MAXWELL PLUGIN AND SKETCHUP FOR INTERIORS
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Thanks again for your reply. Generally, it seems that I need a little better understanding of the settings and what each of them do. I also took time this afternoon to mess with the IES lights in the new version of Maxwell Plug In (2.6.10) I was pretty impressed with what I could do so quickly..and keeping the SL level down allowed me to keep adjusting to get closer to what I was after.
As I was posting those photos for you earlier, i quickly realized what you said, the realism in the MR images is so much nicer than in Shader light. The only real advantage that I see of shader light, is its ability to render animation frames. I saw in other posts that you were looking for a good solution to this awhile back. Did you ever find one. Im not interested in taking on 3ds Max, so Ive been looking all over the net at the different options. Maxwell appears to be what Im after for the realism, but it doesnt appear that they offer and animation solution for Sketchup.
Any thoughts there?
Thanks again, your reply was very helpful
Cheers
LB -
There is a workaround to create animations from Sketchup. There are plugins which will allow you to create a scene for each frame of a SU animation. When you export that to Maxwell you'll end up with a camera for each of those scenes. JD, the writer of the Maxwell plugin created a script that would make a rendering from each of those cameras essentially allowing SU users to do animations. This, I believe is the correct script if you're interested. http://min.us/mF91PT5wN
However, just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD. In practice Maxwell isn't a good software for animations at this point. Even generating low resolution renders can be too slow when you need to render 1000+ of them. I've done it for an exterior animation before, but it's not a great solution.
I never found an ideal solution. I'd planned on going with 3ds Max and Vray but never got a chance to try out many other options and both of those programs have nasty learning curves. However they're the industry standard for a reason (flexibility, speed, customization, capability, etc.). If I were spending my own money, I'd take a good hard look into Modo. I've seen some very nice renderings from it, it seems fairly speedy, and I've heard it fun to model in.
-Brodie
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Thanks again ....looked at MODO..not completely convinced and the price point is kind of high. I also understand that there are alot of add-ons to pay for in that program..
Anyway, Im interested in the script, but not sure what to do with it when I download it..appears as a .ms file..any idea?
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Oh, sorry, I forgot you were using the standalone plugin. The script only works with the full version. Sorry about that.
For an inexpensive solution you might look into Podium. You'll sacrifice quality for sure but it's dirt cheap and super easy to use. Make sure to see how it's working with animations though. A year or two back it had some bugs but those are probably worked out. You could also look into kerkythea if it's still around or twilight. Both good renderers that might help you out on the animation front. Kerky was free last I checked and I think twilight was very reasonably priced and had a lot of the same features as maxwell (which may mean it has the same animation limitations but it's worth looking into).
-Brodie
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One of the companies I work with uses Twilight. It would be my first pick if it were written for MAC. Maxwell seemed like the next best thing to Twilight since I have the platform issue..I could always run Sketchup on my PC, but I do everything on my mac...was trying to avoid that...
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Aww, gotcha. Yes they do seem to be very similar so I think you're on the right track.
-Brodie
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In terms of animations, twilight is a good pick as it has decent biased settings that you can use to keep frame rates to a reasonable level. I also use vray for sketchup and have had reasonable success with flythrough animation. The cost may be an issue though if you are looking in the inexpensive range. That said, I've pretty much given up on trying to render animations directly from sketchup. There are just too many roadblocks.
Best of luck.Andy
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So Andy if you don't render animations direct from sketchup anymore, what do you use?
Thanks
@andybot said:
In terms of animations, twilight is a good pick as it has decent biased settings that you can use to keep frame rates to a reasonable level. I also use vray for sketchup and have had reasonable success with flythrough animation. The cost may be an issue though if you are looking in the inexpensive range. That said, I've pretty much given up on trying to render animations directly from sketchup. There are just too many roadblocks.
Best of luck.Andy
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I've been (slowly) learning Blender and using vray for blender for rendered animation. I still use sketchup for non-rendered animations as it's quick and easy (and meets probably 90% of my needs.) Also, the keyframe animation plugin works very well for SU, but doesn't render with vray. Plus, it takes a loooong time to render out a whole animation, so it's not something I do very often.
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Help!!! I totally need help with rendering with maxwell in sketchup ,and see how helpful these forums can be, but I can't even find where can I start my own post, to ask a question
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@carlosarchicon said:
Help!!! I totally need help with rendering with maxwell in sketchup ,and see how helpful these forums can be, but I can't even find where can I start my own post, to ask a question
.go to the relevant subforum and click the button that says Post a new Topic
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