Thea or maxwell?
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I have a bit of experience with Kerkythea and am now comfortable with the user interface. I have tried Podium and V-ray and while i like the the convenience of the built in render plugin , complicated models take a long time to render ( if the computer doesn't crash!). Also the results of Vray and podium look a bit fake to me . I like what I have seen with Maxwell and with KT, honestly, some of the renders were breath taking.
I want that wow factor with both my interior and exterior renders as well as being able to render animations fairly quickly.
So for people who have experience with external renderers like Maxwell and Thea; which do you recommend and how do they compare?
thank you for your input!
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I'm maxwell user and only thing I can tell - result depends on user not render engine
But for realism I like maxwell. Yes it is slower than other engines, but I like result. If you need do images very quickly then choose something else - much more faster. -
Thea.
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@chris fullmer said:
Thea.
Agreed. Though still a bit rough around the edges, Thea offers more bang for one's buck than Maxwell. And let's not forget that Tomasz, who develops the SU plugin, is an SU user himself. Quite important, that.
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I'm gonna say Thea also, but must admit that I do not use Maxwell so I am not basing my opinion on a comparison.
Firstly you mentioned animation, AFAIK Maxwell does not do animation right?
Thea is heading towards OpenCL gpu rendering which will really give it a speed boost soon.
I'm very happy with Thea so far, the material editor, speed, quality are all top notch, they are still working on the first release and I believe once it's completed and released it will be an awesome piece of render software.
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@solo said:
I'm gonna say Thea also, but must admit that I do not use Maxwell so I am not basing my opinion on a comparison.
Firstly you mentioned animation, AFAIK Maxwell does not do animation right?
Thea is heading towards OpenCL gpu rendering which will really give it a speed boost soon.
I'm very happy with Thea so far, the material editor, speed, quality are all top notch, they are still working on the first release and I believe once it's completed and released it will be an awesome piece of render software.
Thanks for your input. I think I will give Thea a go.
Are the results much different from Kerkythea btw?
cheers
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@aidus said:
I'm maxwell user and only thing I can tell - result depends on user not render engine
But for realism I like maxwell. Yes it is slower than other engines, but I like result. If you need do images very quickly then choose something else - much more faster.speed is important as is the possibility to do animation.
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@comatose said:
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Are the results much different from Kerkythea btw?
.....A totally new render engine, different results in different times
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That's true (especially when it comes to Thea's amazing material system), but I have seen similar results from both pieces of software - although I suspect that this has more to do with skill and experience than the actual software.
The main difference for me has been the learning curve. Despite some great KT tutorials and advice from the forum, I couldn't even come close to some of the KT renders shown in the forum gallery. In fact I struggled to produce anything remotely good.
By contrast I've found Thea quite easy to get to grips with (even without the sort of in-depth tutorials that will eventually become available) and I'm already producing good quality renders. The best thing is that I have only scratched the surface of what the software is capable of and my renders can only get better as I become more familiar with Thea.
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So far i've tried SU Podium and Kerkythea.
Podium is easy to use and you quickly make very nice renders and you run it inside SU.
Kerkythea has much more to offer but isn't easy to learn... i usually find myself spending hours just testing settings i don't yet understand
Have you seen Octane render?
Man... it blew me away, now i'm going for a new computer so i can fully use Octane.
You can export from SU to Octane... work in Octane with materials and lights and do test renders.. then go back to Su and continue modeling and again export back to Octane and all your previous lights n materials are still there.Check it out
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/Also see some amazing videos
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=octane+render&aq=0Cheers
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Something worth noting is that Maxwell is on sale right now for 40% off:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/news/world_cup_promo.php
There is a brand new Sketchup to Maxwell plugin that is just about to be released the looks to be truly spectacular.
You can't beat Maxwell quality and it has a truly enormous range of features -- If WOW! is your goal you can do much worse than Maxwell.
Also it is nowhere near as slow as people try to make it out to be -- whenever I see an honest speed test comparing apples-to-apples Maxwell compares very well.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
You can't beat Maxwell quality (...)
Yes, you can. Takes skill, but it's quite do-able.
@jason_maranto said:
(...) it has a truly enormous range of features -- If WOW! is your goal you can do much worse than Maxwell.
True. Still, there's quite a few renderers out there that offer just as many features - or more - and cost less than Maxwell. If I may be candid: Maxwell is a capable app, but it's overpriced.
Current promo's nice, though.
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Maxwell can animate lights also it can render animation - not from su but 3dsmax.
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@aidus said:
Maxwell can animate lights also it can render animation - not from su but 3dsmax.
Thea can also animate light - it's called relight...
And Thea is also able to render animations... -
Maxwell is now 50% off for the next week due to the above linked promotion.
I'll let Maxwell quality speak for itself.
Best,
Jason. -
As long as you have SU Pro.
When I was weighing up render programmes I couldn't test Max as I only have the free version of SU.
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Also worth mentioning: Thea does both biased and unbiased rendering, whereas Maxwell only does unbiased. And personally, I find Thea's material editor easier to use than Maxwell's.
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One more for Thea:
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=3078 -
Thea also gets the win in licensing and cost per seat if you base it on a render engine studio with two nodes. Einstein doesn't understand Maxwell's licensing policy. It's also worth noting that Next Limit changed the licensing policy between version 1 and version 2. This change broke out the render nodes from the purchased package and caused an increase in price. After this you never know what kind of changes they will make and charge you for. Maxwell's render quality is amazing but in today's economy you have to balance quality with cost and time.
I would recommend Thea for a studio render and get Twilight for any lightweight models you have.
Cheers. -
a few years back I would have said to stay away from maxwell.
But the new Maxwell plugin to be released soon for Sketchup is a totally new thing and since the manual was already set online it promises to be one of the best plugins for SU to render.
Then there is a demo online showing realtime render preview with Maxwell.I am happy to have stayed on the Maxwell train. And since we use several different modelers we can always keep the renderings in Maxwell.
We always made use of the promo's and so we paid really very little for Maxwell. Our initial license years ago was about 500 euros for in total 8 licenses. We updated 1 license to version 2 and did so for about 350 euro. Then we updated a second license to version 2 during the most recent promo for 175 euro. Can't say pricing or license policy was a hassle. Actually Maxwell's license policy is very transparent and well documented on their site.
We have made a lot of our customers happy with the typical super high quality renderings. Even at the beginning years ago, although then it was much more difficult to keep the faith.
Francois
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