My favorite Maxwell Render Pic

makes very nice lighting but it is still quite noisy imo....any idea how long this look to render? BTW now that you have played with it a bit do you think it is a practical engine for everyday work- I imagine you will need to have another pc set up just to use for rendering if you need to run for 8 or more hours and someone who is a dedicated user?

Hi Neil,

The renders you see on the gallery are all done in the Beta and noise is an issue. Maxwell have have been sending the pre-order users some images from the V1.0 pre release the render times have more than halved even for complex dielectrics and caustics. The test image render times from the pre-release are VERY impressive.

The new engine in Maxwell will allow an unlimited amount of emitters without affecting render times, one light or 1000 same render time!

Plus the ability to network render 4 CPUs per licence will shorten render times dramatically.

If you can join Maxwell's own forum (not sure if you have to join or not to view), check out the announcements page

The images on the website look amazing.

Does this renderer, compared to PW, actually have some nice predefined scenes/lightning/models?? Is this program a Goldpartner, or has it only the ability to import SW files??

How about camera settings??

Kind regards,

JJ

No it's not a gold partner, not yet anyway.

No predefined scenes, although they are relatively easy to make. Lights are defined by assigning emitter materials to objects, ie model a light bulb and assign an emitter to it (and set the wattage) or you can use the the skydome feature.

There is a SolidWorks plugin, materials and lights are assigned to parts faces or assemblies. The plugin generates a mxs file that starts rendering outside SolidWorks immediately after clicking the render button. The render can be stopped and the mxs file can then be transferred to another machine or machines (total 4 per licence)to continue the render.

Maxwell uses the SolidWorks camera to define the view, the integration is not perfect some settings need to be manually transferred- the SolidWorks API is apparently lacking in this regard.

I still find it far more user friendly than PhotoWorks, I can achieve quite good results with far less effort. If you can use an SLR camera you can use Maxwell.

John Layne