Shouldn't we start a Maxwell and Thea SubCategory?

valerostudio

V-Ray has one, I wonder if there should one for Maxwell and Thea considering these are the 3 most popular rendering engines for SU.

solo

I do not see the need for a Thea sub forum, The Thea forums are excellent and very fast when seeking help, no point in another IMO.

andybot

hehe, maybe the vray subforum should be deleted so the chaosgroup forum is used more

Zoom123

I think it would be a good idea to have a subforum for Maxwell, especially now that there is a free plugin for Skethup and the users of this free plugin can not post in the Maxwell forum.

Rich O Brien

We won't be creating a Maxwell subforum as we can't see a merit in doing so. Unless someone from Maxwell expresses such interest.

Al Hart

What if someone from Render Plus wanted a Render Plus or IRender nXt sub-category?

Rich O Brien

What's up with your forum?

http://irendernxt.com/forum

Seems active to me. But if you ever run into trouble let us know.

Nice gallery BTW

Al Hart

Does that mean that V-ray simply doesn't have a forum.

I have always felt that people would prefer to post their SketchUp add-on's questions on the forum where they already are, and not have to log in to a different forum.

Rich O Brien

@unknownuser said:

Does that mean that V-ray simply doesn't have a forum.

It seems Chaos Group has a forum. If you read through the threads here you'll see Thomthom and others pushing them that way.

I'd much prefer a rendering forum here that covers all apps but certain areas have grandfather's rights if you know what I mean.

Stinkie

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

I'd much prefer a rendering forum here that covers all apps(...)

That'd make sense.

thomthom

The problem has been that ASGVis forums hans't been that good to be honest. I was mostly active there when there used to be a person from ASGVis that knew a lot about V-Ray helped out. But he left ASGVis and the only reason I used the forum then was for the beta testing. Now that the beta testing is dormant while they work on Rhino there is very little fun to be had there. It's missing the community feeling like you get here and say, Thea's forums. I find the ChaosGroup forums much worse than the old ASGVis forums.

Stinkie

@thomthom said:

I find the ChaosGroup forums much worse than the old ASGVis forums.

Same here -they seem to have a knack for making things overly complicated. And since CG took over ASGVIS, it is apparently no longer possible to acquire VfSU online -one has to go through local resellers. There's four for the whole of Belgium, all of which have terrible websites. Only one of those provides info on VfSU. None list a price.

jason_maranto

I'm all for a rendering forum -- but I'm not really crazy about each application having it's own subforum. I never check the V-Ray subforum but I have learned alot about many other newer applications thanks to the threads that have popped up in this common area -- if everything was compartmentalized I would never have seen those threads.

Maxwell has its own excellent forum (my favorite by far), and I've always tried to direct users asking Maxwell questions here towards it -- but obviously things are a bit more complex now that a free version exists.

Best,
Jason.

thomthom

Yea - most rendering concepts can be transferred between render applications. So it could make the learning area better.

Mike Lucey

@jason_maranto said:

I'm all for a rendering forum -- but I'm not really crazy about each application having it's own subforum. I never check the V-Ray subforum but I have learned alot about many other newer applications thanks to the threads that have popped up in this common area -- if everything was compartmentalized I would never have seen those threads.

Maxwell has its own excellent forum (my favorite by far), and I've always tried to direct users asking Maxwell questions here towards it -- but obviously things are a bit more complex now that a free version exists.

Best,
Jason.

Yeah, and I understand the complexity is that Maxwell don't cater, forum wise, for their free users!

jason_maranto

Yes, users of the full Render Suite demo version are also not allowed to post either -- only registered users are allowed to post, though anybody is free to read... and there are quite alot of valuable assets they can download as well on the forum.

I was a read only member of the forum for nearly a year before I finally purchased, and that year of reading was still extremely valuable to me. One of the other forums I was on had the mantra for newbies as "read more, post less" -- mostly to avoid endless repetition of the same questions... and I tend to agree with that philosophy.

Actually (as I have said elsewhere) I wish Google would implement a similar strategy for SketchUp Pro license holders -- I intensely dislike being lumped in with the non-paying users when it comes to bug reports and feature requests... my feeling is if I am paying to support a products development then I should have a larger share of the developers attention than somebody who is simply enjoying the benefits.

Nothing comes free -- you know that better than most with the advertising driven nature of this forum -- you are essentially selling the users of this forum as a product to the advertisers... in the same way radio or television program viewers are sold to advertisers. The Maxwell forum has no advertising because it is a paid service -- as license holders part of what we pay for the product also pays for the forum (software, bandwidth, upkeep).

Best,
Jason.

Mike Lucey

@jason_maranto said:

Nothing comes free -- you know that better than most with the advertising driven nature of this forum -- you are essentially selling the users of this forum as a product to the advertisers... in the same way radio or television program viewers are sold to advertisers. The Maxwell forum has no advertising because it is a paid service -- as license holders part of what we pay for the product also pays for the forum (software, bandwidth, upkeep).

Best,
Jason.

I totally disagree with you on your 'Nothing comes free' comment. This is a Google SketchUp Forum. It was founded to offer free help to SketchUp users and continues to do this. It has no financial support from Google or Google SketchUp.

As regards your comment that, '.... advertising driven nature of this forum' goes. Again, I disagree on your perception of this forum. We are most definitely not advert driven. Advertising revenue goes towards partly covering overheads but for the most part the background work is completed for no remuneration by SketchUcation Directors and Forum Moderators.

I find your third assertion, 'you are essentially selling the users of this forum as a product to the advertisers', quite insulting to SketchUcation management and again could not be further from the truth.

We only allow banner advertising that we feel would be of interest to forum members. We also try to make sure, in so far that we can, that the Adsense adverts are relevant.

We have a general policy, clearly stated in our Terms of Service, that we do not allow 3rd party commercial product vendors to promote their wares without support advertising on SketchUcation. This I think is most reasonable and the vast majority of 3rd party commercial products vendors totally accept and actually welcome the opportunity to highlight their commercial products.

We are continuously coming across commercial vendors that devise ways to try and circumvent this policy but I normally ferret them out in the end and they either 'toe the line' on a equal footing with other vendors or desist with their promotion. I wish I did not have to continuously do this job but its only fair to our commercial product advertisers that do things properly, that we make sure there are no free rides on their or our shirt tails.

Mike

jason_maranto

@mike lucey said:

We are continuously coming across commercial vendors that devise ways to try and circumvent this policy but I normally ferret them out in the end and they either 'toe the line' on a equal footing with other vendors or desist with their promotion. I wish I did not have to continuously do this job but its only fair to our commercial product advertisers that do things properly, that we make sure there are no free rides on their or our shirt tails.
Mike

I agree with this and as a potential advertiser with you I don't have any illusions about what needs to be done to keep a place like this open for public use -- I was only pointing out that those things are not part of the Maxwell forum landscape because the revenue is acquired through other means.

One way or the other these things have to be paid for.

Best,
Jason.

Mike Lucey

Believe it or not Jason, there are folks here that have no hidden or otherwise agenda other than to offer and provide help to others for no other reason than kindness!

jason_maranto

Maybe so, but a company like Next Limit has to watch the "bottom line" to stay in business.

I think you may be losing sight of the fact that the point I'm trying to make isn't about SketchUcations policies but the Maxwell forums... I only used SketchUcation because it is an expedient example of "free" online service versus paid online service. And that only because you involved yourself in the conversation (and directed it towards that point) so I felt you would get my point better than most, due to your personal familiarity with the principles I'm outlining.

I could have just as easily used Google Earth or Facebook or any number of other "free" services that users actually pay for (partially or fully) via advertising dollars.

I'm hardly intimating you are doing anything duplicitous (far from it) -- this is just a "you understood" fact of modern society.

Best,
Jason.