Maxwell render 2.0

Aidus · 27 Feb 2009, 10:14

Yes! First news about maxwell render 2.0
http://www.nextlimit.com/newsletters/feb09/rd_updates.html

mateo soletic · 27 Feb 2009, 12:12

And this is great news too:

A tiny tip of the iceberg: a new feature will enable users to do a search in the MXM gallery website, directly from the MXM browser on their computers. Users can search by material name, keywords, color and category. A material from the search results can be directly drag/dropped into a scene or onto an object - it will be automatically unzipped. More information will be released in due time, when we are ready to make that information public.

Aidus · 27 Feb 2009, 14:00

Actually I like maxwell's studio. Yes it is buggy but I think developers are going in right direction. I'm using studio because I need to see what I'm changing. In su you just can guess how all will look after render. Since new su2mxm 2.0 plugin has arrived I think there is a one giant step forward. Instancing support is just amazing! And Pelias say's that next plugin will have ability to ad external proxies even mxm files.

brodie · 27 Feb 2009, 17:23

oooo...external proxies? That would be absolutely wonderful.

Did you notice the bit at the bottom about an updated SU plugin as well?

-Brodie

Stinkie · 4 Mar 2009, 12:47

@aidus said:

Actually I like maxwell's studio. Yes it is buggy but I think developers are going in right direction.

Which would be what direction exactly? From where I'm standing, it looks like they aren't developing the Studio at all. 'Buggy' - that sums it up, allright. And don't forget 'clunky' - I use the Studio almost daily, and I simply cannot get over its utter, well, crappiness. Considering Maxwell's price tag, I expect better.

@aidus said:

Instancing support is just amazing!

Yeah, it is pretty handy. Mind you, using instances will slow your render down. Also, it took 'em -what?- over half a year to come up with a solution (which actually is nothing more than a work around) for the "instances get strewn about when you open your scene in the Studio" issue.

All in all, I like Maxwell - the app's capable of producing great output. Yet, for the money they're asking, NL simply delivers too little. I think I'm gonna wait a while before I upgrade to 2.0!

brodie · 4 Mar 2009, 16:35

@unknownuser said:

Yeah, it is pretty handy. Mind you, using instances will slow your render down.

eh? Sounds rather counterintuitive.

-Brodie

remus · 4 Mar 2009, 21:52

From my experience of instancing it is used more for keeping the poly count down rather than speeding up the render, i suppose it would speed up the export though.

Stinkie · 5 Mar 2009, 09:16

@remus said:

From my experience of instancing it is used more for keeping the poly count down rather than speeding up the render

Correct.

@remus said:

i suppose it would speed up the export though.

That it does. Considerably, even.

All in all, I'm hoping MW 2.0 will offer some improvements with regards to rendering speed and stability (Studio). If that happens, I'm upgrading. If not, I'll just stick with 1.7 - the current financial crisis has not skipped Château Malodeur.

kwistenbiebel · 5 Mar 2009, 11:06

Cool news.
They should seriously improve the sketchup plugin for version 2.
The existing plugin forces you to do all in the Studio because it just never matured and not at all ties in with SU itself.
The Fry Render plugin offers a much better and complete toolset from within Sketchup, although development has come to a stand still as well last few months and an update is needed to improve workflow even more.

In general, I have the impression that the unbiased rendering hype 'as easy as taking a photo'is a bit over.
I think people now realise that in terms of workflow, unbiased doesn't really is feasible in a pro environment like your average architecture firm where you need to be able to push out stuff in a short period of time.

The biased engines a la Vray are still a bit ahead of competition, considering that real-time rendering is just around a corner, a thing that is no way possible in the near future using unbiased methods...

Also, since the free render engine Indigo is improving, it is difficult to justify an expensive purchase like Maxwell.
The only thing Indigo lacks for now is more control over sky/sun/hdr. The ability to control sun strength apart from the physical sky and the ability to mix it with HDR or dome light is a thing that is missing.
When Indigo would have that, I see no reason aymore to spend money on the others. The Skindigo plugin already works better than Maxwells.

brodie · 5 Mar 2009, 18:10

I've been doing some experimentation and research in regards to the instancing issue with maxwell and found some interesting info.

There seems to be a bug that can drastically increase render times with instances. Without going into details of my test and forum discussions, here's the deal. If your instance AND/OR the original object from which your instance is taken intersects with any other object in the scene your render times go WAY up (my tests were showing like 15x longer). However, instances CAN intersect with other instances.

-Brodie