Maxwell V2 is out
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@richard said:
No multilight either!
That's what I meant by layer blending. Indigo does it, though.
@richard said:
And of course no studio feature = no high poly if exporting from SU!
Ah, but there is a 'studio'. An actively developed one, too. It's called Blender. Granted, not the user friendliest of apps.
@richard said:
Twilight looks good but for me given the same engine developer is writing a new better quality and faster engine I may as well wait out!
Makes sense. And that one will have a 'studio', if I recall correctly.
But didn't Kerkythea have one too? And doesn't Twilight export to KT?
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Richard, what's with the jones you've got for Thea. I haven't seen much on it. What's it supposed to have that is so good?
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
Richard, what's with the jones you've got for Thea. I haven't seen much on it. What's it supposed to have that is so good?
-Brodie
Mate Thea is the same developer as Kerthy but going commercial, the thing I support and it warms me a bit is that the guy (one guy) replies to every post every day, the same guy developing the engine, interface etc etc! Heck that! And a team at NL cant even work out a proper marketing plan!
Mate even before first launch, he has developed caustics through water, displacement, instancing, thin SSS, multilight, HDRI, fast engine, unbiased and ray trace options, multi layer materials, on and on and on! AND he replies himself to EVERY post in the forum WTF! Does he sleep?
I'm certain he won't launch thea until everything is nailed, not just say "hey it does displacment" "oh but it will take 4x times longer to render! Or "Instancing, it does instancing" "oh yeah but start it today and come back next week to see if the render has launched yet!"
Can you tell I'm a bit jaded today! Man I love maxwell - dont get me wrong! But I just wanted to use instancing and nope, still not working! I just wish they would stop adding new stuff and make the dam thing work! I begrudge paying for an upgrade when they still haven't nailed the main bugs of the last version, I actually find it a bit insulting!
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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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