Maxwell in maya - Speed vs graininess

[debu]

Hi all,

 

I've only just started playing around with maxwell render, and I was a little surprised by just how slow it is! I had a simple scene in Maya which I rendered with default settings, exceot for changing render time to about 2 minutes. After the 2 minute render there was still a lot of graininess and noise in the image, and even after a 15 minute render of the same scene there was still quite a bit of noise.

 

I'm wondering if it's possible to avoid some of the graininess with shorter time renders, even if it is at the expense of overall quality or level of detail? If so, how would I go about it?

 

Also, using the maxwell materials inside Maya (using the plugin) is it possible to assign textures to those materials? Or if not directly on the material, through using the Hypershade is it possible?

 

thanks for reading, and any help!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Maxwell isn't known for its speed. Sorry for not providing any more insight than that, as I don't use it professionally. ...but I don't use it professionally, because it isn't known for its speed.

[debu]

Yeah, I guessed the speed might be unavoidable, but I'm really wondering if there's a way to do a render that doesn't take 30 minutes per frame, but without the graininess. That's the big hang up of it for me. If there isn't I'll have to look for another renderer.

[Kurt]

there are a number of things you can do to speed up your rendering and get rid of some of the graininess much faster. All of these tips are described and discussed in the Maxwell Render forum

[jackb602]

Just to provide a frame of reference, it is not unheard of for Maxwell to take 30 HOURS to reach an acceptably noise free result on a single frame. The short answer is that Maxwell is probably the single least practical solution available for animation.

Edited March 6, 2009 by jackb602

[debu]

Ah ha - 30 Hours eh? I guess that Maxwell is more for single frame renders then.. hehe. Ok well it's good to know that, I'll have to have a look at some other options.

 

Any suggestions? Was thinking of looking into RenderMan.

[Devin Johnston]

The last time I used Maxwell for an animation I let it go for 8 hours on a 720x480 frame and there was still significant noise, it was an exterior animation. Stills will take even longer, if your not using a render farm then you should expect render times to range from 24-100 hours to get a relatively low noise result. There are some things you can do to speed it up a little bit like use AGS glass but the speed increase will almost be unnoticeable.

 

I've used several render engines, the best one you can use in my opinion is Vray. It's really an incredible program and its Superman fast compared to Maxwell.

[shaneis]

Any suggestions? Was thinking of looking into RenderMan.

 

By the time you buy and figure out Renderman then reassign materials, you could have rendered it using mentalRay - which just so happens to be included with Maya (ie free), renders great quality images and is optimised for animation. Maya and MR4M are, after all, aimed at the entertainment/ animation industry!

Edited March 6, 2009 by shaneis