exspensive) then setup time and I have to agree with them after getting stuck in those tight spots where you don't have a lot of time.

 

I never said that diffusion lighting was Maxwell's only advantage, but rather that it was it's MAIN advatage. The thing that attracted people to Maxwell was interior renderings. Lets face it, exterior stuff can pretty much be done with any other software and cornell boxes are neat, but don't drive excitement in the viewer. What got people's blood pumping was the interiors that were rendered. What is the main thing that's used in an interior rendering - diffuse lighting. There are other things and Maxwell renders those things quite good, but diffusion lighting takes up far more screen space and attention.

[Devin Johnston]

I suppose we'll never agree because we have different points of view on this, mine is that I've spent the money and I'm going to use it, yours is there are better alternatives to Maxwell. Neither one is wrong it's just a difference of opinion and I'm fine with that. Maxwell will get faster and better at what it does but it may never be as fast as MR or Vray, well just have to see.

[Yadi Krisnadi]

Its great Maxer, you inspiring me to make short animation of my new project using Maxwell.

Congratulation.

Cheers,

Yadi

[Devin Johnston]

Thanks Yadi and to all of you, I definitely have some new things to think about.

[AdamT]

Bleh, I can't even get the movie to load.

 

Hey Maxer, the NL guys tell me you're beta testing now. Hope you haven't gone over to the dark side completely.

[Adehus]

Hope you haven't gone over to the dark side completely.

 

I dunno... I heard he was applying to become a reseller

 

 

 

 

 

Jes kiddin' Maxer

[Devin Johnston]

Ha...Ha...Ha.... Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!!!!

 

No they just asked me to test out their network rendering setup since I have so many machines, and I let them know how to improve the system.

 

Do you think me wicked?

[AdamT]

Ha...Ha...Ha.... Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!!!!

No they just asked me to test out their network rendering setup since I have so many machines, and I let them know how to improve the system.

Do you think me wicked?

I think I hope you succeed!

[joseph alexander]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't maxwell render a greater range of light. IE something that is out of our visible spectrum, once it hits a surface will become visible, and light that hits a surface, once it's bounces moves out of the visible range. I thought that was the whole Gimmick.

 

-Joe

[Devin Johnston]

Pretty much

[jafs00]

I can`t see the animation, is there some codec I need to download? Because quicktime says it isn't available on the server.

[Devin Johnston]

It's still there, if you've got the latest version of Quicktime then you should be able to see it.

[jhowden]

Awesome work! I too have been using Maxwell to acheive some very nice renderings (i.m.o.a)... but have been wanting to try an animation for some time now... the only thing is i can't amagine setting up all the individual frames for a 10sec animation at 30FPS... Did you do this manually or were you able to script Max to do this... and if so are you willing to share your script?...

 

Kind regards

 

Jason

[Devin Johnston]

Max is already able to export frames of animation automatically, it just takes a really long time to do, and it takes up a lot of space.

[jhowden]

So basically i set it up as i would for a normal scanline animation...? i have pletty of space to spare... 500Gb or more... So i guess i might be losing a few nights sometime soon

[Devin Johnston]

Yea set it up just like you would any other Max animation, the file sizes are big I'd say at least 100MB per frame. You will also have to deal with the instability of the Maxwell plugin when exporting which means it's more than likely going to crash on you a few times.