topic Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision in Visualization

FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Thu, 11 May 2023 10:35:13 GMT

Hi Guy's,
I've got an interesting internal rendering job to work on over the Christmas break and I want to look at upgrading my rendering software. I currently use C4D advance render (9.1) but I'm sick and tired of tweeking the radiosity setting and waiting overnight to look at artifact riddled images.
Maxwell has sooo much promise but is unworkable (I believe) at the moment and FR2 produces great images quickly but apparently also requires a significant amount of 'tweeking' to acheive good results.
Any current users have any comments??
Any insite would be appreciated.

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 23:55:05 GMT

At this moment maxwell is "unusible" but when it become stable and fuctional u will get the best. Still, believe me they say that u have press 3 butons to get good picture thats is not true.

First of all u must have eye
second is to be able to "shake" textures to look like in life
third is to know light and how camera works

and many little things and then u will be able to create something like attached.

But maxwell will kill allother render software surly if u ask me. There is something beautiful in maxwell and that is U DONT HAVE TO TWEAK TO GET REAL LIGHTNING

P.S If u know to create extra good images in C4D then u will create them in maxwell to, but if u dont know to create extra good images in C4D then u will be same in maxwell, get it, masters are masters, where ever they fight,

I wote for MAxwell

but what i know ?

NFS

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:40:45 GMT

NFS,
Obviously you know what your talking about with that great little image!

I can create good images out of C4D but it is still pretty combersome and unpredictable and also very scene independant when using radiosity (for me at least). I don't expect maxwell to have a 'click here for great render' button (though it would be nice!) but I'd like to say "if the sun is here, a window is here then there will be enough light over here". I get sick of having to compromise with small omni's infill into the corner or tweaking lots of light fittings to look natural.

To be honest, I don't mind waiting overnight for a render, I do that all the time, as long as my results are predictable.

Thanks for taking the time to reply

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:03:58 GMT

Have to agree on the C4D, hit & hope radiosity issue...
I have 3 renders to get out before we break for chrissy, & I lost 24 hours yesterday as the first one froze 3/4 finished... Standard settings, nothing obvious that I should've allowed for in the model & I'm not exactly green when it comes to this type of thing, but I gave up on it & re-set it, dropping the accuracy back (& will have to deal with the artifacts in Photoshop). I'm only using the old ArtV7 of C4D, but unless Santa wins lotto, I can't see an upgrade coming I'd like to use this program to it's potential, but don't have 3 weeks to wait for results... & there's always this little thought in the back of my head, 'Is there something I'm doing wrong ? Is there a setting option that will allow twice as good a result in half the time ???' Is throwing money away the only option

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:40:58 GMT

Justin,
I must say the full C4D with advanced render is much quicker that the old R7 (though still frustrating) and I just bit the bullet and payed to upgrade to 9.5.
The jury is still out (in my head) re maxwell or FR2, but if AR2.5 is as good as some reports, I might take a chance on Maxwell.
Depends on Santa

Cheers

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:43:49 GMT

Just for my own interest, what did you upgrade from, & what did it cost(incl. advanced render module) ???

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:24:26 GMT

Upgrade from 9 to 9.5 = $352 AU
Upgrade Advence render to 2.5 = $176 AU
a little cheaper than my ArciCad upgrade
Cheers

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:30:01 GMT

& I suspect, just a little bit more to upgrade from my Art V7
edit: Just checked Adimex; AU$1280 to upgrade from XL7 to C4D V9.5+AVF2.5... ON SPECIAL jeez, great... I guess I'll have to keep wishing !
Cheers mate,
Merry Xmas...
(or should I say; happy non-denominational holiday season )

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 05:39:13 GMT

It's the price we pay to play

Have a good hot break.
Love long hot summers and no snow!

Cheers

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:20:39 GMT

Well, I just received my upgrade of C4 R9.5 and though I am just starting to play around with it, the Ambient Occlusion option iin the Advanced Renderer is getting closer to the "one click render wish..."
Basic work sample, no radiosity just A.O. and one infinite light with area shadows, 21 min render time. The only changes from the AC file was the water, glass transparency and reflection, floor reflection and grass material.

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:12:19 GMT

Sorry for the obviously silly question, but what is FR2?

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Wokka — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:21:33 GMT

Sorry Kliment, Final render Stage 2 was released for C4D a few months ago as one of the few 3rd stage renderers. It was big news for us C4D users as we didn't really have any other chooses apart from C4D's inbuilt Advance Render module and the promise of Maxwell.
Judging by your listed software, you have a much larger chose of renderers. (you lucky thing )
Cheers

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 22:18:43 GMT

Tough decision. You can still buy Maxwell's RC version for about half price of $495. The only thing is that it doesn't work too well yet....too long a story to tell here. We also use FormZ and purchased the Maxwell beta version to use as a FZ plug-in....the images produced by the alpha and beta versions are just astounding. Next Limit is claiming 1000% increase in speed for complicated scenes with their new engine...however, IMO for all practical purposes it's not working right now I agree that's it's not quite selecting three buttons, and voila! Since I've used it only inside FormZ and am familiar with it's Renderzone rendering interface (same Lightworks rendering engine as Archicad), it was in the beta version easy to use and doesn't require a virtual rocket scientist to figure out, unfortunately, the RC version of the plug-in in not working yet.

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

giza — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 15:02:58 GMT

I think that the greatest advantage of using Maxwell Render 1.0 (even curent RC versions ) is the Maxwell Studio included inside the package, you can simply export to 3ds from archicad and import to M~R studio apply materials position the building , set the sun and voila, also the speed has increased significantly from beta its just those d*** bugs still a problemo,

i talk about M~Studio since i dont see archicad M~R addon comming in the near future (the current AC plugin doesnt work at all with any of alpha,beta or RC versions), so either you'll need to use 3D max or other Highend 3D soft. or simply import your AC exported .3ds file

o and one interesting thing about 3D max M~R plugin it includes import of .kml files from Keyhole or Google earth so now you dont have to be smart and know all the lattitudes and longtitudes of the spot you're renderin

the easy setup of the scene is the greatest thing of all especialy for exteriors, when you need to use interior lightning its a bit of pain since youll need to think and "construct" path of light inside the scene if you're using special photometric efects from light, i belive that in the near future there will be a huge Maxwell material and light models library for sharing between the users .... same as the vray community has.

happy new year to all

Re: FR2 or Maxwell : The Christmas decision

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 18:39:56 GMT

For maxwell there is the archicad add-on for win for export to maxwell... the mac add-on is on the way.

See here (in italian):

http://www.archiradar.it/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=116&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

PETER
archiradar.it
maxwellrender.it