The Maxwell plugin

Is anyone here currently using the plug-in?

It's been a while since I have looked at their site, the Beta plug-in
has been updated several times since then. So just wondering if anyone
is having success with it?

If you are using it, I would like to see your results and get feedback
on ease of use.

After just downloading SWX2006 I am frustrated that the PhotoWorks
plug-in is the same as it is in SWX2005, (that is buggy). I would like
to evaluate Maxwell but the only way is to buy it!

Regards
John Layne
www.solidengineering.co.nz

 

I have not used Maxwell but lurk at the site quite often. I'm like you. I
want to try but there is no free trial. There are some incredible sample
renderings in the forums section that were rendered out of solidWorks. I
have heard the GUI needs work and there are still some things to work out
but all in all Maxwell is easy to use and works well. I've been told it
will provide a true high end rendering option for SolidWorks. The down side
I see, all the incredible images I've seen are taking 4, 6, 8 or more hours
to render.

 

why do you guys who forked out for Photoworks want to spend $1000 on another
renderer? you should hassle SW to improve PW rather than look to where the
grass seems greener.
imho it is the operator who makes the real difference in what comes out of
the rendering process. time spent = quality result.
rendering is an expensive thing to do. most people will max out their image
budget well before they reach the limits of the software to produce pretty
results.
just a thought
neil

 

I agree time put in equals the quality of the output, Paul Salvador is
living proof.

BUT-- I have complained to my VAR and to SolidWorks, PhotoWorks doesn't
seem to get any Service Packs and still has the same glitches of 2 years
ago. I give up -- I still have 11 SPRs one looks like getting fixed in
SP5.0 and it's not PhotoWorks related.

Maxwellrender as an independent product that plugs into many differing
platforms has an incentive to maintain it, at least that's what I hope.
The grass may or may not be greener, maybe someone here who has used
both can render some grass and let us know if it is in fact greener!

I am seriously considering downgrading from SolidWorks Office Pro to
plain SolidWorks, just trying evaluate the alternatives.


John Layne
Solid Engineering Ltd

 

I am all for making SW try harder to improve quality and innovate. If direct
requests from customers doesn't do that then some healthy competition
might... but it seems like a lot of money to me - $ NZ 1800 -
I am afraid I don't have that for occasional rendering which is why I picked
up on free Blender.
I can understand why you would want to downgrade your subs...I ended mine
altogether.
Mostly my lack of confidence/ fatigue with the product outweighed the cost
and benefits.
cheers
neil

 

Hmmmm... Hassle SW... good luck with that, it's worked very well in
the past...!

As for PW vs. Maxwell; PW is, let's say "mature" and it still is
incredibly hard to use (compared to other renderers). You would do
better using something free like Blender... If you are doing "quick"
renders to see what a finished part might look like, then go ahead
(still a wate of time for me...).

IF you want to do photoreal renders for publication or the like,
Maxwell is a good choice. BUT REMEMBER, it is still "Beta". There are
LOT's of things not implemented. Also, unlike a lot of renderers
(Lightwave, etc.) where you can get good results because alot of the
work "is done for you", you really have to have an understanding of
lighting and photography (you set up Maxwell EXACTLY as you would "in
the real world", lights, camera, sirfaces, etc.). And yes, right now,
the render times are veeeeerrrrrrryyyyy looonnnngggg. But, if set up
correctly, you will get fantastic results. If you think that you will
use Maxwell as part of a pipeline, buy now... price is going up in
October...

Mike Tripoli

 

do you have to set up 'everything' each time or can you save a scene for
reuse?

 

I'd like not to pay subscription either, but when my clients upgrade so
do I, unfortunately!

I will give blender a go, downloaded it, on my Linspire box, yesterday
and will run through some tutorials. The interface does seem illogical
coming from Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT and XP (missed 2000 completely).

Regards
John Layne

 

That seems like a more logical way to work to me, maybe I'm somewhat
naive about the possible problems. And at $1000 USD (not discounted) to
find out for sure is something of a worry.

Are you using Maxwellrender?

Regards
John Layne

 

Hi - John -

Timezones? - go to sleep and wake up and there are 8 replies to a
thread I can actually answer !!


Sorry not to keep you all up to date.

I have been using the new Maxwell Plugin and it works fine.

Here are my thoughts.

Very easy lighting set ups and minimal settings that are based on
'fudges'. If you know about photography you can use Maxwell out the
box. Maxwell comes with predefined solar times of day around the
world and a thing they call the 'Sky dome' which gives generic light.
However I have quickly modelled up a studio in SW where I have created
reflectors and lights. One of Maxwell's materials is a thing called
Emitter - They have a set of generic Light Type with the colour temps
- tube, light bulb etc or you can set your own and give them a power
in Watts or Watts/m2. There is no shadow control. You get what
ever shadow comes with your studio set up. So if the light is large
and far away the shadow id blurred. If small and close the shadow is
sharp. Just like a photostudio.

Materials are still being defined by by core atributes, roughness,
specularity , absotion etc and there is no material library just yet
so there is a steep learning curve to get your materials correct.
Setting materials and applying them to the model is still in its
infancy and I know Maxwell are keen to improve this as a top priority.

Render times
These are slow at the moment but Maxwell is still under development
and I am sure this will be improved once all other parts are locked
down and rock solid. It is important to note that Maxwell renders in
a way most are not familiar with. Before you hit the render button
and the image starts rendering, you set a time you want to take and a
number of 'loops' of calculations. However at any time you can stop
the render if you feel it is good enough, and restart it later when
you want to. The more time and cyles you give it the less noise there
is and the more the finer details like 'caustics' becomes apparent.
If you don't use dielectrics (glass etc) in your renderings then the
noise reduces very rapidly.

Decals
Still not implemented, while MX textures uses the SW texture feature -
but I am not sure how good this is as how reliable SW has been when
implementing these sorts of features. I thing MX are a hostage to
fortune using SW textures but this may change.



Summary
PW - takes for ever setting up to get anything halfway decent.
MX - set up lights literally takes a few seconds if sunllight is all
you want !.

PW - materials and their assigments is adaquate but after 7 years you
would have thought it would be better!
MX - Materials and their assignment are adequate after 6months
development - Hopefully they will become great.


PW - renderings can take a few minutes if you can get the damn thing
to light well.
MX - renderings at 800x600 can take 15 minutes if no dielectics and
simple materials. Poster size interiors etc can take hours, but the
time is literally a function of quality oif image acceptable and
'grunt' in your box. More 'grunt' faster render. Maxwell can also be
run from the C prompt (what ever that is ;-) - my memory is failling
me) and you can set up a sequance of renderings to be done over night
on the network. Not done this but I believe it is possible.



So is maxwell worth it ?- I think so - I have used it on a live
project because it was a white product that was just impossible to
light well in PW - In MX - no problem - so for me it has paid for
itself already




Maxwell can be used to render over a network and the licence is I
believe for 4 cpus and one interface. So if you have a network this
should be a great help with rendertimes - However I have not tried
this as i am a one mand band ;-(.



TTFN




Jonathan

 

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:59:32 GMT, wrote:


I forgot another MX bonus - once you have hit the render button and
the Maxwell starts to render - you can go on working in SW - Maxwell
just renders away in the background -

Of course if you want a render quickly you leave you machine alone so
the cpu can be used by maxwell. Or perhaps those with better
computing knowledge could set up a system where Maxwell rendered on
another machine on a network.

TTFN



Jonathan

 

The maxwell materials are saved in the sw assembly file at present, so
I have set up a studio that has the most common materials I use
already set up .

I import the SW assembly into my SW Studio asm template and place the
model and lights how I like.

Then using the Maxwell material present in my SW studio file I assign
them to the model parts and faces.

If I need a new material I create it and add it to the list in my
Maxwell list in the SW Studio file. It is not the easiest list to
navigate and - I must admit this is not ideal and hopefully
Maxwell come up with a better way of handling materials so we can
create libraries that can be quickly imported into SW assmeblies -
like PW - but hopefully better and that actually work everytime


TTFN

Jonathan

 

Sounds like a progressive renderer.cool stuff.
Does it have any animation tools? sub surface scattering capability?

OT:I have finished a material library script for Blender.
At the moment I am waiting for Blender 2.4 to arrive to finish defining the
materials because it has a new metal shader and also an animation make over.
The script matches SW materials to full blown Bender materials for an
assembly in a few seconds. It is just a matter of tweaking things a bit if
you want and unchecking some options for rust and grime textures etc if
needed. Coupled with Ewout's batch import script this makes rendering very
easy.
Some time soon I will probably make it available to people who want a copy
although this time it will be on an individual email basis rather than waste
my time with a user site.
There will probably be some standard scenes included for no brain gallery
display and basic fly by / fly around animations.

 

I use Maxwell as my prime renderer, with Lightwave as a second...

To clarify a few points:



Not entirely true: there are resellers with a demo version. It is
limited in output size (I think) and slaps a big watermark in the
middle of the image. Contact Next Limit to find a reselers near you.

Spot on.

Material setup isn't that bad, if you've had some experience with
other 3D programs. It will be better with the final release.

It calculates radio frequencies actually, so in essence it is
calculating "real light". This is one of the reasons it is slow, but
if you thnk about the calculations it's doing, it's not "bad"... I use
other renderers, and to acheive a soft natural shadow takes FOREVER...
forget about things like caustics and sub-surface scattering (SSS)...
you could wait forever and they are difficult to setup. In Maxwell,
you don't even think about them, it's automatic....

This is an awesome feature. You can do a quick render and to show a
client, then let it go to get the quality you like.

Not really true. You can apply an image map to any surface you like.
They must be color RGB images and there are a few things to watch for,
but you can apply "decals" as you wish. UV mapping too (though still
limited).

They will...

LOL! You never used DOS! The "c:" prompt is a command line! Open a
"Command Prompt" window in any of the Windows versions. Maxwell is
actually a command line renderer; the "plugins" mentioned (for LOT'S
of software packages) are just GUI's to the command line. There are
command line options for quite a few things... read through the manual
and visit the forum....

my memory is failling

Yes, but in some plugins it's not fully implemented....

 

It can do animations - but don't ask me ! I just know people have
with 3d Max - however with the render time issue , people have held
off the animation side.

SSS - not in the SW plugin - but iI believe it will be in the
released October version - but don't quote me.

Sounds like I ought to check out blender again - I looked about 5
years ago !! - time flies !!

I think Maxwell will offer a tool to those who want to test lighting
products etc because their aim is to simulate light exactly and not
just produce a render that uses techniques to create good looking but
artificial pictures. On the forum people have even mocked up a pin
hole camera and sure enough an image apeared on the back wall !! just
as you would predict.

Thank God PWs days are numbered. ;-)


Jonathan

 

A fellow convert Mike !

Add to the list of features you want at the MX forum - I know Juan is
getting his head around future features and would value peoples input.

Your correct - I have limited experiance with other render packages
and I think most SW users will be like me and find the intial learning
curve quite steep, but for engineers it will be a bit of fun night
time reading !!

Good to know the background.

I have to get my head around apply textures etc - on my system it
seems to lose the settings and does not always attach onto the part.

I remember using punch cards and Fortran - but I have to trawl back to
memeories that are forgotten - It is quaint to see the C prompt still
in use - its just I remember why I hated computing at college

-


Mike - have use set up a network that renders ?




TTFN


jonathan

 

Neil

I'd appreciate a copy once it's finalised please.

I just went to go there and upload some stuff and it's gone! It should have
been left up, takes time to get traffic going especially for a relatively
minority interest like Solidworks>Blender. (Unlike Blender on its own)

Rich

 

Rich,
I spent many many hours on that content and no one visited or contributing
anything (other than Ewout dropping by to tell us about his wiki)...It
attracted very few members almost all of whom chose not to receive any email
and they did not reply to my managers messages. I may be community minded
but I am not going for sainthood....it had it's run and failed...people will
be able to find their own way in Blender without it I am sure. I have
offered Ewout the screen shots to reuse if he wants but I won't be doing
anything more to promote Blender other than perhaps making the new script
available...and you can bet I will have spent hours on that BTW.
Ewout's wiki will be a good home for SW-Blender stuff in the future. It has
a better format and has been well received. It will be a one stop shop for
people interested in SW-Blender. I suggest you put your content there.
neil

 

I actually own two seats (8 render nodes) but to date, have not tried
network rendering for a few reasons. One, I haven't really needed it,
as I do product still shots (mostly). Second, it's a little rocky
right now, so I decided to wait until it's more robust.

BTW, for those following this thread. There have been a couple of
questions regarding "animations". Please remember, an animation is
nothing more than a series of still shots chained together, no if's
ands or buts. So, yes ANY program (including things like Photoshop)
can do "animations. You just need at least 24 "frames" (individual
images) per second x minutes to make an animation. I know of people
(my son, for instance) that has used MS PAINT(!) to create animations.
So yes, render a few thousand frames, string them together (Quicktime,
XP's video editor, whatever) and you have a movie!

Miek Tripoli

 

well of course you can 'animate' by doing individual frames Mike ...but the
question about 'can it do animations?' was implying in-built capability for
automated paths (camera, parts, lights) and sequence
editing/compositing....which I gather it doesn't have....which makes it a
bit limited and kind of expensive for a slowish render engine, imho.
neil