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About built-in and 3rd party, classic and real-time rendering solutions, settings, workflows, etc.

Maxwell Realtime preview engine on Archicad...

TMA_80
Enthusiast
This engine is being integrated in most compatible maxwell software plugins ( Max, Maya, Rhino...until now ) can we expect something similar in Archicad ? ...well, personnaly, i really hope so (while i don't see how they can integrate it in Archicad ?) ... we shall see when this engine is out

Check out these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X08nC_GP-PQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvu1thb6ZI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rQqGlcJSw


(Source:http://maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35459 )
AC12_20 |Win10_64bit|
6 REPLIES 6
I have been using Maxwell Render v2 for a few days with it's ArchiCAD plug in and it seems to work very well. The preview window is kind of real time. It updates every so often. It is very useful because you can see if he render is worth doing sooner than before.
It takes about 10 min. to see what I need to know about the settings. It takes me about 3 hrs to know if it is worth sending out to a render farm.

I really like the new on-line materials browser. You access a huge library of materials from a data base so you don't have to keep so many on your computer. Free too. Thousands and thousands of fantastic materials.

The program in actually not that hard to run now. But it will still take considerable skill and time to tweak the materials into one of those exquisite Maxwell Renders.

Plenty of good help is available on the Maxwell Render forum. I have had the program sitting on the shelf so to speak since about 2005 just fooling around with it from time to time.

Version 2 has changed that. It is a much easier program to run now.

With some help from the Maxwell forum over the last few days I am learning how to use it very fast. You could go there as see my work in progress if you want. It's nothing special but it might be of interest to some maxwell beginners like me.

Talk about a good value!, I think I paid $150.00 for Maxwell Render because I bought it before the first release 5 or 6 years ago. All of the upgrades to version 2 have been free. It cost me $395 to upgrade to version 2. I can tell already that I will be able to use this program to it's full potential in a very short time. This upgrade will not be setting on the shelf for the next 5 years.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have read one of the shortcoming of the program is its long render time..
Is this still true for version 2?
Have you compared it to artlantis?
I'm thinking of buying a rendering program. Your feed back (or anybody's)will be valuable to me..
Thanks....
jocontreras wrote:
I have read one of the shortcoming of the program is its long render time..
Is this still true for version 2?
Have you compared it to artlantis?
I'm thinking of buying a rendering program. Your feed back (or anybody's)will be valuable to me..
Thanks....


I have Artlantis Render also. Artlantis is much much faster, however, I don't use these programs same thing.

Maxwell Render is for making a specific kind of photo-realistic Art that is simply not possible with Artlantis. Render speed is not a factor for me if I am using a render farm.

The thing about Artlantis is that I don't need the kind of pretty pictures I am able to make with it. 30 min. of render time with Artlantis will probably get you to the best you can do with it. It's a very nice image.

But when it comes to Architectural Rendering, Photo-realistic images are like a toupee. It better be a damn good one or your better off with out it.

I think it's safe to say that you can generate a better image with small amount of effort in Artlantis than you can with great deal of effort in ArchiCAD. So if your looking for something to take it up a notch from ArchiCAD, Artlantis is the best program available for doing that.

But if your looking for a way to take your ArchiCAD models all the way to the top of the high-end. I think Artlantis falls a little short.

As an ArchiCAD user, if I could only have one rendering program I would choose Maxwell Render since I am not very interested in a mediocre toupee. I have the ArchiCAD rendering engine for that.

Maxwell Render v2 and the ArchiCAD plug-in are a huge step toward making Maxwell a viable option as a first choice rendering engine, even for regular work if you use a render farm. Even the render farms are faster and more affordable these days. Another very big factor in choosing between Maxwell and Artlantis is the materials or shaders( if they still call them that ?) Getting enough quality shaders to do a good job in Artlantis will cost you. All of the very high end materials for Maxwell are free and of course you can make your own as well. You can create your own Maxwell materials in ArchiCAD too.

If you tried Maxwell before and thought it was not a viable choice, version 2 might change your mind.

Something else to keep in mind is that you can save your ArchiCAD model as .3ds or other file formats and import the model into almost any high-end rendering program. I don't know that having the Maxwell plug-in for ArchiCAD has a very large advantage over simply saving you model as .3ds and opening it up in Maxwell Studio. I have not used it enough to tell just yet.

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

TMA_80
Enthusiast
Can't agree more with steve, maxwell quality and the plugin are just great...
further more and as i mentioned in m first post it will have soon a Realtime engine for free (for those having version 2.0) and it going to be (if released for archicad). a huge step forward.

Ps: steve, thanks for your post, however i think you were talking about the preview in the render window whereas i was refering to the upcoming Realtime engine...unless i missed something
AC12_20 |Win10_64bit|
Yes. I did not know there was a difference.

But I don't understand the idea of a live preview in Maxwell. Preview of what? The Rendering? Wouldn't that be like watching paint dry?


Ohhhhh! Like this... www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHyrROqAiZM

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

TMA_80
Enthusiast
Ohhhhh! Like this... www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHyrROqAiZM
Absolutely ( and like the links above ).

The main benefit is that this engine is faster than the rendering one. That means it could be used to manipulate materials and light settings in realtime "rendering" ( Instantaniously !) before lunching the final render...
AC12_20 |Win10_64bit|
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