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]

I actually like the look of that grass but only for close ups, or small areas etc ( its too brutal on archicad and a normal machine ).

Lately ive been toying around with the displaced grass that looks more like Astro-Turf more than any thing from the mxm site. not satisfied with the render times vs end results though.

but generally as a rule i photoshop grass in, sadly... it just helps keep the subject in context with site observation photos.

[Anonymous]

At the end of the day . . . . . . . . . I think you're right. He he.

[Anonymous]

rslt wrote:
Thanks to the advice I got, here is the first example of grass using the above mentioned mxm.
It rendered for 20 mins and even though it needs more work I'm quite happy with it. I left the rough ends to show the construction method.
It really does slow the computer down, this took about 5 mins to start rendering, there are 8386 walls with a thickness of 0 and height of 60mm and it covers a 10mx10m area.
One problem is when copying, the gravity selection doesn't work and doesn't carry over from the original object so I only have it working on flat surfaces.
MVP: If this is not a good material to be using for grass do you have a recommendation. I Photoshop grass but would like to get away from it, if I can.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/rslt/Illustrations/grass.jpg

Not bad. But with complex and heavy geometry the 3D grass may just be little do much. In archicad the grass is just static mass. In other 3D packages with basic knowledge you can define presets that assigned to any mesh can automatically generate grass plane instances that more or less face the camera. At least I think so. Though it needs studio at the end to merge mxs-s from archicad and the grass from the 3D software.

[Anonymous]

W.I.P
My first effort with a Archicad / Maxwell workflow.
I have been using Archicad for about 10 weeks now and I'm slowly getting it? Maxwell is new to me also and I kinda like the results but I'm finding it hard to get a clean internal image? Even leaving it over night I still find the results grainy, although external renders seem to come clean after a few hours..
Although I'm new to Archicad, I have been using AutoCAD and 3DSMax/VRay for many years.. So I am familiar with modeling, texturing, lighting & rendering.... sort of

[Anonymous]

Yes, Rock on! Nice image and you are modest, great combo. I remember someone on this thread talking about ways to burn the internal images quicker. It takes additional lighting, think like a Dwightanian Photographer, and change a few settings in Maxwell. Might be the flash setting? However, that image looks really good already.


For some really nice examples of interior renders and multi-light --- type in the words ( Maxwell and ArchiCad ) into YouTube.com -- Realize that the resulting animations are from ONE RENDER, animation controls and sliders on each light switch, just like dimmer switches, allows you to tweek the image lights AND the exposure controls of the camera.

[Anonymous]

MaX_MaD wrote:
W.I.P
My first effort with a Archicad / Maxwell workflow.
I have been using Archicad for about 10 weeks now and I'm slowly getting it? Maxwell is new to me also and I kinda like the results but I'm finding it hard to get a clean internal image? Even leaving it over night I still find the results grainy, although external renders seem to come clean after a few hours..
Although I'm new to Archicad, I have been using AutoCAD and 3DSMax/VRay for many years.. So I am familiar with modeling, texturing, lighting & rendering.... sort of

Very nice! Hard to tell if you already have but try to avoid pure white because it's hardly ever exists in the real world, it flattens the image and generates more noise in maxwell. Paper white is something like RGB 220,220,220 if I recall correctly.

[Anonymous]

Awsome!!
Thanks for the advice. I think the interior views probably need more internal light sources, they kinda rely on the light filtering through the windows. and a few temp spots I put over the counter..

[Anonymous]

Practice render. I really like the way Maxwell handles those shadow areas. It lets you have something to look at. Spielhaus Model by Robert back from ancient ArchiContest days.

[Anonymous]

I'm having a problem with displacements.
The example of the tile has quite deep grooves for the grouting yet doesn't seem to show in the rendering. It is a simple tile with a displacement for the grouting, a bump map for the texture and the colour map.
In the material editor it works well, it worked rendering the simball but not on anything rendered through Archicad or on objects exported from Archicad.
It's not just this tile but anything that has displacements is not rendering properly.
Any ideas?


http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/rslt/Illustrations/tile.jpg


http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/rslt/Illustrations/floor.jpg

[Anonymous]

Try upping your precision settings dramaticaly (like to 500 or 1000), I have only used displacement once and had similar problems.. In the end I'm sure I really ramped up the precision and that seemed to solve the problem.

There arn't that many controls, so I would just have a play with them and study what does what..

I don't think it's an archicad problem as I have had it working fine, but out of interest, what version of maxwell are you running (I think displacement only works with 1.6, but I could be wrong)

Below is a quick test I did for a carpet texture.