Slow Maxwell(free)+SketchUp - what am I doing wrong?????

KatrinK

Model Hi

I'm it's been a second day I was struggling with free Maxwell plugin for sketchup and now i'm about to give up

Rendering my sketchup scene appeared to be an everending process, so I decided to create as simple scene as possible and see how long will that take to render.
My comp is now really slow 8GB (ram), AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2GHz processor, 64-bit Win OS, but rendering of the attached doc takes 10 mins!
Here:

The walls are (230, 230, 230), e.g not a pure white.
The light source is only one and it's a Sky dome (no competing lighting)
Fstop = 41 - so, not loosing here on DOF rendering.
Thread = 0 so it should utilise as much as it can

So as per 1-4 I did most of things that are mentioned on this forum&video tutorials to be the main reasons of slow rendering.

What am I doing wrong?????

Fire settings

Camera settings

Environment settings

Material settings

Option settings

Output settings

jason_maranto

Its hard to say for sure without having the SketchUp file... but 10 minutes is not a long time to reach SL 16 (with any scene).

If you were using the full version of Maxwell I'd tell you to run Benchwell: http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php/benchwell -- but you should see something close to your system specs there anyway.

Best,
Jason.

KatrinK

@jason_maranto said:

Its hard to say for sure without having the SketchUp file... but 10 minutes is not a long time to reach SL 16 (with any scene).

If you were using the full version of Maxwell I'd tell you to run Benchwell: http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php/benchwell -- but you should see something close to your system specs there anyway.

Best,
Jason.

Hi Jason
Thank you very much for the quick reply. Sorry I couldn't attach the skp file as it's 7mb, but there is a 4mb limit on the forum. Could you please advise on robust workflow to render a more complex scene(pls see pic).
I have a chandelier here that will be an emitter(no any sun or other emitters) and a table with glasses - so a lot to calculate for Maxwell.
When I'm trying to render this I leave it overnight but in the morning it's still about 12SL. Is it worth to render with lower resolution or SL first? Just it's a bit worrying that everyone manages to render scenes somehow but I get stuck with the simplest things, so I feel frustrated that within a week I will be able to render it maybe 4 times and it's not enough to get any proper results. There definitely should be some workflow people are using to get proper results in reasonable period of time. Please help(.

jason_maranto

I can say (based on what I see with Benchwell) that you and I are running about the same system specs, and while that is not an easy to resolve scene (noise-wise) for the draft engine, I would get much farther than SL 12 leaving it overnight.

So it does indeed seem that something is amiss with either the scene itself or (more likely) there are other processes on your computer that are taking up system resources while Maxwell is trying to render.

The first thing I would do (if you have not already done so) is to disable SketchUp auto-save (in the preferences).

I also disable all auto-updating software and any screen savers as well -- although I do not keep my rendering machine hooked to the internet (since anti-virus software suck up too much system resources for my liking).

Also, I remember that there is an issue specifically with certain AMD processors rendering scenes with r2 enabled materials much slower than Intel processors -- something to do with how the two company's vary in their optimization of certain calculations. Common materials that use r2 are "satin" and "velvet" materials, but it can be used in "car paint" and many other types of materials... to test your scene for this I would do a clay-render first. A clay-render will override all material in the scene (except emitters) and reveal the fastest that the scene can be rendered... any slowdown from that point is simply due to extra complexity in the calculations due to the materials you are using.

To do a clay-render go into the Maxwell Scene manager to the Output tab, and to the materials subheading. Check the box next to the word "override" and browse to load the material I have attached.

Best,
Jason.

MXM material for clay renders.

jason_maranto

I found the thread on the Maxwell forum that identified this r2/AMD issue:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=37764

Best,
Jason.

KatrinK

Hi Jason.
Thank you very much. I've applied clay material and got last scene rendered in an hour with SL=16 and Res:790*427!
I read the discussion about AMD/Intel performance differences when it comes to R2. I guess there is no way to discover which material causes an issue(as long as i don't have a full version of maxwell) so i should just hide all the objects and them open them one by one to see what causes the increase in rendering time. Or alternatively I can just become a clay-addict)
Thanks a lot for your help!