18 replies to this topic

[HSrdelic]

NextLimit announced new version of Maxwell render with grass.

What's new in 2.7?

• NEW! Grass generator which allows you to quickly create grass on a selected piece of geometry
• NEW! MXI/MXS compression: File sizes 4x smaller with the new compression system for MXI files, especially when using additional render channels
• NEW! A new 3d vectorial displacement type for RealFlow displacement

Cinema 4D plugin new features

• Added support for the new Maxwell Grass feature.
• Cinema Luminance Brightness is now used for MXI Emitter Intensity.
• Added support for the (R13) Cinema Camera's "Focus Object" link.
• Maxwell Fire exports are now performed using display LOD (in R12+).
• If no default mxm is found during export, one is written automatically.
• Optimized export of instances, when object motion blur is not enabled.
• Re-wote Render Region, to circumvent Cinema viewport z-clipping issues.
• Added ray-tracing code which finds interpolated UVs for Maxwell Hair.
• Added support for the use of instances of auto-translated Cinema lights.
• Added Render All Textures option, to facilitate animation of disk textures.

This is a free update to registered Maxwell render V2 customers.

Aside to new version, NextLimit now offers Maxwell render learning edition - no student ID required.

More information on their website

http://www.maxwellrender.com

[PixelPit]

Very tempting...! Noob question: How does MW handle UV maps and different types of texture projection? Are they automatically transferred from C4D? Can´t find info on that...

[HSrdelic]

It works just as with regular Cinema material - no problems there ;)

Cheers

[PixelPit]

I´m sooo tempted to pull the trigger.... thanks, HSrdelic.

[Rezca]

I wonder how Maxwell's Grass compares to scattering low to medium polygon objects in say, SurfaceSpread or CarbonScatter? And how is it on memory consumption (Like C4D's Render Instances or Vray's Proxies are).

Not that I have the cash on hand to grab Maxwell, even with the current "offer" they're having :3

[HSrdelic]

Ahh, you are hovering overt buy button?

I know the feeling. Most of the time I am trying to rationalize the purchase before buying

Cheers

[Walter]

I bought Maxwell when they had their World Cup special going. I got 40% off. If I waited one more day I would have got 50% off.

I'm pretty happy with the update, though I had a few problems. The attached scene took 8 hours to render and reached a SL of 14.8. I disabled 2 SSS layers in the grass material, otherwise it would probably still be rendering.

The issue I had was that Maxwell crashed almost immediately every time I started a render. I narrowed the problem down to 2 materials I downloaded from the Maxwell resource site. They were for the roof and foundation of the house. These were completely invisible in the C4D viewport as well. Once I disabled the displacement layers the problems were resolved and Maxwell rendered the scene without crashing.

Walter

[furezasan]

Sounds cool... will keep an eye on it!

[Rezca]

I decided to give in and purchase (current promo dropped it to $760) but am having troubles with the payment. All goes well up until the end when it says theres a problem with my order =/

[HSrdelic]

You should definitely contact them...

Cheers

[Rezca]

I did

Turns out my bank has a restriction on payments from foreign countries and automatically blocks anything over $200. Later today we're going to see if I can get that resolved and if not NL suggested doing a wire transfer instead.

[ChristianZ]

... and the promo is again at 50% after this impressive victory of the Spanish team !

[PixelPit]

My first Maxwell render. I just loaded the file, adjusted camera focus distance and set fstop to 2.8 to get a shallow depth of field. Hit render - standard C4D light and all - et voila. (Slightly overexposed... my bad). Imagine I had put some effort into it, redone the materials in Maxwell, used SSS, lit the scene with a nice HDRI etc. ....

Edited by PixelPit, 03 July 2012 - 04:56 AM.

[Walter]

Looks tasty.

I think my favourite feature in Maxwell is multilight. I find it really convenient to be able to adjust the intensity of each individual light while rendering.

Walter

[PixelPit]

Thanks :-) Playing with multilight and AE export right now... will be a while before I know my way around the features of Maxwell. More than happy with what I´ve experienced up until now... :-)

[SanderSuitup]

I read that Maxwell render is not very useful for animation, because of the long render times. Is this right? You guys use it only for still image renders?

[HSrdelic]

Basically, yes, animations in larger resolutions are no go without render box or farm, but that also applies to all other render engines.
It all depends on the scene complexity and how much render time is sufficient for each frame to be acceptable in quality.

Cheers

[RichArt]

I downloaded Indigo and Maxwell and did a test.

See results...

All 3 have a physical sky and sun and a standard material.
Vray is the winner in speed. Although I never used Indigo and Maxwell so with those 2 engines I used all settings on default.
Also keep in mind that the unbiased engines are click and go. No setup time.
With Vray I had to test several settings and thus do a lot of render tests, so the overall speed of Vray will drop considerably.

Dell laptop with an I7 2720QM proc.

Peace,
Rich_Art.

[Rezca]

The sky settings in Maxwell can drastically change the lighting of the scene from what I've seen. I haven't had much luck with emitters *yet* so I've mostly stuck to just the sunlight.

...

I like the Indigo "test scene" the best out of the three :3
I've gotten some interesting and colorful results from Indigo where Physical Render and Vray would give a bland and flat look *with a somehwat similar* setup. By that I mean light positions and colors, and basic materials.