my first maxwell render too...

[shangriladida]

Sorry guys, Im still figuring out on how to make realistic exterior image like setup some trees around the building and all. Does it work if we just put billboard trees(the 2D ones) and render them in maxwell? Does it give a realistic look?

 

But anyway, I need comments from u guys out there...

 

Sketchup & maxwell

render time: 60mins

[Adehus]

Nothing to be sorry about... not bad for a first try. I'd work on asphalt and grass textures some.

 

Most users seem to be having an easier time using trees with real geometry vs flat billboard entourage.

[AJLynn]

Very nice work there. Only a few comments -

 

In the first one, the roof could use a texture, and if the asphault and grass were lighter you'd get more bounce light.

 

The third one is very dark. Try making it so the sun shines in the windows, or crank up the camera exposure, let some outside parts get blown out and let the interior be brighter. For your windows, if you're using dielectric, try AGS.

[edub]

try to keep your eyelevel horizontal, especially with a wide view angle. 3-pt perspectives usually don't go over so well with clients, although they can sometimes give a more *dramatic* image. In your case. i don't think it's benefitting you. Good work overall.

[Devin Johnston]

A very good first try but there to dark, I'd play with the ISO settings and see if you can make them a little brighter. More detailed textures would also help you out.

[thedarkmaster]

Hallo everyone, I'm creating my first experiments in Maxwell and as for interior design, I always get results similar to the third picture by shangriladida. Very nice work indeed but the picture looks exactly as it would look if a digital camera took it with a dark environment and no flash: very dark picture but very pixelous picture too! Why is it pixelous? I'm always getting this kind of ugly results. I use Archicad but would like to understand something about how should I play with maxwell settings: what do I need to do if I want a dark scene with no pixelous output? Like a fantastic photo taken by night?

 

Or what should I do if I'd like the picture to be taken inside a room but not look so dark or pixelous?

 

Another interesting question for me would be about the environment, the sky and all. Is it possible to add clouds or realistic sky effects?

 

As for threes, guess I'll just have to find some good 3D three model for archicad, right now I have none looking good :|

 

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help me out with some suggestions

[Kurt]

try to keep your eyelevel horizontal, especially with a wide view angle.

 

I could not agree more - I seee a lot of these 3-pt views really destroying otherwise great renderings...

[AJLynn]

Little late here, Luca, but the noise comes from the way the renderer works - it has to bounce rays repeatedly to hunt for a light source. Outdoor images are easy, because there's a lot of light and the sun/sky system is easily calculated. Indoors, the ray has to hunt to find a light bulb or a window. The rays are assigned randomly, so supposed one pixel has 10 rays and 6 found a light source, and the next pixel over only 1 found a light source. The first pixel would be much brighter.

 

On a regular GI renderer like mental ray or Vray there are algorithms to average samples over pixels, and decide where it's allowed to average, or assign averaged bounced illumination to surfaces in 3d, or other averaging algorithms, to smooth that out. Because Maxwell is "unbiased" and scoffs at "biased" renderers because all the averaging is not "physically accurate", the only way to fix the noise (aside from noise reduction software meant for digital camera photos) is brute force. The more render samples, the more the randomness makes the pixels converge toward a solution that's accurate across the images and therefore less noisy.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

You can get rid of some noise in interiors by having some amount of interior light source. This probably doesn't "get rid of" the noise trickling in from outside but merely covers it up with a less noisy source ;-).

 

You can get rid of some noise in interiors by not having a (I forget the term they use, it pretty much means "glass and chrome" material between the light source and the area being rendered. I _think_ that their architectural glass material ("AE GLASS"? Something.) helps in that respect. Double check that that isn't meant for single plane geometry, like Max's "thin geometry" option. I forget.

 

One thing I noticed about the first popular unbiased renderer images was that an obvious reason why the renders looked "so photographic" was merely that they used nice photograps for textures. That is, if your renderer duplicates textures perfectly and your texture is a photograph then you can make a flat plane look like a photograph of a gothic cathedral by simply putting a photograph texture on the flat plane. No sweat. Point? It should be possible to get great looking trees by using great looking photographs of trees. The shadows from and light interactions with the tree will suffer. You may run in to trouble with the lighting on the trees being obviously wrong, but that's merely a "how good is the photo" question. If you supply a photo that doesn't look right, it... won't look right.

 

For an object with as much depth as a tree, you may run in to issues with close trees not displaying correct depth of field (see "supply a photo that looks right" ;-).

[cadmunkey]

September 2006? I bet this guys an expert user by now!