Devin Johnston Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 Just got this e-mail: Dear Customer, Thank you for your feedback regarding the new 1.5 manual. We didn’t anticipate this level of disappointment regarding not being able to print the manual, believing most users would be happy with a high quality screen-readable version. Please understand that there was no malice in the decision to provide a version of the manual that was print locked. This was done for a lot of good reasons in order to get a high quality professionally produced manual and to protect a broader, general print concern. With this in mind, and paying attention to your concerns, we have decided to make a printable, copy-protected, low-resolution version available to everyone from today. This manual is available from the usual download page, alongside the original high-res version. To get the best out of the manual and to see the real quality of images and screen shots, we still strongly encourage you to buy a high-quality printed version from Solid Publishing. We will soon provide you information on manual prices and how to order high-quality manuals. Regards, Next Limit Team Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 That's a good idea. But I still think you're entitled to 40 copies of the printed manual at no additional cost because of the beta sales policy (that when 1.0 came out, beta purchasers would get a boxed copy with a printed manual). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ki_cz Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 Remember when the manual was > 150 pages? Plastic, metal, glass, diffuse, emitter ... it all seemed so simple, "as simple as taking a picture" ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whiskey Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 okay the x64 solidworks plug is unuseable..we could switch to x64 maya or rhino..which of the two has less bugs...so you can get the job done? thanx for your insight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rivoli Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 from what I gather the maya plugin seems to be the most solid and integrated of all. the rhino one should be in pretty good shape too, things seem to go pretty smoothly since jd has taken over the development. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whiskey Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 thanx alot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 The best is yet to come! (from Maxwell's website)- THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES... Maxwell Render™ is still in the early stages of it´s lifecycle and the revolutionary development continues every day. We have more ground breaking features and methodologies waiting for the right moment to be made public. The Next Limit philosophy is to provide cutting-edge simulation technologies. We will continue to innovate, and others will continue to copy. ----- Hmmm... others will continue to copy. Wonder who they could be referencing... ? Frankly, I'd be happier if they copied Fry... then we'd have displacement and instancing. And properly debugged software. Are the bugs the revolutionary part? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave davidson Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 hmm "waiting for the right moment to make them public" LOL like when we hand over the money they make them public. nah that dont sound right. yeah good idea to hold onto them till the moment is right Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 that page is a revolution in bad taste Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 The Next Limit philosophy is to provide cutting-edge simulation technologies. We will continue to innovate, and others will continue to copy. That's just plain insulting. Such arrogance in the face of such ineptitude. Amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 Let me just add that Darkling Simulations has hosted a repository for user and company created Darktree shaders for years. Maybe copying old ideas doesn't count? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 TM™ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave davidson Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 Let me just add that Darkling Simulations has hosted a repository for user and company created Darktree shaders for years. Maybe copying old ideas doesn't count? quoted for agreement this isnt a new thing at all :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHE Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 This is just plain ridiculous and insulting. I am so glad I ordered a license of Fryrender last week. It should be here on Tuesday. I am done waiting and listening to these fools! Good luck Next Limit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 26, 2007 Author Share Posted May 26, 2007 What can I say I agree with you all, this release although not a total failure is no where near the great achievement NL wanted us to think it was. When I purchased Maxwell over two years ago it was with the express understanding that network rendering would be working by the time V1 came out, I'm still waiting for that to happen. Very soon I'm going to have to make a choice between continuing with Maxwell or moving over to Fry and the sad fact is Fry is doing everything right in order to eventually win my business and Maxwell isn't. I think Brian is right NL may have killed them selves with this one, unless they do some major damage control by fixing all the bugs this week there going to loose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 NL may have killed them selves with this one. They continue to be just fine, thank you. Perhaps we arch-vis users over-inflate our importance to NextLimit. Perhaps we paying customers over-inflate our importance to NL. So far no prediction of their imminent demise from bad customer relations and poor product performance has proven to be accurate. Perhaps they really don't need us at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 27, 2007 Author Share Posted May 27, 2007 In any other circumstance I would say you were crazy Ernest but with this one you may be right although I don't know how, maybe we as a community are just that gullible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted May 27, 2007 Share Posted May 27, 2007 Seems like it's anyone's guess as to NL's health... maybe they can go on forever. The thing that they can lose (and I think to a large degree have lost) is the respect of the CG community. Not to mention influence. Already, people look to Fry to see what's next. We look to NL for the next delay, next excuse, next broken function, Next Limitation™. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 27, 2007 Share Posted May 27, 2007 Next Limitation™ Good one, Andrew! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted May 27, 2007 Share Posted May 27, 2007 I'm usually quite critical of Nextlimit, but to be fair I'm going to point out some of my positive experiences with the release so far- Even though the Cinema plugin has major issues, I've been able to try this thing out on Windows with the Max plugin and I'm seeing improvements in some areas. For example, right now I've got a fairly generic interior running with library materials, several emitters, and sunlight through large (about 33% of the wall) AGS windows. It's 1600x1200 and I've got Multilight turned on, which is showing 3 lights and Environment. It got to a pretty reasonable preview state in under 20 minutues and a usable image in about 4 hours (on my Macbook Pro Core Duo 2.16 under Windows), it's using 340MB RAM ad a 187MB MXI file and I can mess around with Multilight while it renders without having problems. And Multilight is really cool. The footprint is smaller and it's more stable. I haven't run into any bugs not relating to the Cinema plugin. Also, it's giving me a pretty good render and I think I see some "beta love". The Max plugin, which they've been improving under cover of darkness for the last year, is vastly improved over the 1.1 version - it's better integrated, the materials handling is better and it gets more information, such as render resolution, straight from Max instead of duplicating the input. In MacOS, I've also not run into any non-Cinema-plugin bugs. I've tried a few scenes, including some pretty high poly stuff, and been able to get a reasonable render and use the Simulens effects to simulate a crappy camera, and those computed in reasonable time, looked good insofar as a simulation of a crappy camera looks good, and didn't run the RAM way up or cause instability. In both OSes, in 1.1 I would have run across several major problems by now that would have kept me from continuing. So my (highly qualified and provisional) review on 1.1.5 (which is what I'm going to call it from now on) is: While it's lacking any substantial new features, 1.1.5, as far as I've seen so far and aside from the Cinema plugin, is successful as a bug fixing and performance optimizing update. Also, I applaud NL's lowering of the bar to the point where I don't feel completely ridiculous making a statement like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IC Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 A lot of people (here and elsewhere) are using Maxwell to great effect. The results of that are available for everyone to see so Next Limit will continue to do well. Scrutinize and criticise the history and continuing shortcomings all you like-Next Limit are not a dying concern. Neither should they be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 A lot of people (here and elsewhere) are using Maxwell to great effect. Really? I don't see much new work posted in the mwr forums, and the work from mwr posted here is usually accompanied with a 'how do I get this to work' SOS plea. If you want to see a dynamic and genuinely informative forum, go to Fry's. Scrutinize and criticise the history and continuing shortcomings all you like-Next Limit are not a dying concern. Neither should they be. Dying, I doubt it. But there's a big difference between what their future is likely to be, and what it ought to be. On that count, well... your statement is pretty darn debatable. Which was really the point, now wasn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IC Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 But there's a big difference between what their future is likely to be, and what it ought to be. On that count, well... your statement is pretty darn debatable. Which was really the point, now wasn't it? Debatable? No I don't think so. If my firm let some or all of its clients down and those clients wanted us to be closed down or liquidated, I would deem that to be an over reaction. Whatever stress they had been put through due to product quality or undelivered promises, I think the stress I would suffer from losing my job would be greater, especially if the shortcomings of the firm could be solely attributed to others. And if you want, I can name some firms who are happily using Maxwell, normally in association with a faster rendering application for 'everyday' work. Some of them have made their feelings known about the software and Next Limit but they seem to feel the benefits outweigh the slow to non existent progress. As for a reason for this forum being short of positive contributions, I'd reiterate something I said before: a lot of people see this forum as a complaints recepticle populated by VRay users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 a lot of people see this forum as a complaints recepticle populated by VRay users. Humm. Well, this is mostly an arch-vis forum, and most arch-vis is done with vray these days. And some--though not all (I'm not making that mistake again!)--arch-vis artists feel let down by the shortcomings of MWR as they effect our work. And if you have any criticism of what NextLimit does or what Maxwell can't do, you pretty much have to find another place to speak, the MWR forum isn't open to that. So what are we looking at now for the next release or development? I haven't checked back to see if there's progress on the C4D plug problems. Displacement, when? Are we back to having no idea of what's next? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whiskey Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 out of fairness i'd like to state that juan guided us through the manual installation of the x64 plug for solidworks and it now runs nicely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now