Hi Jonathan Great detailed response thanks, also appreciated you sending those test renders to my email. It does seem like an improvement over PhotoWorks, my few attempts at rendering white or black plastic with PhotoWorks have left me with thinning grey hair! It is quite hard for me to justify spending the money as few of my clients have need of renderings. However I may be able to create a market if Photorealistic renderings are more easily achievable. --- just trying to justify buying it to myself, when my partner (girlfriend) sees the bill on the credit card! Regards John Layne
Your response is valid. Maybe I could have been a bit clearer. Maxwell is a renderer, that's all. I guess that was my point before in saying it is actually a "command line" program with many interfaces to popular animation programs. The "animation" (the things you mention) are handled there (Lightwave 3D, 3dSMAX, Maya, etc.) and then "sent to" Maxwell for rendering. This in fact was the holdup for using SW with Maxwell: Maxwell has no way to control the "camera" in these apps; it just renders what it's been given. Until SW2006, there wasn't a way to control the camera (very well) so it kindof' sucked. With the new ability to control the camera, you can get some good renders. As for doing animations from SW, off the top of my head I'd have to say no, as I do not know of a way to send individual frames from SW (at least I have never looked into this, so please, someone correct me if there is). My major point (and why I think this thread was started) is that given the SAME time setting up PW vs. M~R, you will get incredible renders from M~R... you'll get "less than incredible" renders from PW... BTW, with even the "animation" programs (LW3D, etc.) though there are tools for doing compostiting, anyone doing editing and such use a dedicated program for this as well (Adobe Premier, etc.) so it's not really a shortcoming in Maxwell. And, I'm beating a dead horse here, but if you compare (let's say Lightwave, which is the only 3D prgram I have first hand knowledge of) and compare what it takes to set up a glass object, caustics, shadows, radiosity, etc. (which are ALL seperate functions in LW, and are not even available in PW, as far as I know) and then look at how Maxwell does it (there is no setup, you adjust your lights, apply surfaces to your objects, adjust your camera and hit "render" you will see why SO many people have fallen in love with Maxwell... Mike Tripoli
ok thanks for the clarification, I wasn't really meaning to give Maxwell a beating... I am sure John will have a good understanding of it's capability now. possibly Maxwell isn't particularly suited to animation anyway - going for quality over speed...re editing/compositing- yes ok perhaps that's a bit unfair I was comparing to my experience with Blender...really the question should have been more directed at PW-Animator features. I hope Maxwell gives Solidworks a good hurry up when they get all the bits finished. neil
Thanks everyone for your input. I have decided to spend the cash and will purchase after this post. After seeing Jonathan's 5 min rendering (even with noise)and reading Jonathan's and Mikes comments. It appears the grass may in fact be greener. The only disappointment is the apparent lack of integration into SolidWorks Animator. Regards John Layne
Ok it's a little bit annoying after entering your credit card info the online response from Maxwell--- THANK YOU! Thank you, you will receive your license(s) in the next few hours. If you need to contact us please do so at I hate that! When buying software online I expect to be able to download it immediately. Patience is not a virtue for engineers. John Layne
They have to set you up with an account and a license number. You'll get an email from them telling you everything... Mike Tripoli
John - just got back from a Bank Holiday weekend - I am not sure about the animator - but I have not heard about it in the SW section of the MX forum so I suspect not . However with Maxwells current speed of rendering , I think any animation will have to be very short !! if it is possible at present. In term of justifiying the cost to the boss - well - it does actually save time in the setting up of work and you will have less grey hairs !! - or it could be a n excuse to not go to bed as most Maxwell rendering is done at night !! I put the MX file on another computer and let it render away while I get on with other SW work. A few tips to remeber Use dielectics sparingly . Use 'Diffuse materials use if not sure and don't need the additional features of a 'plastic' material like Roughness, specular colour etc. When setting the colour of something don't use highly saturated colours ( they don't really occur in nature and give alot of noise) . For whites and greys you can use 0 saturation for the colour ( on the Win Colour picker) Below 214 for all other colours. I think this is the rule of thumb but tune into the forum. Make sure the Maxwell Camera foal length is the same as the SW camera or you don't frmae the pic correctly. Be patient with the material assignment - I find if I try and assign more than one SW part to a material by selecting lots of parts at once, a few seem not to get the Material. So for example - if a I have Material A - I select Part A and assign Mat A , Then select Part B and assign Mat A untill all are assigned. It is possible to select Part A,B,C and then assign them to Mat A in one go , but I think it is a bit flaky at the moment. Look at the SW section of the forum and Juan has posted a few video tutrials for setting textures etc. We should start swapping Material settings when we get going - on the SW section of the Maxwell forum. TTFN Jonathan
Hi Jonathan, Installed yesterday, had a few problems straight away, one crash one lock-up. I posted this in the Maxwell forum. But it is Beta and the SolidWorks Plug in is still Alpha. After my first rendering, I figured out the issue with focal lengths needing to be the same. In SolidWorks I had a focal length of 135 and Maxwell had 50mm. It rendered ok but too small, after changing Maxwell to 135 it rendered the correct size but out of focus. Not sure how to fix this as there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust focus. I will read through all the Help and PDF's this evening. It would be great to have Lighting library of SolidWorks parts / assemblies with emitters assigned. Would make setting up studios much easier. See you in the Maxwell forum, Regards John Layne www.solidengineering.co.nz
In the SW camera twin window - you have to look down on the camera and object and drag the green rectangular viewing window so that it is over the place you want in focus. This then creates a 'Custom lens' so I change it to a standard lens - say 50mm and the green frma changes size but stays the correct distance from the camera. I also use the SW DOF as i think this helps get the part in focus over its 'Z' distance, if you know what I mean. I think this is the way to go, as well as the U and V numbers etc for materials. I created an SW Studio that I posted in the main Max forum thread http://rapidshare.de/files/3882545/SW_2006_Studio.zip.html Nothing great but a quick start. You insert your part or assembly onto the origin and then swivel the emitters and reflectors around as they are mated using the Normal sketch line to the origin. Juan is very helpfull if you hit any problems, and he is keen to get feedback on how to organise the SW plugin for th future, so once you have had a play contibute your thoughts because he will listen.
Juan posted a way to get the focus - It is in one of his video tutorials. In the SW camera ypu drag the green frame to be the distance of the part from the camera, and then windows 'Copy' the camera distance. The stange thing is you don't have to 'Paste' it anywhere. Since this video from Juan, he says this is not necessary, but I still do it anyway !! - - I also set my shutter speed to at say 1/30 or less and have a very small aperture like 22 or 16 to get the most depth of field. I am not sure how much the DOF is set by SW or MX . This all needs clarifing but no inconveniance compared to PW ;-)
