Is anyone really happy with Maxwell?

[makeArchitecture]

But I will say, that for those who stick with it, the new plug-ins look really good. NL has been working hard.

 

I have stuck with it for a long time and it doesn't work.

 

It should work consistently for everyone as advertised.

 

My first letter to the EU has been sent.

 

How many of you would like your money back?

 

Wm

[Fran]

I totally understand your position William and I wasn't suggesting that you should stick with MW. But for whatever reason, and going by whoever's good advice (or whoever's persistent campaign), Next Limit does seem to be intent on improving. There are some wonderful people over on the MW forum (Mihai, Tyrone, Jomega, Chris, and too many others to mention), and I feel I can't say anything about Maxwell without giving them their due respect. But Maxwell itself just isn't for me.

[makeArchitecture]

They maybe very nice and con men usually are...

 

The fact is that the Mac version has never worked. it has gone from totally unstable to somewhat unstable and back again.

 

I need to render scenes to show clients. The $500 program I bought from Maxwell cannot create them because of sloppy and poor code. The Sketchup plugin is a good example of this. Where's the C drive on my Mac? How long have they sat on this and claimed it was a "user" problem?

 

No, dude, it's your sloppy code. Take responsibility for it and fix it. Next Limit has balked at fixing it. So now it's time to refund the money of those who have patiently waited for a year. Or face government and legal action.

 

I will contact the Spanish consulate in the morning and speak to their trade representative.

 

Wm

[Devin Johnston]

Unfortunately William if you succeed in getting a refund from NL I think we may see the end of Maxwell. I can't imagine that they have a very big revenue stream even with Real Flow, if hundreds of people are allowed to get a full refund from a company that has surely already spent that money I think it's going to be the end of them.

[Antisthenes]

i am more than happy with maxwell but then again i am using rhinoceros and there has never been any problems with the connections.

also using dual processor machines and i have not had to deal with any slowness.

 

all i read is problems from people using max and skribleup and mac, kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside since i avoid those.

[makeArchitecture]

I don't think that their going out of business is a negative. Someone with a working product will take their place.

 

I cannot afford to subsidize their half-baked fiasco.

 

There are many other programs...

[AJLynn]

i am more than happy with maxwell but then again i am using rhinoceros and there has never been any problems with the connections.

also using dual processor machines and i have not had to deal with any slowness.

 

all i read is problems from people using max and skribleup and mac, kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside since i avoid those.

 

It doesn't matter what program you use to export with, Maxwell's core is still slow and buggy and almost incapable of rendering an interior at print res. We've done testing, and Maxer's done testing on a large render farm - like I said, it takes dozens of computers several hours to get a good result, and that is assuming it does get a good result. (I've done scenes that Maxwell just can't render at acceptable quality, no matter what. Remember the "Maxwell will always resolve to the correct solution" line? Bull.)

 

Add to that that a bunch of the problems that were always there, that were supposed to be fixed with RS2, haven't been fixed because RS2 doesn't exist. IES lights? Remember what they told us the "solution" was? Model the light fixture. Okay, so I've tried that, and the light fixtures, usually involving glass and metal, produce a lot of the light with caustics. Caustics take forever, and there's the problem (which has never been addressed, and AFAIK never even acknowledged to exist by anybody from NL) that in MLT renderers (and I don't care what they say, Maxwell is an MLT variant - they've said it's not and this was not the truth) you can't see anything resulting from caustics in reflection or refraction. Basically, interesting light fixtures can't be accurately simulated in Maxwell The Light Simulator ™.

 

Most of the things I bought into Maxwell for, it can't do - it's been reduced in my toolkit to what I use when I need a quick setup for an exterior and it doesn't have to be good. Then when Max9 came out, mental ray replaced it for that. Of course, it's had other uses - when I was in school and they had all those RC versions (misnamed - they were pre-Alphas, not RCs) that could produce completely bizarre, unpredictable results, I did a few bizarre, unpredictable renders for bizarre, unpredictable professors, and they loved them.

 

Seriously, is there any reason I would use this when I have mental ray? Anything it can do better in less time?

 

BTW, glad you're enjoying the struggles of your colleagues.

[AJLynn]

I don't think that their going out of business is a negative. Someone with a working product will take their place.

 

I cannot afford to subsidize their half-baked fiasco.

 

There are many other programs...

 

I wish Autodesk would buy them - everybody wins (Except Autodesk, but they can afford it.)

[Antisthenes]

i don't wish autodesk buys anybody they ruin everything so far in my eyes.

[Adehus]

I don't think that their going out of business is a negative. Someone with a working product will take their place.

 

I cannot afford to subsidize their half-baked fiasco.

 

There are many other programs...

 

Frankly, they NEED to go out of business for the good of CG as a profession- their survival suggests to other developers (and potential developers) that they can get away with lying endlessly and putting out garbage products, and that their customers will simply accept it.

 

In NL's case, it seems as though they calculated correctly. It'd be nice to prove them wrong.

[Adehus]

i don't wish autodesk buys anybody they ruin everything so far in my eyes.

 

I do believe that was the point...

[Fran]

They maybe very nice and con men usually are.....Wm

 

Be unhappy all you want with Next Limit, but give the users, testers and employees a break. They didn't make the deal with you. They didn't take your money.

 

I know what it's like to be accused of things just because you're a beta tester. Some not-so-nice people over at the MW forum have said some really nasty things about me - publicly and quite unfairly. So I can't let it go by when it happens to somebody else. Even if they could probably give a fat rat's a$$ what you think about them.

[Antisthenes]

OT: reminds me of seeking justice for the palistinian people

 

you can always sue for defamation when people static label and slander you

[AJLynn]

OT: reminds me of seeking justice for the palistinian people

 

you can always sue for defamation when people static label and slander you

 

Huh? And huh?

 

As much as NL aggravates me, there are people in Palestine and Israel who are so much worse off, I wouldn't compare the situations at all - I would consider that very bad taste. Or did you mean something else? This doesn't make any sense to me.

 

And William was filing protests with commerce authorities regarding potentially illegal trade practices, not suing and not for slander. They sent him an email suggesting he was incompetent to use their product - if they had done this more directly and in a public way so that he could be damaged (e.g., potential clients reading it and believing him incompetent) there might be a case for slander, but it was William who posted it in public, so that throws a wrench in that one.

 

William: have you tried the FTC as well? NL does have a US office so they could be liable here too. FBI maybe (one might try to make a case for wire fraud) but it would likely be a stretch to prove intent.

[makeArchitecture]

Fran,

 

This guy at Next Limit is lying to me in his email. He is completely dishonest. He is covering up for his company's negligence and incompetence.

 

Hello William,

 

We have many happy mac users of our software, who have made really great renders using mac as you can see in the forums. Those are images posted by clients like you, if some of them have had problems they have e-mailed us and we have tried to solve them.

 

Most of the times problems were in the users side, not in the software. Users have not read the documentation and don't know how things work in Maxwell. Maxwell is a new paradigm in render technology and many of the things valid for other renders are not for Maxwell. Bu we have always helped any users that have asked us.

 

In thing you can do is export the mxs file and open it in mxstudio, and try to render from there, it will say you what textures are missing and will ask you for the location.

 

Probably you will also like to know we are updating Sketch Up plug-in today or tomorrow, so probably it will help you in your problem.

 

Best regards,

 

===========================================

Ignacio Bonafonte Arruga

Next Limit SL

http://www.nextlimit.com

 

He's basically saying that it's my incompetence that is keeping my from using the Sketchup plugin. Yes, the Mac Sketchup plugin is looking for the Arroway materials on the "C" drive.

 

Why of course!

 

I wrote it after all!! It's all my fault! ;-) LOL

 

And then he says:

 

Most of the times problems were in the users side, not in the software. Users have not read the documentation and don't know how things work in Maxwell. Maxwell is a new paradigm in render technology and many of the things valid for other renders are not for Maxwell.

 

My copy of crashes about 50% of the time on each computer I have when I try to export it. Is that the new paradigm?

 

I have reinstalled everything including the OS. No change.

 

Who pays for this time?

 

The Mac stuff is a poorly written beta. Even an architect knows that the Mac does not have a "C" drive. But a computer programmer at Next Limit? He knows how to point fingers at others when he and his company need to take responsibility for their own actions.

 

This is negligence and I want my money back and I will pursue it to the end.

 

Wm

[AJLynn]

Look on the bright side - at least you don't have Linux. It's been a year since they started releasing RC's for Windows, and there's still nothing past the Beta for Linux.

[AJLynn]

William:

 

I downloaded Maxwell for MacOS and found the solution to that problem: move everything from /Applications/Maxwell//materials database/textures/Arroway/ to /Applications/Maxwell//materials database/textures/

 

That's a freshman computer science 101 mistake. Nextlimit could have solved it by putting the Arroway directory in Maxwell's texture search path, having it use subdirectories in the search path or having people unzip the Arroway files to that directory instead, but instead they relied on a Windows-only absolute path, which would be just about the worst solution even if it were a Windows-only app, and they would have found the problem and fixed it if they actually tested everything on a Mac.

[makeArchitecture]

Andrew,

 

Thanks for the tip. It's a rather stunning indictment of these idiots at Next limit.

 

How many errors exist in the code of Maxwell?

 

The ones that make it crash 50% of the time when I try saving a model in the stand alone application.

 

I am not going back in the water.

 

It's time for them to return people's money and take some community college ethics and programming classes.

 

Wm

[makeArchitecture]

Can anyone get the Materials Database to show up in Sketchup?

 

Wm

[AJLynn]

No. There's a routine in MaxwellExport.rb:

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

# Open Maxwell Material Editor in browser mode

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

def run_mxm()

 

#system("mxed -brw")

system("/Applications/mxed.app/Contents/MacOS/mxed -brw")

 

end

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

# Open Maxwell Material Editor in wizard mode

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

def run_mxm_wizard()

 

#system("mxed -wizard")

system("/Applications/mxed.app/Contents/MacOS/mxed -wizard")

 

end

 

They expect you to have MXED in the base folder of Applications, but I put the whole Maxwell folder in Applications because I didn't want to have a ton of crap there. I bet 99% of people do the same thing. I'm not sure what effect putting the apps in Applications and making a Maxwell subfolder would have, but the alternative would be to edit the script. I don't like having to edit the script (because I'd have to remember what scripts I edited for all my apps and redo the edits every time I upgraded or reinstalled...) but I don't see any other really good option. But here's the edit and it works:

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

# Open Maxwell Material Editor in browser mode

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

def run_mxm()

 

#system("mxed -brw")

system("/Applications/Maxwell/mxed.app/Contents/MacOS/mxed -brw")

 

end

 

 

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

# Open Maxwell Material Editor in wizard mode

 

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

def run_mxm_wizard()

 

#system("mxed -wizard")

system("/Applications/Maxwell/mxed.app/Contents/MacOS/mxed -wizard")

 

end

[Ernest Burden III]

I am not going back in the water.

 

It's time for them to return people's money and take some community college ethics and programming classes.

 

 

You started talking like that a long time ago, then when I came to agree with you, you got all optimistic on me and wanted to give it the old college try. I guess you're back to where you were. I've managed to move on. Sure, I'll take the refund I publicly demanded from NextLimit now, but I'm not going to pour the energy into being angry at those issues as I was before. Being kicked off their forum was worth what I paid for Maxwell. I got my life back.

 

And next I will get Fry. If its good enough for Fran its good enough for me.

 

"We have many happy Mac users". Right.

 

The one, and only one, time I got burned by someone on ebay (selling reproductions of antique postcards in a vintage postcard forum) and asked to return the items the guy refused and pointed out all his great feedback. "I have many happy customers who bought the same item". Interesting how many copies of 125 year-old cards this guy had. Anyway, he really did have good feedback from people who bought the same museum gift-shop repros I accidently did. There were 12 of them. So I emailed each of them and asked if they were really happy, and wondering why I felt cheated, did hey? EVERY person I emailed wrote back and said they also felt defrauded, were really angry, but hated leaving negative feedback. 12 for 12.

 

So there you go, happy users.

 

Oh, and nice picture Fran!

[IC]

I really can't see the legal process you're proposing to be an open and shut case.

Software is expected to be buggy and problematic in its early stages and although Maxwell should be beyond that now, it's still is a huge case for Next Limit to argue: this is a new TYPE of render engine not just a new render engine.

 

They'll get endless mileage out of that and to be fair its hard to argue against.

[Adehus]

You started talking like that a long time ago, then when I came to agree with you, you got all optimistic on me and wanted to give it the old college try.

 

I was recalling the same thing. I'm certainly no lawyer, but I suspect it'll be more difficult to pull off any type of legal action now that NL has released something they can call a 1.0 (crappy though it may be...) Has the real window of opportunity passed us by?

 

Still, if you think you've got the goods, go for it. Don't know if I could be of much help, but I'd be willing to participate as I can.

[Ernest Burden III]

you got all optimistic on me and wanted to give it the old college try.

 

I was recalling the same thing.

 

By the way, I didn't mean to say that there was anything wrong with William deciding to give Maxwell an openminded effort to work. And I think he had a new baby in there somewhere to distract from such silliness as being mad at NextLimit.

[Devin Johnston]

Fran,

 

This guy at Next Limit is lying to me in his email. He is completely dishonest. He is covering up for his company's negligence and incompetence.

 

That's par for the coarse William, if I had a dollar for every time NL has lied to me personally I could buy another copy of Maxwell or maybe Fry . The sad fact is that these guy's are chronic liars they don't know how to be honest and they don't know how to run a business or even program very well. I need to stop talking about it before I really get angry!!!!