Maxwell Render - The Light Simulator

[Anonymous]

If you are interested in a new rendering engine for ArchiCAD, check out Maxwell Render.

Gallery at:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/

If you want THAT TYPE OF REALISM in your images, you need to take the jump into the Maxwell universe.

You might be thinking it is difficult. I used to think that way. Guess what? It isn't all that difficult. Within just a few hours I have been able to come to grips with the interface, navigation and material editor.

"But isn't it Slooooooooow?", you quip... No. In many ways it is actually fast. The reason it is so fast is because it is predictable. You don't need to think about Global Strength, Occlusion, Shadow Sampling settings, etc, etc.

It is extremely architectural, place your crosshairs on the hires Earth globe, think google earth, now position your project with north arrow - specify the year, month and time of day. Check Physical Sky and you have just successfully finished the lighting of an exterior.

It has a function that takes just 1 or 2 minutes to generate a fuzzy preview. Very fast and useful.

Here is the clincher, you can also do much of it from within ArchiCAD 10. Yup, NextLimit is working hard to create the connections (plug-ins) between ArchiCAD 10 and Maxwell. PC will come first (as usual Mac comes next) What's exciting about the Mac development is Universal App - Mactel support. Have you heard about the Quad Core Intel chips coming out soon? Imagine a MacPro with dual Quads. All of them working on your images at once. The future is looking kinda bright.

I will post within this thread more info as it become available to me, and I will give you a peek at some of the programs more useful features.

[Anonymous]

Maxwell 1.6

[Anonymous]

Colyer-Lloyd wrote:
Was this done in Studio or with the plug-in?

Pretty cool.

Justin

I assume it can be done in both, I have not used 1.6 yet. I just posting examples of what it can do, I don't think there renders were done in archicad.

[Thomas Holm]

Danj wrote:
Maxwell 1.6 out now, displacement is very cool.

Dan, your images are very cool, but please use the forum's attachment mechanism instead of posting in-message links. Your method slows down loading a great deal if you're on a slow connection!

[Anonymous]

Thomas wrote:

Danj wrote:
Maxwell 1.6 out now, displacement is very cool.

Dan, your images are very cool, but please use the forum's attachment mechanism instead of posting in-message links. Your method slows down loading a great deal if you're on a slow connection!

sorry, fixed

[Anonymous]

A recent rendering.

15 hours on quad core

S.L. 18

Justin

[stefan]

Colyer-Lloyd wrote:
A recent rendering.

15 hours on quad core

S.L. 18

Justin

Nice rendering, but 15 hours on a quad? For a single image? I am not sure if this is still practical when deadlines are getting closer.

[Anonymous]

I usually let Maxwell render when I leave the office. So it's not like I'm just sitting around waiting.

If I need a good quality and quick render, I use Artlantis Studio.

Justin

[Eduardo Rolon]

Vray example, Core2Duo.

1 minute rendering time, it is a frame from an animation test of Vray running under C4D in OS X.

The problem with the 15 hours is that if you need to produce more than one Image it adds up to an impossible number . My personal target for rendering time for single images is no more than 20 minutes for tests and final images between 1-4 hours, but usually the test image is good enough.

[stefan]

ejrolon wrote:
Vray example, Core2Duo.

1 minute rendering time, it is a frame from an animation test of Vray running under C4D in OS X.

The problem with the 15 hours is that if you need to produce more than one Image it adds up to an impossible number . My personal target for rendering time for single images is no more than 20 minutes for tests and final images between 1-4 hours, but usually the test image is good enough.

Does the VRay-animation produce flickering? This is not noticeable in a still image. I ask this, since I wouldn't imagine rendering an animation unless I can be sure that no (or only minor) flickering occurs.

Can you create flicker-free animations with Maxwell? Is the noise consistent over frames when making faster renderings or is it random and this different for each frame?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Was able to produce it without flickering but since I was not paying attention I changed the settings and didn't write them down. So now I have to start over but I think it was turning on the basic AntiAliasing settings.