Maxwell for SU VS Twilight
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@jason_maranto said:
Vray doesn't fit the "easy to learn and free" criteria you had established in the beginning... are you considering buying something now?
Best,
Jason.Yes, although I still don't think I want to spend $800, especially if I can get something adequate for me for $100 or $0. Vray has a 30 day trial, if within this time I manage to learn it good enough to be able to produce results much better and/or much faster than any other renderer then I will consider it.
I am also planning to test Kerkythea and Indigo RT. How do these compare in terms of learning curve?
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Yeah at $800 for VRay you could get the full Maxwell Render Suite for less at $700 which offers much more room to grow beyond just working inside SketchUp.
The others I don't know very well, so hopefully somebody else can comment.
Best,
Jason. -
My issue with Maxwell so far is rendering speed. Would the Render Suite be significantly faster?
I understand that unbiased renderers are slower by nature but that in the end they can produce more realistic results. The problem is that trial and error is part of the learning process for me, and with a slower renderer I would learn slower as well.
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Generally setup time with an unbiased renderer is greatly reduced -- so the render takes longer but the setup time takes less which to me is a good tradeoff. Set-up time requires you to be in front of your computer and actively engaged -- whereas render time does not... you can easily render at night or other times when you will not be using the computer.
This way the computer is working for you, as opposed the you working for the computer.
Also Maxwell comes with 5 render nodes included so you can have up to 6 computers working together or separately on whatever you need.
Best,
Jason. -
I guess that would work good when you know exactly what you are doing and you know what results you will get. So you set everything up the way it should be and then let it run overnight. But when I am learning I like to experiment. I would change something, e.g. lighting or a material, and then render to see what effect my changes had. Then change it some more and render again, and so on and so forth.
It would be nice to have some sort of "lower quality" setting that you can use while learning or experimenting, and then when you are satisfied with the results let it run overnight for the best quality.
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After about a week of trying different applications (Twilight, Maxwell for SU, Shaderlight, V-Ray for SU and Podium) I finally decided to settle on one of them.
Obviously it would be be impossible to fully learn all applications within such a limited time but a decision had to be made eventually even with the limited info I could have during such short period.
I made a model of my home office in Sketchup and then I tested each of the above applications based on the following factors (in no particular order):
- How close the rendered image was to my actual home office (both during day with light from the window and night with artificial lights)
- How user friendly and easy to use was the interface
- Required features
- Availability of Tutorials and video Tutorials online to help me learn the application quickly.
- Cost
- Speed of Rendering
Shaderlight had the easiest to use interface, had several tutorials and webinars and it was relatively fast. Unfortunately the rendering engine itself didn't seem to be up to par with some of the other applications, while the cost was higher than most of the other options.
Podium was also very easy to use although the interface didn't seem as refined and it had fewer features. Some presets were very fast to render, but unfortunately the rendering engine again didn't seem to be at the level of some other applications (even with the best quality presets which took much longer to render). The cost is not high, but still higher than some of the competition.
I tried V-Ray to have a taste of what seems to be the favorite application for many here, even thought the cost was way higher than the rest. I got good results rendered quickly without messing too much with the zillion options available. There are also plenty of tutorials online about Vray. But ultimately the cost was too high for me and so was the learning curve (no point in paying $800 and then using just the defaults). Since I am not a pro I decided that I was not really willing to give up the amount of money and time required by V-Ray.
Maxwell for SU (standalone) has a nice and quite intuitive interface, although not as easy to use as Shaderlight or Podium. There are some nice tutorials online, but not that many yet (this app is new). The price is great and there is a free version with no time limits. Unfortunately for the time being it lacks a feature to easily create spotlights and it renders relatively slow. But if you don't mind to wait longer then the results seem to be very good.
I got very good results from Twilight, which if not equal are very close to those by V-Ray and Maxwell. Twilight has presets that give good results fast and other presets that give better results slower. It is not as easy to use as Shaderlight and Podium but it is almost as easy and with more features and at a better price. On the minus side the interface is not as polished as some of the other apps and I couldn't find any good video tutorials. My main issue with Twilight is that light strength is entered as some vague number (Podium does this also), not as Watts/Efficacy, Lumen or any real world unit as is the case with the other applications.
My choice in the end of this week was Twilight because none of its issues was a "deal breaker". I also liked Maxwell for SU and I will try it again if/when they include MXED, or some other way to include spotlights or IES lights. Shaderlight also showed potential, but I would consider it only if they make the improvements they promised in their rendering engine and also drop the price.
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just prepared a fast model to compare light/render quality using maxwell and twilight.
on my machine twilight/kt and Thea were faster and less noisy comparing to free maxwell. but needs more feedback
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I'm not sure what makes you think this is a good test scene for Maxwell (or anything else) -- the render I'm getting with your environment settings and exposure settings is basically a blown-out white mess.
Also one of your materials (the pink plastic) exceed the RGB to Spectral (CIE xyz) color conversion recommended threshold for real world surfaces -- a brightness of about 87% or RGB 225, 225, 225 is the real world brightness of a white sheet of paper... anything brighter than that is not only unrealistic but also will produce more noise by reflecting too much energy back into the scene.
Also the low roughness of the emitters reduces the light emitting strength (so that the parameters are no longer true to life) and adds no appreciable effect if you are intending an indoor scene (but for that you would need to turn off the physical sky, which is adding unnecessary calculation time).
Also surrounding an emitter with shiny metal is a very bad idea as this introduces reflected caustics into the scene which will create more noise and make render times longer for no good reason.
And finally Maxwell is a render engine that is meant to work with real-world parameters and that means everything should be modeled to real-world scale and have the same details as a real-world objects -- as near as I can tell this scene bears no relationship to any real world scenario that has ever existed.
If you want a good test scene try one of the "eye candy" models that are modeled very well and will show what Maxwell is capable of when dealing with geometry that is properly made.
Best,
Jason. -
Here's a couple of renders at 800 pixels wide using your scene as-is (geometry-wise) but with a few materials edited and the physical sky turned off(see attached sketchup file).
The free version of the plugin only has the "draft" engine which is not well suited to complex lighting -- the $99 version comes with the prodcution engine which is better suited to such tasks.
I can get better results by editing the geometry which I will do next.
Best,
Jason. -
Here's the a version with edited geometry (see attached SketchUp file) at 10 min with the production engine ($99 version of the plugin)
Here's the results of the same scene using the full Maxwell Render Suite ($696.50) at 10 minutes and with Color Multilight enabled which allows me to not only adjust the intensity of the light but also the color as well.
Best,
Jason. -
I suppose I should say as a point of reference I am using a Intel i7 920 processor (@2.67 GHz) -- which is hardly the latest/speediest hardware available... so anybody who has a better processor/ more cores should be able to get much better/faster results.
Best,
Jason. -
Here's why you would not want to use physical sky in an interior scene.
Both of these are rendered to the same 10 minutes, but one is a hole which reveals the physical sky lighting and the other is a simple emitter plane in the same spot:
As you can see both will render white because of the exposure needed for the interior setting for this render so from a practical POV it is faster to simply use an emitter plane or a HDR emitter plane for that "hole" rather than making Maxwell slog through all the extra calculations for such a tiny opening.
If there was stuff going on outside that could be seen through the windows I'd say OK, but even then IBL is a better choice than Physical Sky -- which in my opinion is best used if it is the only lighting in the scene (otherwise I prefer IBL environment or HDR emitter planes).
Best,
Jason. -
I'm guessing he put that hole in the wall for that exact reason to stress out an unbiased engine.... almost cruel.
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@solo said:
:mrgreen:
I'm guessing he put that hole in the wall for that exact reason to stress out an unbiased engine.... almost cruel.
Maybe he did at that -- pretty sadistic indeed
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
@solo said:
:mrgreen:
I'm guessing he put that hole in the wall for that exact reason to stress out an unbiased engine.... almost cruel.
Maybe he did at that -- pretty sadistic indeed
Best,
Jason.not for sure mate, solo is right. also I was using the free version, and am not on testing a "real model" as if Maxwell is modeled to mimic the real world , so it most be also capable for a bit larger or smaller objects "that are possible in real world".
twilight and v-ray also were good on this scene... no something special, but just a simple scene.......
I was not aware of "roughness on emitter materials and was thinking completely at the other side!!! (imagined that it must be like a light bulb, and so, must be glossy...., as real world
). also about the lights... I've modeled it based on one of maxwell manual scenes.
at the other hand , Thea also supports more light types... that are really handy while I am not familliar with maxwell lights ( I just have experienced Mx r1.7) -
To be clear my point is that Maxwell is optimized to render scenes with realistic proportions and details in the geometry, the higher-poly the better...
A test like this proves very little because nobody who is using Maxwell as it is intended to be used is actually going to ever need a scene like this.
Basically all you are saying to me with this test scene is "Maxwell sucks at the pure CG look" -- which I already know, it's not meant for that.
The question of speed is somewhat redundant because of course any biased engine is going to outperform unbiased engines in speed as a rule... and fully unbiased engines should generally vary in render time very little assuming they are using the same hardware resources and using similar features.
And finally it has been said in just about every way conceivable that the draft engine (which is all that is available in the free plugin) is not suitable for complex lighting... it can be used but do not expect great results fast using more than 1 - 2 lightsources.
The free plugin will do a very nice job on exterior arch-viz shots and IBL lit advertising-type product shots, but arch-viz interiors (with emitters) will be somewhat of a stretch using the free plugin.
But at the end of all this, to be completely fair, if you are going to compare the interior results from other engines you need to use the production engine -- at $95 it is still cheaper than Twilight... and this way you would be comparing apples to apples.
Best,
Jason. -
a bit off topic,
let me ask , wich is the best setting to prepare a light model using maxwell, and does it offers ,point , or spot light or we must model them?
also I like the simple interface of su plugin while it has almost everything needed.
twilight is really handy but it's interface is not still friendly (maybe we must be patient for next version that seems has some interesting new features (like toon shader ).
as I mentioned befor, fry is a nice render engine and also so powerful that hasn't been such popular as i.e. v-ray.... -
Right now the options are to use an emitter material or an HDR emitter material.
The emitter material allows you to set the light power parameters the same as a real light fixture -- so you would want to apply the material to the same surface area as a real light to achieve the most realistic results. Keep the material roughness at 100% unless you are planning on showing it as turned "off" in another render and need the "glass" look.
The HDR emitters are bit more flexible IMO and I would tend to use them for any complex light effects (computer monitors, TV's, fireplace, etc.) -- basically any 32-bit image will do.
Coming soon are IES lights which are already supported by the engine but are not available as an embedded type in the current stand-alone plugin release... this would be the best choice for light fixtures, especially if the light source will not be seen "on camera".
Point or spot lights do not exist in Maxwell because they are considered Biased approaches to lighting -- so IES would be the alternative, which is why I am excited to see they are coming.
I've been helping alot of new users lately and the most common issue I am seeing is the geometry they are using is not Maxwell-ready... Maxwell really will only give as good of results as the geometry you feed to it. Generally any shortcuts taken in the modeling will yield poorer results with Maxwell -- it wants the model to be as the real thing. Emitters are not excluded from this -- for instance if you want to do a flame you can use a regular emitter material but you would need to model the flame to scale with details (probably with artisan or similar).
At one point in time I was better versed in the various rendering packages, and I really enjoyed comparing (which is why I try to read whenever something is posted about other engines and participate in the "render this" threads when I can) -- but these days I have my hands full trying to stay on top of all the software packages I already use, so I'm not personally testing other engines.
There are a number of really tremendous unbiased engines -- I'm not so crazy about the biased engines in general, but with good post processing skills almost any engine can produce usable to excellent results these days.
Best,
Jason. -
Jason,
I'm curious, I don't know if you've posted about this elsewhere, what do you see as the major disadvantage of biased renders? Kinda leading I know, but you keep putting down biased renders, so I'd be interested to hear why. If you've already written extensively about it, can you point me there.
Andy
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Nope I tend to avoid the subject since I'm far from an expert -- I already have 2 biased renderers myself, but I prefer Maxwell by far and use it almost exclusively when I have a choice.
It's really as simple as the quality of light for me -- I just think unbiased renders generally look better (more realistic) out of the box... but the thing that aggravates me about the biased approach in general is the arcane terminology that is used so often for many parameters (this is present in some unbiased engines as well). Probably the thing that appealed to me most about Maxwell was the simplicity and relate-ability of the parameters and the quality of light.
It's really the same thing that appealed to me about SketchUp -- I'm not a big fan of the typical "CG speak"...
Best,
Jason.
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