Archicad+Maxwell

[Anonymous]

Turist Agency

[Anonymous]

Nice rendering I like it. Hows the work flow between ArchiCAD and Maxwell? Only thing I would suggest would be to reduce the graininess of the image (only noticeable when you view it in actual size).

[Anonymous]

( reduce the graininess ) This picture is on a S. Level 17.5 but it need to come on 25.0 and with that level the graininess-noise will disappeare:)

[Anonymous]

T.A

[Anonymous]

You need to avoid using spherical lights with emitters assigned to them. Try making your own lamp object rather than using the ArchiCAD lamps as they often use hi poly objects like spheres to make the bulbs. Maxwell is very slow with interior renderings and you can help yourself alot with noise by making the emitter a simple 4 sided plane nested up in the can with the down surface as the emitter only.

Generally speaking, these tips can help you.

1. DO NOT TRY TO MAKE THE INSIDE OF THE CAN A HIGHLY REFLECTIVE MATERIAL. This will add time to the render as well as noise that may never clear up.

2. DO NOT TRY TO MAKE A TRANSLUCENT SHADE TO COVER YOUR BULB. This will introduce noise that will never clear. It is better to create a .mxm material in the Maxwell Material Editor and use a .mxi image as a lightsource that is mapped directly to the lamp shade or cover to your fixture. It can look more photographic and will not intorduce the noise AND will render much faster.

3. For white walls, DO NOT MAKE YOUR WHITE HIGHER THAN RGB 240,240,240. In fact, it is suggested that no color should ever exceed 240 as the physical rules of conservation of energy are better observed. Higher values reflect more light than realworld objects generally do.

4. Make MXMs for your lights. Assign them in the ArchiCAD materials editor so they render. Making MXM's allows you to choose accurate color temperature settings that the plug in doesn't.


5. Using Multilight requires that you group archicad lights by assingning an AC Material to a set of light sources. They will export as a single object. Therfore you need to set the wattage to reflect the total number of lights in the new object. So, if you have (8) 50 watt MR-16 lamps in the ceiling, you should go make an MXM that is 400 watts with a color temperature of 3050 kelvin. Assign this to the simple plane in your lamp and you are good to go. The plane need only to have the emmiter material assigned to the bottom. Not the sides or top. It will save on calculations.

6. Avoid Displacement, Coatings and be careful to not over do it with high reflection values. These all have a taxing effect on the typical computer. Unless you have an 8 core machine, a very simple scene or access to a network rendering facility like www.ranchcomputing.com you will be waiting for a day to see something decent.

7. Remember that photorealisitc renders do not mean photographic renders. Turning on all the lights in your scene shows the funtional lighting of the space, but rarely are all the lights on in a building. If a photographer properly shoots an interior there is a high probablility that flash and fill lights would be needed as well as maybe even turning off some building lights to get an aesthetically pleasing photograph. Be prepared to add some fill lights and play with the color of the lamps to get a pleasing result.

[Anonymous]

Some very good advice there Daniel,

May i ask what sort of material it is that you use for the reflector cone for your lighting ?

i wasn't aware not to use a highly reflective materials, i followed the post on the maxwell forums regarding the roughness vales and how that effects the caustics etc. But i cannot recall any one ever stating what material it was that they used.

previously i've just been using a silver type reflector with a roughness of 15.

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

From what I understand, direct lighting is the key to clearing out the noise. Indirect lighting relies on the bounced light and the properties of the surface that is bouncing the light. Certain thresholds in Maxwell's materials should be respected and certain strategies should be employed when modelling to achieve a resonably noise free image.


As for a reflector, you can use a simple reflective surface, but I would not suggest using a material with an complex IOR to reflect light out of a recessed can. It's too slow and will be noisy. Maybe try applying a 240,240,240 white with 90% reflectivity and see if it produces a more noise free image. Keep in mind though, that the emitter plane is likely to be emitting directly downward and probably will not bounce off the walls of the can anyway. It would only be evident if you made a two sided plane (slab with 0 thickness) or and cube with 6 walls emitting light. But beware that there is an increase in calculation with each side. And if you try circular plane, that also is a costly shape due to the number of edges it requires to make it look round.

[Anonymous]

thanks for clearing that up, it appears that i have been using a material suited for it. doesn't hurt to make sure though

[Anonymous]

Another couple tips:

1. Buy NeatImage for photoshop. It's cheap and it will remove enough noise to make a marginal image presentable and requires just a few minutes to run.

2. Render your images around 50% larger than you need to print and downsample in photoshop after using NeatImage. Since the higher Maxwell SL numbers become exponentially timeconsuminug to reach, this can help capture some detail that will be missed doing smaller renders. IOW, I beleive that the time to render the oversized imageis less than it will take to achieve the higher SL in a smaller actual print size image. I try to render around 3000x2000 pixels or bigger.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tips Daniel,
I have been assuming (for the most) that it was just my PC not being up to the task that I had long render times. I had already found to minimize the size of polygons assigned emitters (although I was still using cubes, not single planes), & grouping emitters to limit massive amounts of ram requirements. Plus of course, NeatImage is a god-send
I have a scene file (shown in another Maxwell thread) that would have greatly benefitted from some of your advice...
My future interior projects in Maxwell thank you !