Maxwell render vs. others

[CaptainObvious]

It's slow, but realistic. It's a trade-off. If you're satisfied with the level of realism you attain in Vray, you might just stick to that. Remember that a significant portion of the realism in many Maxwell renders in their gallery is more a testament to the modeling, lighting and texturing skill of the user, rather than the technical merits of the renderer.

[meanlebh]

[QUOTE=Remember that a significant portion of the realism in many Maxwell renders in their gallery is more a testament to the modeling, lighting and texturing skill of the user, rather than the technical merits of the renderer.[/QUOTE]

This goes for just about any renderer out there. A talented artist can acheive very realistic resluts with most any of the major renderers out there. This is not to say that Maxwell isn't very capable. If all you will ever need is just still images that look very realistic, then maxwell might be right for you, but if you feel that you may want realistic looking Animation at some point...then you may be better off looking somewhere else....

I myself have never used maxwell (i mainly use mental ray), so I can't really comment on its' strengths or weaknesses, but I would certainly do some research and testing if possible before you jump into anything.

-Brian

[MikeBracken]

Maxwell is very capable. It can produce some very nice renders. But you should go to the
Maxwell forum and look through the gallery to get a real idea of how long the render times are.
I am not dissing Maxwell, but when people say long rendertimes, it really does mean LONG
rendertimes.

Regards,
Mike

[joost_db]

it really does mean LONG
rendertimes

i downloaded the maxwell sample scene (simply 3 glasses on a surface) from their website which has been rendering since yesterday morning - so around 36 hours, and it says that it is 2% done. WHAAAT???? the render at this point looks alright but looaads of noise.

this makes me wonder how on earth they have made those animations on their site? maybe huge renderfarms?

[playmesumch00ns]

If you want to do renders for industrial design then yes, I would say maxwell is definitely for you.

You might also want to take a look at indigo: http://www.indigorenderer.com/ It's a free metropolis renderer (same algorithm maxwell uses), and while it's slower than maxwell and has less featured, it's capable of some very good results and development is moving on pretty quickly.

[CaptainObvious]

Maxwell isn't really *that* slow. It just depends on the scene. Anything that contains lots of dielectrics (read: glass) and caustics will be horrible, though. But on the other hand, Maxwell can do caustics that are simply NOT POSSIBLE in normal renderers. If you want to render a highly complex glass object with awesome caustics in a renderer that uses photon mapped caustics, you'll have to use tens of millions of photons, and suddenly you have render times in the same ballpark as Maxwell.

As PMSC* suggested, you might want to take a peak at Indigo. It uses a similar rendering method as Maxwell, and will often produce similar results. Also, there's WinOSi (http://www.winosi.onlinehome.de/), another highly accurate renderer. In fact, WinOSi even renders stuff that Maxwell and Indigo has issues with, like THIS (http://www.winosi.onlinehome.de/Gallery_t13.htm).


*did I pick the right letters?

[playmesumch00ns]

*did I pick the right letters?

Yes :)


[obligatory extra character padding]

[mer]

""In fact, WinOSi even renders stuff that Maxwell and Indigo has issues with, like THIS (http://www.winosi.onlinehome.de/Gallery_t13.htm).""

You mean that Maxwell wouldnt correctly simmulate illumination from total inner reflection?
Could you post some more info on Maxwell's/Indigo's limitations?
Any links to relevant threads?

Thanx

[CaptainObvious]

""In fact, WinOSi even renders stuff that Maxwell and Indigo has issues with, like THIS (http://www.winosi.onlinehome.de/Gallery_t13.htm).""

You mean that Maxwell wouldnt correctly simmulate illumination from total inner reflection?
Could you post some more info on Maxwell's/Indigo's limitations?
Any links to relevant threads?

Thanx
Maxwell and Indigo do simulate these effects, but they have problems with them, as far as I know. Takes ages to clear out the noise. WinOSi traces light from the lights to the camera, while Maxwell does it the other way around. This gives WinOSi the upper hand in certain situations.

[thablanchh]

Maxwell is a nice little toy, but it is not your bread and butter... Cool to play with, nice results, but I would not base my production on it...
If you have lots, lots, lots of time on your hands, mabee it is a direction to look forward, but most of us do not. A preview should be done in a few seconds, and not not in minutes
FryRender is on it s way, Hoping it is going to be faster....

CapitainObvious: For the caustics, a little exercice happened here on this very forum a few months ago, ligting rings, and most of the result had really comparable results for the caustics.. So yes, they are possible in other renderers..

[playmesumch00ns]

Hmmm WinOSI is horrifically slow isn't it?

Indigo does bidirectional path tracing, so I'm fairly certain maxwell will be too.

[mer]

''Maxwell and Indigo do simulate these effects, but they have problems with them, as far as I know. Takes ages to clear out the noise. WinOSi traces light from the lights to the camera, while Maxwell does it the other way around. This gives WinOSi the upper hand in certain situations.''


I havent used WinOSi but anyway Maxwell does BI-Directional path tracing so it actually traces light not only from the cam but from lights too.So what you say is not correct.

[CaptainObvious]

Okay, fine, so Maxwell is bi-directional. My point was that, as far as I've seen, Maxwell has some issues with caustics, in that it takes a really long time to clear out the noise. I did not say that Maxwell couldn't do it at all.

[mer]

"Okay, fine, so Maxwell is bi-directional. My point was that, as far as I've seen, Maxwell has some issues with caustics, in that it takes a really long time to clear out the noise. I did not say that Maxwell couldn't do it at all."

Perhaps in this kind of scenes WinOSi could outperform Maxwell in rendering speed but as I haven't used WinOSi and haven't done any comparison tests it think its pointless to argue without proof .On the other hand perhaps the results from Maxwell might be slightly more accurate.

If you have any links to comparison tests, I d love to see them.But its really pointless to talk without any comparison tests and withou any personal experience.

Anyways have fun:)

Cheers

[joost_db]

i had a quesion regarding maxwell's workflow. when i use vray, i used to move around some lights, render, change intensity values, render, tweak some material settings, render, and kinda keep chaning things until i was happy with it, then boost the render settings and output size and do the final render.

with maxwell does it work the same way? i have been trying to setup a few maxwell scenes and each "in-between" render just takes such a long time. and thats on dual opteron 252s...

any suggestions?

[joost_db]

can anyone help me out with this?

[mer]

Well , basically the workflow is pretty much the same.
In maxwell you save some time in the render setup .. its easier to get physically accurate results but the render times are longer.In maxwell the multilight feature helps you to avoid re-rendering the scene when you just want to re-adjust a/the lights intensity,which is a time saver.You also dont need to re-render to change the film's iso.

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