Maxwell for SU VS Twilight
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@zoom123 said:
What I am rendering is my future home. I started with sketchup to test out different ideas before even going to an architect. The architect took my initial general ideas and developed them into a plan. Using those plans I created another model which was used to fine tune the plans.
Now we are at the stage where we have to decide about materials, lighting etc, and I need a render engine to be able to test those. Like you I need something that can render fast so I can test many different ideas quickly. A bit of noise doesn't bother me, what I care most is that the lighting and the rendering in general would be as natural as possible. My aim is not to create pretty pictures but renderings that can help me make decisions.
Unlike you I am not a professional so I wouldn't want to invest in something expensive and difficult to learn. This is why I excluded V-Ray.
Jason, is there a new version of Maxwell for SU?
I understand that the Free version is not a demo version, but this basically means that the paid version of Maxwell for SU can not be tested. Before I pay the $100 for the paid version of the plugin I would like to test it, and the free version does not allow me to fully test it because of the luck of the production engine and the inability to properly render artificial lighting. How about a time/resolution limited trial of the paid version? Even 1-2 weeks would be enough.I understand about the price, completely. On the topic of price, you say that you hired an architect. How much time are you putting into this on your own? Why not have the architect you've already hired help you with the material and lighting selections through renderings, samples, etc.? You should have just hired a contractor if all you wanted was plans because you aren't getting the true value added for an architect without the rest of the design services IMHandbiasedO. If the architect you already hired can't do it, find another one that can.
That said, if you are doing it because you are really enjoying it and have the time, for my 2 cents--and I have used V-Ray, Maxwell, Twilight, Podium, and many other render engines--don't sweat the $100. I really think Maxwell ($100) or Twilight will do what you need it to do. Personally, I'd choose Maxwell because I like the interface. You're not going to get the quality you want with the free version, you've seen that. And as suggested, you could try out the demo of the full version of the Maxwell Suite to get a feel.
Good luck with your house! Post some renderings and pictures, too, so we can all see how it's going.
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@massimo said:
Well I don't know Vray or Maxwell and usually i don't use biased presets. Anyway if you like Vray output (btw I cas see some AA issues) just let it cook longer in Twilight's 09 preset and... 30 sec in PS.
Thanks Massimo. In that regards, I don't know twilight or maxwell that well, so I'm glad you took the time to run on a better setting. How does that render look before PP?
FWIW: I didn't have the vray one on the highest noise threshold settings, so yes, it's not as clean as it could be.
Edit: hmm, I just opened twilight to see what 09 setting is. FYI I used the 10 setting, and it ran 39 passes.
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@unknownuser said:
How does that render look before PP?
It's just the unbiased version you posted here with a bit of noise reduction and tone&color and gamma correction in PS.
Presets 09 and 10 will have quite similar outputs for that kind of scene IMO but 09 should be a bit quicker. -
Well, I guess that's a whole 'nother topic about post processing... in the same vein the maxwell render could use some NR for similar results. My goal was to show the render engine output as a side-by-side comparison.
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Well, my point was just that I think that Twilight or Thea have more "neutral" outputs than Vray, so you can easily change the image with a bit of post pro if you like.
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Just curious - is there a way to control the blue-ishness of the twilight output. That's one things that's bothered me that I can't seem to figure out. With vray and maxwell, there are ozone and haze settings that can control that. You can change the sun color, but the physical sky is a very strong blue.
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@ledisnomad said:
I understand about the price, completely. On the topic of price, you say that you hired an architect. How much time are you putting into this on your own? Why not have the architect you've already hired help you with the material and lighting selections through renderings, samples, etc.? You should have just hired a contractor if all you wanted was plans because you aren't getting the true value added for an architect without the rest of the design services IMHandbiasedO. If the architect you already hired can't do it, find another one that can.
That said, if you are doing it because you are really enjoying it and have the time, for my 2 cents--and I have used V-Ray, Maxwell, Twilight, Podium, and many other render engines--don't sweat the $100. I really think Maxwell ($100) or Twilight will do what you need it to do. Personally, I'd choose Maxwell because I like the interface. You're not going to get the quality you want with the free version, you've seen that. And as suggested, you could try out the demo of the full version of the Maxwell Suite to get a feel.
Good luck with your house! Post some renderings and pictures, too, so we can all see how it's going.
The architect can and did some 3D, but I like to test several different ideas and the easier way to do that is if I do it myself. It would take a lot of time (and possibly a lot of money) if I was asking the architect "try it like this, lets change it like that, what if we do this" etc. How do you work with your "picky" clients?
I will definitely buy one of the $100 apps and when I have something decent ready I will post it here. Since many of you are architects maybe you could even give me some input on the architecture and the design, since I care more about these than the quality of the rendering
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@jason_maranto said:
@zoom123 said:
Jason, is there a new version of Maxwell for SU?
I understand that the Free version is not a demo version, but this basically means that the paid version of Maxwell for SU can not be tested. Before I pay the $100 for the paid version of the plugin I would like to test it, and the free version does not allow me to fully test it because of the luck of the production engine and the inability to properly render artificial lighting. How about a time/resolution limited trial of the paid version? Even 1-2 weeks would be enough.Yes, there is a pre-release version being tested now... IES lights are included as well as a few other nice new aspects to the plugin.
I am just a user like you so I have no influence over how they decide to limit the plugins -- I would think buying the production engine sight unseen is a bit of a stretch and currently the only way to test it is to download the demo version for the full Maxwell Render Suite. Perhaps this will change in the future -- everything is still so new that I'm sure there will be lots of adjustments made over the next few months as they get a better handle on how best to do something like this.
Best,
Jason.Thanks! Can you give us a link to this pre-release version?
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How curious - I ran the preset 09 - I got 40 passes in the same time - so no speed difference, but interestingly, the noise went way down...
Anwyay, it's sort of academic, since I only have used twilight because of its quick biased presets and the ability to use it for rendering animation.
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Actually I can't -- you would need to register for the Maxwell forum and locate the 2.6.1 Preview thread in the SketchUp subforum... those are the rules and I didn't make them.
Best,
Jason. -
@unknownuser said:
Just curious - is there a way to control the blue-ishness of the twilight output.
Well as far as I know the sun color will change with time of day if you leave the sun to the default white and the sky itself will appear differently depending on the situation or location. Also you can play with brightness and turbidity of the sky or the sun color (I always use a pale yellow in that way you can reduce the blue cast that comes with the default physical sky).
Off course you can also use a colour instead of the physical sky. Finally you can also save a template in SU with your preferred sky settings. -
@unknownuser said:
How curious - I ran the preset 09 - I got 40 passes in the same time - so no speed difference, but interestingly, the noise went way down...
Isn't that a speed difference?
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I made some changes to your scene -- I added a white ground plane to provide more natural looking lighting and neutralized the sky dome, also several of the materials exceed what I would consider the realistic RGB to Spectral (XYZ) color space values of RGB 225,225,225 (which is the brightness value of a white sheet of paper)... this will lead to extra noise and "flatter" looking renders so I dropped the brightness (in the offending SkletchUp materials) to 87%.
Also I did a once over for all the materials since one was missing the linked MXM (galvanized).
I'm rendering to SL21 with the production engine now -- I'll time it but I doubt it will have much relevance since we are running different systems.
Best,
Jason.
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jason, good tips. Thanks!
Massimo - less than a minute out of 30 is essentially the same time...
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@unknownuser said:
Massimo - less than a minute out of 30 is essentially the same time...
Absolutely, but you have a lot less noise so it will require more time with the previous preset in order to have the same clean output no?
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@massimo said:
@unknownuser said:
Massimo - less than a minute out of 30 is essentially the same time...
Absolutely, but you have a lot less noise so it will require more time with the previous preset in order to have the same clean output no?
Well, that's just me not being familiar with the presets. Why is the 10 setting more noisy than the 09??
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Well, basically 10 setting is better for caustics and it will produce caustics also from sun&sky only while 09 will not. Also preset 10 will work better in technical/studio renders and/or with difficult condition of lighting to solve. The cons is that it is slower so this means much more time to clean the noise.
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thanks for the explanation
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You're welcome.
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Here's my test with the Maxwell "production" engine left to render to SL 21 -- which took 2h 47m on my Intel i7 920 system (4 core hyper-threaded 2.66GHz).
It could be rendered a bit longer to reduce the slight noise still present in parts but I personally wouldn't find this result objectionable... obviously you can adjust the exposure setting to whatever you need when setting up the scene.The lighting is dead neutral here so any color you are seeing is due to the materials themselves... and I know that Maxwell renders absolutely pure nuetral.
I was also not happy with how the silhouette material you have was performing in this render (I've never used that effect before for rendering) -- so afterward I made a SketchUp material (Maxwellized of course) that you can use whenever you want that effect for better results.
the SketchUp material.Best,
Jason.
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