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Maxwell Render for 3dsmax7


ceballos
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hi metroberlin, ohh, sorry kunstraum.tv ;)

 

i couldn't resist the temptation to get my hands on this

piece of software. very nice pic with the panton!

actually i don't get it how you did the sunlight.

could you explain how you set up the scene?

thank you in advance.

 

i think i'll going to email you soon =)

 

best wishes

ale

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Indeed, back on subject. Good news, I just submitted questions to the CEO of Next Limit a few days ago for CGA interview. As soon as they send the interview back it will be published. Should hopefully be really interesting things revealed....

Nice Jeff... That's what I wanted to hear.... and tell them they can count on me or us, to test, comment, or maybe even make a wishlist!!! (i feel important "hihihi" lol)

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Thanks Jeff for getting us back on topic.

 

My experiences with Maxwell:

Yesterday, I drove 60 miles to a city to deliver a render to a client, and while up in that city I decided to visit my friend who bought Maxwell. He is very inexperienced with the 3rd party renderers in general, and had not been able to max Maxwell work yet. He had installed it, but had no success in getting it to work. So I helped him get up to speed with it, authorize it, and get him started with this new renderer.

 

So I tinkered around with it, and learned that Maxwell is a commandline renderer. You can also renderer in Max if you want to. It does this by exporting from Max a maxwell specific scene file. Then the maxwell application takes over and renders it, creating a visual image buffer to show the image in progress. At first once I had set up his license file I still couldn't get things to work. Finally I fiqured out that I couldn't put spaces in any of the file names, either in the *.mxs file, or in the image file generated when the renderer is done. Also I found nothing worked if I put spaces in between the flags and the arguments passed via the flags to the application on the command line. i.e.

 

Bad example

 

mxcl -mxs: my scene.mxs

 

Proper example

 

mxcl -mxs:my_scene.mxs

 

So once I figured that out, it was a simple matter of creating a box, and whipping out 3 teapots to sit on it, and pressing go. It was cool to watch the pixels appear slowly and surely. In some of my physics textbooks in school, there were some pictures (simulations) of a scene illuminated by 20 photon's, and another picture illuminated by 1000 photon's etc... Watching maxwell start a rendered image reminded me of that series of pictures in my textbooks. It was cool.

 

I had a few more trips to complete before my other clients offices closed, so I could only play around with 4 and 5 minute test renders with Maxwell. But I was suprised at how fast Maxwell was. I suppose I had expected it to be slower. Kind of like watching lightscape render. It starts out fast, but converges slower and slower to a final complete image with no noise or artifacts. And for our 4 and 5 minute tests, even at the end, the noise was very significant and made the images unusable. Still however for the scene I set up, it was cool to see. So I am looking forward to seeing more features with this Maxwell renderer.

 

I would like to see it have the following in the future:

1. Displacement

2. Fur capabilities

3. Support for 3rd party plugins

 

Chris J.

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Thanks Jeff for getting us back on topic.

 

My experiences with Maxwell:

Yesterday, ...

 

....

I would like to see it have the following in the future:

1. Displacement

2. Fur capabilities

3. Support for 3rd party plugins

 

Chris J.

 

 

Chris no offence man - you are excited because you only use that for 1 day. I remember myself the first day! I could no beleive how nice it was but...

 

...Maxwell is cool indeed but I think that it is unusable right now... to render a 1600x1280 architectural rendering with no noise or very little you need 15+hrs. if no more (on Dual 3Ghz Xeon)

 

...I would say that you just experience the maxwell syndrome! (like all of us) ;-)

 

...What is that syndrome? Well in plain words - you can see the potential ! You love how easy it is !

 

So lets wait and see what the 15Dec. update beta version will offer.

 

If I am not mistaken keytoon animation studios using the new beta version and they have 10min renderings with no noise... (at least this is what they are claiming)

 

anyway...

Maxwell needs to reduce noise and rendertimes - but still it is Alpha version so I do not really critisize them...

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Andronikos - could you do us a favour pls?

 

i'm on the understanding YOU set the desired render time and the Maxwell renderer optimises and renders to suit that time?

 

well some renderers' low quality gi and gi artifacts can quite often be a visual bonus, and in certain circumstances can actually look quite effective.

 

well instead of say a 15 hour artifact free render, could you specify a 1 hour render time on the same model and post up that image to show us exactly how the artifacts look?

 

i'd be interested to see :)

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if you can leave without 400$ buy it! lol...

 

anyway the new 1.15 release is faster and less noise!

 

...also you can control not only render times but quality too...

 

I will render more stuff and I will upload some renderings...

 

cy

 

they also fixed some bugs (blury refractions - chromatic something (lol) - and enviroment)

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please andronikos do it... well is not that I have a lot of money, but I think it will not come back to me that easy, at least not using maxwell, I wrote a letter to the maxwell people asking them if those 2 licenses can work in 2 separate machines, and the answer is NOT! so those of you thinking about share expenses......think again!

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Hey guys,

 

I bought Maxwell a week back because it was just too tempting not to. I like these kind of renderers, simple and fun to use. It does have a number of bugs and it certainly could use some extra features but it is an alpha after all. It definitely has potential and the promise of a damn fine renderer at this price is too good to pass up.

 

My render times suck more than most I imagine as I'm only using it on my laptop (P4 1.7 with 512Mb RAM) with Max 7 while I experiment. Still, it's fast enough to see what's what. The latest update is faster and less noisy than the first, but still slow. I'll soon be putting it on a much faster computer which should help things along a bit. Even at this early stage, I have to say It's a lot of fun. I haven't enjoyed myself with any renderer this much since I was an Arnold Beta tester. :D

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Ok I have the results :

 

I have to say that the new 1.15 Maxwell Engine seems much better and faster to me.

 

The illumination also seems better... I do not have much free time to compare with previous version - and I do not really want. This is still the 2nd alpha - so upgrades and optimasations are expected of course.

 

 

I EDIT THAT POST BECAUSE MY WEBSITE WAS OUT OF BANDWIDTH...

 

I WILL UPLOAD MORE IMAGES SOON

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Someone was asking about making light fittings that work as in real life, well here's a torch, a shiny arc plate, a lumpy glass ball and a plain emitter. All objects have the same emitters as each other.

 

http://home.comcast.net/~garybutcher/lights.jpg

 

I guess this opens up things for those concerned about things being too simple, now you can make real world fittings, lenses etc. to improve your lighting. It's certainly better than standard CGI spotlights and omni's. This will allow some very neat lighting effects. I guess this can be a blessing and a curse as it can force you to do better now the standard lights are unavailable.

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Chris and Ernest,

 

****snip****

 

I can't believe the anxiety caused by Maxwell.... We are in the wrong business, we should be doing software....!!!! Ernest.... you are right... we should start a new thread headed by a PhD Psychology..... the name for the thread.... RENDERING HYSTERIA.

 

Thanks

Elliot

 

The reason for this is that Next Limit understands their market, and they understand who their potential users could be as well.

 

Best marketing initiative I have seen in CG software and the other thing that is interesting is that it is working.

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The reason for this is that Next Limit understands their market, and they understand who their potential users could be as well.

 

Best marketing initiative I have seen in CG software and the other thing that is interesting is that it is working.

And it's against the render times grain, and your paying to test out the software and damn those boys are doing it on a shoe string marketing budget. Took everything that was against them and turned it around, awsome. Saw the obvious right up front and amazing how soo many just jumped on board the hype bus to destinations unknown / long traveled render times? Still potential for some incredible renders, understand the intrigue;) .

 

I tip my lid (hat) to Next Limit on a marketing job well done!

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