My first "not bad" render in Maxwell Render if you're interested

Awesome... nice work.

It's a pity that you cannot get Demo from Maxwell, or am I wrong?

Not sure, I'll ask the question on Maxwell's own forum.

John Layne

I checked the forum it seems there is no demo version, you have to do what I did and fork out $500 for the pre release offer.

badass. Was it relatively simple to setup?

Relatively easy:

2 emitters, 2 diffuse reflectors behind emitters and a diffuse backdrop. The hard part in Maxwell is figuring out settings for materials.

They are promising a material editor in the release version.

John Layne

Shame... alltough the results are nice I do give extra point on useability... and thats just something that you don't ge on preview images...

I'll stick to PW... for my skills and work done with it, PW is still enough...

-------------------- Arto Kvick, CSWP2005

--------------------

Relatively easy:

2 emitters, 2 diffuse reflectors behind emitters and a diffuse backdrop. The hard part in Maxwell is figuring out settings for materials.

They are promising a material editor in the release version.

John Layne

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:07:36 +1200, John Layne

Mmm, I'm impressed John. Is the knurl modelled into the knobs?

Does Maxwell run as an addin, or does it pull geometry from sw into a standalone program?

Currently it is a plugin and it creates a maxwell file that can be either rendered immediately or else it can be saved and restarted on any computer that has maxwell on it - using the command line which is nice and quaint !!

There will be standalone soon, but I think there will be still plugins to get the geometry out to the stand alone.

Jonathan

Hmmm, I guess my question is, as a plugin, if I change my model do I then need to completely re-setup the rendering? Since the 'maxwell file' will be new I'm assuming it will be blank in terms of materials, lights etc? A nice thing about photoworks is I can change the model but the scene, materials, decals persist.

Zander

No you don't need to re-setup the rendering materials scene etc, the scene stays the same materials stay attached. It's not as seamless as PhotoWorks regarding being able to see which material are attached but the Maxwell Render SolidWorks Plug-in is still in Alpha and Maxwell Render itself is still Beta

I also have PhotoWorks but even in this early stage I find Maxwell more intuitive because it works like a camera, f-stops, shutter speed, ISO settings. Therefore, I seem to spend less time tweaking settings than I did with PhotoWorks.

John Layne

It's a clamp for holding nasal gastric, Bolus, feeding equipment, designed to clamp to tables and pushchairs

Roughness was assigned using U and V. The texture maps need to have high contrast - black to white - none I have found in SolidWorks have worked well for me. I will get around to editing some in Photoshop to improve contrast level.

I have seen others use the flash effect. It can achieve the "Snap shot" look which adds to the images "reality". I'll give it ago and put the clamp on a table perhaps.

John Layne

The knurl is modelled, it may be possible to achieve the same effect by just applying a texture bump map in the Maxwell Plug-in. I hadn't read the manual at that stage!

The Textures also require a high contrast - so I would need to edit some of the SolidWorks textures for them to work. I'll give it a go and render two side by side.

John Layne

Nice render, John! I agree, PW is not that good when compared to Maxwell, some of the stuff I've seen rendered looks pretty darn good! Anyhow, since I do not have Maxwell, I couldnt help to try and get something similar in PW so, here is what I came up with..

..

"John Layne"

I'm wondering if both of you used the same lighting techniques. The patina on the thumbwheels seems a bit more realistic on the Maxwell rendering. I have to believe some of that is due to lighting. The floor surface has a bit of visible gradation on the PW rendering. The Maxell image had about 31,000 colors in it while the PW image had about 41,000 colors, so the gradation in the floor shading is a bit surprising.

I added U and V Roughness to all the Metal components, as originally they became to perfect, as if they were mirrors.

Lighting - 2 lights one either side one on left 1000watt one on right

2000watts, both have diffuse reflectors behind each light. Lens - 135mm f-stop - f11 (for depth of field) Shutter - 15sec (I think) ISO - 100