Any news?

[buffos]

What a suprise!!! Isnt RS2 the engine that would take just a few days to fix?

hehehehe

 

Those guys at NL are great in selling thin air. Almost 2 years after preordering and they still dont have a full version.!!!

 

I wonder what "king" victor would say. But we all know. We make our best to produce the best renderer in the world we are making history, we will SOON arrive at our goal, and SOON make you all proud of our choice, and SOON.. and SOON... and SOON.... and then we all woke up.

 

What a nightmare!

 

(i remember in a post, victor saying, he hoped one day i would be their most satisfied customer. LOL. I think that would only happen if i have a lovotomy LOL)

[Devin Johnston]

At the Arch Viz conference Juan basically said the same thing, he said that they are doing all they can to get RS1 working correctly and once it's there they will start working on RS2. It comes down to man power and with only 7 people they just don't have enough to work on both at the same time.

 

PS. Did you guy’s see what Nicole said about Mike? She said he is a customer just like the rest of us and he doesn’t enjoy any special privileges.

[Fran]

PS. Did you guy’s see what Nicole said about Mike? She said he is a customer just like the rest of us and he doesn’t enjoy any special privileges.

 

Someone needs to tell Mike that.

[buffos]

Is that the only lie you have heard over the NL forum?

I guess not

[AJLynn]

I think in the past couple weeks I've come back around to the "to heck with Maxwell" school. I'd never expected Max9's mental ray to be so good - it can replace both Maxwell and Vray for me, and it's already saved me some time on a quick project.

[Devin Johnston]

I'm in the midst of a big animation project with Maxwell (mistake) so I'm stuck using if for now but when I'm done I'll be learning Vray. I'm tired of getting the shaft when it comes to software, first it was Final Render, then it's Maxwell so I'm going with something I know is going to work. Fry is on my radar but I'm not going to take the plunge until I know it's a fully functional product.

[AJLynn]

How so on FinalRender? I never spent that much time with Stage1 but it seemed pretty good to me, though excessively complicated in places, and I thought people were generally happy with SP3?

[Devin Johnston]

There's nothing really wrong with Final Render other than there is little support for it and hardly anyone uses it so there are almost no tutorials. It's a very complex program that I've spent years learning so I don't want to give up on it but when I see the things that Vray has implemented and I look at where we are with Stage 1 I can't help but think I made the wrong decision.

[AJLynn]

That's fair - Vray's got the technology edge - but I don't think it's a complete waste. These GI renderers all have so much in common I think any time you've spent learning one of them is going to be at least somewhat applicable to the others.

[F J]

hi AJLynn,

so u'd say MentalRay is better than Vray at this point?

 

(also its kind of annoying all this Maxwell fuss still around..

i'd expect ppl to let it go already n simply focus on the workflow that works best for them..

some renderers work, some dont, tough decision?)

[Ernest Burden III]

At the Arch Viz conference Juan...said that they are doing all they can to get RS1 working correctly and once it's there they will start working on RS2. It comes down to man power and with only 7 people they just don't have enough to work on both at the same time.

 

It's remarkable that being under-staffed is expected to be an acceptable excuse for not having their act together after so long.

 

What Juan said to me was that NextLimit had been overwhelmed by the pre-order response, it was too much to handle. So they were awash in money but are still whining about not having enough people to produce what all those customers had sent them the money to do?

 

It's mind-numbing. It's NextLimit™

[Devin Johnston]

(also its kind of annoying all this Maxwell fuss still around..

i'd expect ppl to let it go already n simply focus on the workflow that works best for them..

 

I expect this from those who doesn’t own a copy of Maxwell and don't keep up with what has happened. I'm not going to go into it because we've done that several times but it's not such an easy thing to forgive a company that has done what NL has done. Workflow is different for the different applications, Studio was supposed to be the great equalizer but it turns out that it doesn’t work much better than the plugins do. We are basically working with an alpha or beta version of software that there trying to pass off as a fully functional version 1, people are understandably upset.

 

 

Ernest I hadn’t heard that, I didn't know they were that well off! I agree with you though being understaffed is a bad excuse.

[AJLynn]

Devin: What annoys me even more is that workflow is different for different versions of the plugins for each application - when it went from simple tagging in Cinema and the old materials setup in Max where you could even just use the Maxwell converter script to needing MXM files for everything, I had to redo everything if I wanted to reuse an old file.

 

Francisco: I wouldn't say "better" - I've noticed strengths and weaknesses for each - but I'd be willing to go so far as "equally useful for the way I work". And a huge improvement over the last version, in that all the old methods still work but they've added some simpler new ways of setting up materials and lighting that are very helpful.

[Guest imanobody]

I guess that my take on Maxwell may be a little different then other people. When I first saw Maxwell I was really excited and followed it's development with great interest. But I never bought the software because something just didn't seem right. I didn't know what it was, but something was fishy. Slowely, after watching the developers leave the forum, anyone who voiced there opinion in a way that was anything other then pro-NL get banned , and lies after lies, I started to detest the company and everything that it stood for. Now my opinion has started to change as I've started working with the open-source community. A while back a friend of mine pointed me to an online book written by a guy into OS called The Catherdal of the Bazaar where he points out the problems with commercial software and why open-source is a better way of developing software. Maxwell is a prime example of the problems with a closed source system. They have plenty of developers (7 programmers and over 3 years of development is more then enough), but their software is far behind from where it should be. Indigo has been in development for a little over a year and has only 1 developer working on it in his spare time. I would agree that Maxwell is ahead of Indigo, but it's not even twice as far along. If Indigo had the artist it would be doing much better now, but currently it only has the hardcore enthusiast (like most open-source projects, and yes, I know that Indigo is not open-source, but it's still a good example).

How many times have I've heard people get onto the boards and start screaming about they have this bug and they can't get a project done because of it. It happened to me just the other day; I had a job that only took me 10 hours to do, but I ended up spending an extra 30 hours finding a workaround to a bug that I couldn't fix because I didn't have the source code. That's 30 hours that I couldn't charge for, so I was basically working for free because of a company's product that I paid for. Bugs don't get fixed in a timely manner with commercial software - just look at all the bugs people are still waiting to get fixed in Maxwell. I've been working with an open-source renderer lately and most bugs get fixed really fast; faster if you use the CVS instead of waiting for the next release.

I still don't like how Maxwell has treated their customers; too me, when one 3D artist gets taken, they take from the whole community. But now I see Maxwell more as the poster child of everything that is wrong with the closed-source system. It's a prime example of how software should not be developed. As for the Fry guys, I can't say I trust them that much either. If you remember, the NL guys were all happy - happy - joy - joy when it first came out and look want happened to them once they got your money. Everyone is really nice to you when they are trying to get your money, my bank keeps telling me that we have a relationship, but they have yet to makeout with me.

[Devin Johnston]

Those are good points; I think the key at least with Fry is for people to just wait until V1 comes out, that way Feversoft is kept motivated to deliver a real product. When you think about it the pre release isn't such a good deal when you consider all the frustration and headache you have to put up with.

[F J]

hey Maxer,

i know im probly not giving it the proper importance cuz its not my money, but whats the point of not lettin' it go?

i know i got a lot to learn from u, i saw ur gallery n the different renderers u've used, n send u congrats for the skill level u've achieved..

i just feel the bottom line is, if i were in ur shoes, accomplishing this quality of work, i'd just stick with what works best n not lookin' back..

all else is just a waste of time..

[Devin Johnston]

For me it's a personal thing, before we purchased Maxwell we had several conversations with Victor and Maya about release dates and network rendering features. We wanted to be absolutely certain we were getting what we paid for and we were assured that the pre release that we were purchasing Maxwell under wouldn’t last much longer and that the full version would be out very soon. That was back in February of 05' and it turns out that they were more than a year away from releasing the "full" version. It was a deliberate lie and it wasn't the last time they would do it to me and the rest of the poor soles that purchased Maxwell. I have no sympathy for their situation, they created this mess for them self. They had more than one opportunity to come clean with their customers, to let us know what was going on and fix all of the bad blood between us and them, they chose not to and continued lying to us. That when it really started to get bad, there were the mass banning, the miserable failures of the RC's which were only glorified alphas, it got really bad for a while. Now that Juan has taken over things have definitely taken a turn for the better, he knows what needs to be done and is doing his best to make it happen. Most of the people that are on this forum came here because they couldn’t discuss the problems with Maxwell on NL's own forum. Jeff was nice enough to give us a place to vent and to talk about issues we had and technical problems that come up without the fear of being banned. It might seem like were wining about something that is in the past but in actuality were still living through it and each time NL does something like delete a post it just reminds us of who were dealing with.

[F J]

i guess when i said annoying i wasnt refering to the whinning but rather to the fact that there hasnt been any closure to all this already..

how can one not be sympathetic with the NL victims given the situation?

man! n to think they live just across the border from me.. feel like stepping over n bitchslap 'em silly! for i too was immensely impressed with Maxwell's showcase at the time, sensing promising times ahead as they were developing (or planning to) a plugin for Bentley's MicroStation which i use to model/render..

i've only followed the story from in here (no time so far for browsing Fry's or Maxwell's forums) n i probly shouldnt speak w/o base of all that info, but its surprising, given the situation, how they can do such thing n not face a snowball of lawsuits???

 

anyways, im just keeping an eye out at a distance..

keeping busy settin' up my new system n optimizing my workflow..

hope to achieve some good renders soon

[marcdevon]

NL and Feversoft have both said that there is no relationship between the two companies. As to whether Feversoft is using ex NL employees is a good question, I find it absolutely wacky that Fry is in almost every way a complete duplicate of Maxwell even down to the way it stores it's data.

 

 

You know, this kinda remins me of those old Knight Rider episodes with KARR. Both KITT and KARR were essentially identical in every way except KITT was good and KARR was evil. I am not saying that NL is evil and FeverSoft is good. OK, maybe I am ;>)

[buffos]

Before buying Maxwell in Jan 05, i did read carefully what they were going to offer. They did announce the beta (and the interface to be there in March 05) and full version in May 05.

 

And now the question. 2 years later many of the features in that list (not one or two) are not implemented in the product. How do you call that?

How can you sell something saying i will have it in 2 months, and you have not even started it yet.

 

I would tell smthg like that if i have already finished it and i am just polishing the details. They did put a super feature list just to sell.

 

This is Not just false advertizing.

False advertising would be smth like "the best renderer, and the fastest of its kind". That statement may be valid if we restrict ourselves to ppt like renderers. But the statement would make a customer believe that he is buying the fastest around (on all kinds). That would be false advertizing.

 

What they did is equiv to selling you a car without tires and wheels.

 

Where is displacement and where are programmable materials. As victor said they would have materials scripted in c-like langruage.

Where is that? Nowhere

 

NL is nowhere. The worst company i had encountered for a loooong time

[AJLynn]

NL is nowhere. The worst company i had encountered for a loooong time

 

They're pretty bad but I don't know about "worst". At least they're not Dell. Or whoever make Folgers coffee.

[ClaudeFerret]

They're pretty bad but I don't know about "worst". At least they're not Dell. Or whoever make Folgers coffee.

 

Folgers coffee:D

[_PopArt]

Nescafe too. Always hated nescafe

[AJLynn]

Nescafe's pretty bad too, but Folgers is what we have in the office and it's way worse than Maxwell.