Maxwell V2 is out
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Do you buy what Juan was saying about instancing always taking longer to render? My understanding was that proxies in 3ds Max with Mental Ray or Vray, for example, didn't just save loading time but saved rendering time as well. I haven't been able to find anything official to confirm that though.
-Brodie
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As I understand it, instancing should save on RAM while parsing the scene.
The render time should remain the same for the same amount of rendered geometry, whether it is instanced geometry or not.The Maxwell story seems to continue... NL never made work of the SU plugin and it seems they never will.
To me, Maxwell is the most overhyped render engine of them all.
I remember some years ago, when we could render SU models using the 'Matador Light' standalone GUI (not developed by NL as a note) that could run the alpha and beta of Maxwell through .obj export, long before there was a Maxwell plugin for SU.
We thought M was revolutionary and the quality was insane (I thought)....Afterwards I realise that most of the so called photorealism was actually the amount of noise of unfinished renders which creates that sense of irregularity and thus realism.
Back then, the Intel multicores didn't exist yet, so I can proudly say that none of my renders ever got crispy clean . -
From what I understood, using instancing reduces RAM usage but increases render time.
@kwistenbiebel said:
NL never made work of the SU plugin and it seems they never will.
I've always thought that the guy who develops it isn't an SU user himself.
@kwistenbiebel said:
To me, Maxwell is the most overhyped render engine of them all.
It's certainly overpriced - given the Studio's clunkiness and instability.
@richard said:
And a team at NL cant even work out a proper marketing plan!
True! I was shocked at how they went about the whole reveals thing! People had no idea when the next one was going to come! Exit anticipation and excitement, enter irritation and boredom! It was absolutely amazing how they could scr*w up such a simple yet effective marketing ploy!! If NL were my company, heads would roll in the marketing department.
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Hi, I actually get a lot of work done with Maxwell for my clients although at times I am utterly frustrated with it.
I bought v2 and just one license to test things first a bit.
The new plugin though does not work yet. With autoMXM on the export fails or takes so long you have to cancel it. I do all my texturing with autoMXM. Who knows how long it will take to get it fixed. I should try to reinstall the old plugin and see how it works with Maxwell and Studio v2.
Will try that later.
Francois
PS
Made this little drawing with v1.7 for a client this week. I can not get this model (2.5Mb) to work with v2. Happy I did not upgrade while working on that project.
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Wow, I love the design purism on that building.
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frv, that isa nicely designed building.
Have you posted the issue on the Maxwell Sketchup forum? What do you mean the model didn't work in 2.0? Did it crash it or what?
-Brodie
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BTW, I'm getting ready to get Maxwell 2.0 along with a render node so I'll try and report back. I don't use AutoMXM though so that shouldn't be an issue for me.
-Brodie
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Hi Brodie,
yes the design is nice but I did not make it, I regret to say I just did the SU/Maxwell/PS work.....
I did post my problem on the Maxwell sketchup forum.It did not work since I use the new plugin and autoMXM. Once I reinstalled the old plugin all went well again. Reinstalling is just a matter of getting the old installation file and reinstall over the new version.
I wonder how you asign tectures without autoMXM. I find autoMXM the most useful way to asign textures.
Some quick remarks about the new Maxwell:
Working in Studio v2 seems a bit slow (unresponsive) compared to the old Studio.
Studio is easier to work with since its all a bit more visual.
Maxwell output is rather different in color and renderquality. My first renders of older models came out ugly. Glass to much reflective, colors harder and skies a but dull. I am used that one should tweek settings to get good results so I am sure these differences can be quickly overcome. -
I use the Maxwell Material Panel within SU to associate my SU material with my .mxm file. My initial reasons for doing it this way were 1) the panel was pretty intuitive and I never took the time to learn the automxm feature 2) I've heard many more issues with automxm than the material panel 3) in the beginning I was adjusting my materials and names for each project so it was just as easy to pick them using the panel as to use automxm.
I think I'm going to use the switch to 2.0 as an excuse to reorganize some of my workflow. I'd like to get into automxm as I think now it would be more useful to me. To bad it's not working yet.
Interesting to hear your comments on the color differences with 2.0.
-Brodie
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Well, autoMXM is linking SU materials in an automatic way and its actually really simple to use. Just get the names right and it works. But with the new plugin this does not work any longer.
To be honest, I got v2 now but for architectural work using SU I would wait a few months before upgrading. I don't think you should be excited a lot over faster renderingspeed. My current models seem to not to be rendering any faster or nicer. For me upgrading is more or less a matter of keeping support up to date.
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Well I am excited about the thinSSS. I ran a test w/ the demo version and my trees look a lot better.
I'm also excited about hdr shadows as well, I think that should help out.
As far as speed, I'm not too concerned about whether or not the engine is faster since I'm able to use this upgrade as an excuse to get a node license as well. That will take me from running on one quad-core machine to also including an 8-core server machine downstairs. So w/o any engine improvements that puts me at 3 times faster than I was.
Then there's the layered materials which I'm excited about as well. It will probably take a bit to get a good grasp of material creation but I suspect in the end it will make things much better.
If you get a chance maybe you could open up that same building model in 2.0 and just do a straight render w/o changes? Could be interesting
-Brodie
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I admit to historically waited till the x.1 (1.5.1, 1.6.1, 1.7.1) releases before upgrading! For my thinking the first releases are more an open beta where testing across platforms and configurations (always issues).
Regarding AutoMXM - I originally did all linking this way and later dumped it not because it was buggy but because I found it just so tedious to continually rename textures and prey that one name isn't wrong! Now with the MXM reporter plugin everything is SO MUCH quicker and intuitive, what a godsent!
Like brodie I'm really excited about the HDRI shadow improvements, now just have to finally workout my manual placement idea, as I have NEVER been able to get them placed correctly. Wish they had incorporated a better placement system as I had posted to the wish list which works similar to my manual method but obviously not in model. I posted the same recommedations to the Thea forum and giannis was fairly interested in the idea of incorporating something similar to thea.
It's a bit of a nightmare that materials seem to need to be re-tweaked!
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Is anybody using Maxwell 2 and the new plugin. I wonder if others are having the same problem exporting models under autoMXM ?
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@frv said:
Is anybody using Maxwell 2 and the new plugin. I wonder if others are having the same problem exporting models under autoMXM ?
I have no problems using Auto MXM in Maxwell 2.0 (Maxwell Exporter 2.4, SketchUp 7.1). It links and scales mxm materials as expected, similar to the settings in SketchUp.
... Wooops - When using lots of different textures it really is slow! You are right
Richard has got a point regarding the MXM Reporter though: THAT is a great tool which makes the Auto MXM-feature much more interesting, flexible and understandable.
Only thing I need is a toolbar-button to execute the plugin... I already posted a suggestion for the button icon but the cool guy who made the script doesn't reply and I don't know how to add anything to the script.
Maybe one of you guys would give it a try?
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The SketchUp plugin for maxwell has been improved since 1.7 or is the same?
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The plugin is slow as much that exporting goes from second or a minute to hours . Not even with really a lot of textures. I am exporting now with the old plugin and render from studio.
I have not seen any response on the Maxwell forums or from NL.
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@frv said:
The plugin is slow as much that exporting goes from second or a minute to hours . Not even with really a lot of textures. I am exporting now with the old plugin and render from studio.
I have not seen any response on the Maxwell forums or from NL.
I fear that the SU plugin development is dead! I'm not sure there are enough SU users using maxwell to warrant developing it further!
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@richard said:
@frv said:
The plugin is slow as much that exporting goes from second or a minute to hours . Not even with really a lot of textures. I am exporting now with the old plugin and render from studio.
I have not seen any response on the Maxwell forums or from NL.
I fear that the SU plugin development is dead! I'm not sure there are enough SU users using maxwell to warrant developing it further!
There is Twilight and soon will be THEA... I'm not worried. If Next Limit thinks that, it's just their problem.
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There's a lot of alternatives out there, also for Sketchup. But its still NL's problem if things go wrong. People invest time and money into this app and for reasons of quality output. I am sure they will solve the matter but its true that SU seems no longer a target for Maxwell.
How else would you sell a new upgraded version/plugin that stalls at the first test by (Iam afraid) the first guy who upgrades.....I am thinking of going Vray. We already use Modo but not yet much in combination with SU.
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@frv said:
There's a lot of alternatives out there, also for Sketchup. But its still NL's problem if things go wrong. People invest time and money into this app and for reasons of quality output. I am sure they will solve the matter but its true that SU seems no longer a target for Maxwell.
How else would you sell a new upgraded version/plugin that stalls at the first test by (Iam afraid) the first guy who upgrades.....I am thinking of going Vray. We already use Modo but not yet much in combination with SU.
As I think I said earlier I always wait till x.1 to upgrade, always has been issues with first releases.
I've always found in general though that the SU/MR combo is a very simple and easy workflow, I bought twilight the other day and am surprised that others suggest it is a break through in ease of use, sure simple but still more general settings than Maxwell out of the box. Speed is about the same but not nearly as functional. And of course no studio for high poly support.
I just hope they do get things sorted for the release of 2.1! Just hope they wake to the fact there is a growing base of SU users!
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