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]

import the mxs file that maxwell plugin creates when rendering or exporting to the studio

where do I find the mxs file?
if not
what format for exporting to studio?

[Anonymous]

flamingjawa wrote:

I would say yes. If you don't use any other 3d app to import your geometry, add more triangles and bring back into the archicad, then displacements like grass is quite impossible task and I would say most useless. Some different type of displaced materials might work, like stone walls etc.

1. Try using the mesh tool but set the subdivision of the mesh so that you get a dense grid of polygons. Each square should be about 6" or so. Then you can turn off adaptive and set to 128 or 64. The key is to provide many polygons for displacement to take affect.

2. You must use a high bit depth image for Displacement Maps. Try opening your displacement image in Photoshop and change it to 16 or 32 bit. Run a light blur filter to smooth the image into the new bit depth and save.

[Anonymous]

Burginger wrote:
Taking a standard example model - the NHS Building - (supplied on the GS web site)

do you still have this model from GS? I'd like to mess around with it in Maxwell Render and compare my results with yours, but I can't seem to find it on their site anywhere.

thanks

[Anonymous]

Have some simple questions that I hope someone who uses Maxwell Render plug-in can help me with.

On the PhotoRendering Settings/Maxwell Rendering Engine/Maxwell Environment/Physical Sky

There is a Latitude and Longitude field. It allows numbers in 99.99 format. How would I enter a longitude/latitude off Google Earth for example:
Latitude: 12°53'46.79"N Longitude: 100°54'10.81"E

How is the GMT field used? If the timezone that the location being rendered for example is Singapore, GMT + 8, what should be entered here? +8?

[Anonymous]

"Daniel Hruby" wrote:
Another view, w/ differnt multi light settings. This is an awesome feature of Maxwell. Fading lights in near realttime to balance the perfect scene lighting.

I have installed demo of maxwell render as a plug-in to Archicad 12.
and it has dialogue box with maxwell render options, as well as that
allow me to generate. but the problem is nothings in the file. and the
message says it hasn't got the emitters. what does that mean and
how can i solve that problem?

[Anonymous]

Have you tried opening the file in the Studio application? Do that to check and see that you have some geometry. You also need to go into the Materials in Archicad and set them up with Maxwell properties. Just change the preview engine to Maxwell and you can then set some basic values for your materials (including emitters for lights) or you can link directly to very good maxwell materials that you can download from the Maxwell materials site. MXM Gallery

It sounds like you just need to keep playing around with the render settings until you get it working. If you want to post an MXS file, I can look at it for you.

[Anonymous]

"Daniel Hruby" wrote:
Have you tried opening the file in the Studio application? Do that to check and see that you have some geometry. You also need to go into the Materials in Archicad and set them up with Maxwell properties. Just change the preview engine to Maxwell and you can then set some basic values for your materials (including emitters for lights) or you can link directly to very good maxwell materials that you can download from the Maxwell materials site. MXM Gallery

It sounds like you just need to keep playing around with the render settings until you get it working. If you want to post an MXS file, I can look at it for you.

[Anonymous]

It did open fine in studio. I saw 4 walls. You should not need to add a light if you have the Physical Sky option checked in the Photo Rendering settings in Archicad Choose also to use archicad sun position and sunlight. If you want to add electrical lights to your scene, you can do so by using the archicad lamp objects. make sure to check the Export Lights option in the Photo Rendering settings window before rendering.

[Anonymous]

thanks for your advise.
i tried to see what was the problem with the program and played around with that for a while and realised that from your comment i have not installed studio.
i just installed the plug-in. so i downloaded studio and tried, it is up and running. thank.