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.

[Thomas Holm]

Soo, so, now let's not.... I think Mark just means what he says - he wants more details. Your model is complex and has many light sources, and it should take a while to set it up even in Artlantis. I'm interested too, as an Artlantis user that largely agrees with you. How did you do it?

I find some of the Maxwell renders very good, especially the last one above by Daniel Hruby, but the set-up and render times look disencouraging for my line of work. I seldom have a budget that allows it. A quick-and-dirty Artlantis + one or another of Dwight's Photoshop tricks is what is usually allowed.

[Dwight]

Of course, many user simply feel dirty after using one of my Photoshop tricks.

[Anonymous]

I have used Artlantis for years and I even tried to move to Lightworks a year ago just to improve upon the internal AC engine. Both achieve excellent results with ALOT of tinkering. In both applications, there is nothing very intuitve about the lighting paramaters and as Mark points out, terminology/paramters are foriegn to real world lighting. To acheive realistic lighting, generally you spend more time guessing in these programs than you do in Maxwell. And it is difficult to escape the odd scalloping / halos that occur in either program, which tend to comprimise realism, IMO.

Maxwell, with a properly material libray ready to go, can import an ArchiCAD model into studio and I can have materials placed on the model in minutes (not unlike ArtLantis) and have a very realistic shot rendering within a few minutes of that. It takes some time to render, granted, but the software is brand new and will certainly speed up in the coming releases. This workflow should speed up significantly with the new ArchiCAD plug in as there will no longer be the need to export / import.

The beauty of it all is you dont need to do much guesswork with lighting once you are ready to go. Light behaves with parameters traditionally associated with lights and cameras. For example, lights are delt with in Wattage, Lumenance, Halogen, flourescence and color temperature. Cameras have ISO, F-Stop, etc. Its simple point and shoot. The results are based on real physics of light propagation. Camera's behave like a real camera body/lens. You can acheive photograpic effects like depth of field atc, which significantly improve realism.

This of course, is esoteric and many architects dont need the level of realism that Maxwell affords. It is a tool for realism. If you just want qucik adequate renders for efficinet communication, as most architects do, then artlanits et al, will suffice. But make no mistake, you wil be hard pressed to find a single artlantis render out there, that will beat Maxwell in terms of realism.

This software is addicting to play with and I think anyone with an enthusiasm for rendering with find this a breakthrough in rendering technology. I hope this helps "shed some light" on the topic. Get ready for some insane renders!

[Anonymous]

An updated test from the scene i'm working on. I used a physical sky to get some sort of radiosity and the multilight feature. My fstop was 5.6 and my shutter was 1/19 i think

But I'm please with the results I'm getting from my test considering I'm teaching myself how to use the program

Now i just have to practice with my materials etc.....

Oh and I touched up the image in photoshop.

[Anonymous]

I have posted a SAMPLE FILE that came directly from one of my ArchiCAD 10 models. This file was created with the ArchiCAD/Maxwell beta plug-in for Windows. Not much has been done with it, you can change the textures or anything you want within the Demo Download of Maxwell. It gives you something to start with so you can get an idea what this program can do with a simple model.

2.7 MB zip file created with the PacknGo feature in Maxwell.

http://www.Burginger.com/MAXWELL/ArchiMax.zip

Link to the Maxwell Program for Mac or PC

http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php?pForm=demo.html

[Anonymous]

I have downloaded your scene, and loaded to maxwell.

I have to say that the export of the model is MUCH better and easy to manipulate. I dont know ofcourse how the integration looks like in archicad, but if it is easy, then it would be a great step for archicad users.

The bad thing i noticed. Object names are abit confusing, but i dont know the exporting options so i can not comment fairly

Thats all. I hope the plugin would be avaliable publicly soon.

[Anonymous]

Regarding the Macintosh version 1.1- I have experienced problems with the following:

• Crashes when moving scene data between Maxwell Studio and Maxwell Render. Is this just my installation?

• Does multi-light work on the Mac?

Other than that I won't say that I really, really like the Maxwell Studio interface. I am spoiled by Cinema4D and their really great modeling environment. Also it would be nice to be able to create simple geometrical objects inside of the studio. This is obviously one area where Cinema4D is way out front. The objects would be useful for scene setups, emitters, etc. No need for the highly advanced modeling tools of C4D and FormZ, just the basics would be helpful. Also better GUI when looking for normals since this is so important to the lighting.

I don't understand how animation happens in Maxwell. I have seen some great animations so I assume it's not impossible.

Depth of field settings, can anyone here post a simple explanation of how to best use it?

The technology is amazing, I assume it will all become better with each release. Just think, this program is only version 1.1.

[Anonymous]

Depth of field settings, can anyone here post a simple explanation of how to best use it?

It's true that to use maxwell you need to be familiar with some basics of fotography because with maxwell you don't render your scenes, you shoot them with camera. The greatest advantage of it is that you are able to change exposure of a scene during the proces. For your question: right-click on the screen gives you access to some quick sets like "autofocus" and "focus to" just click on the point of your model you want to be center of sharpness. DoF is strictly related to F-stop number you are using (longer times = shallower DoF). It is nicely explained in the manual but you might also look here. Wish you many great "shots"

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

[Anonymous]

Mark,

• Crashes when moving scene data between Maxwell Studio and Maxwell Render. Is this just my installation?

When working in Studio, if you have Multi light enabled (check box) AND Autoexposure enabled you will get a crash once the rendering engine starts. Just disbalble auto exposure for Otherwise, I have had no other repeatable crashes.

• Does multi-light work on the Mac?

Yes, just make sure you have at least one emitter assigned to an object. When the rendering starts, you will then get an array of sliders to control lighting from a range of 0-1000 with 100 being your lamp levels as set in studio. You can also lower the enviorment lighting (sun , sky dome) to give some intersteing effects.

You can use the built-in animation controls to make an animation of your scene.


• Depth of field-

Use this to practice with appropriate settings....

http://atillaakin.com/maxwell/dof.html

note that lower Fstop and higher shutter speed pronounces the effect.

Also, play with the focal length to get shots that apear to be telephoto. It also seems to enhance the DOF.

You may find that renderings come out looking like little toy scenes. This is related to DOF. Make sure you play with it to get something more full scale. kjverine's scene is close to becoming a toy model because of the DOF getting tight. But just bring up the Fstop to 12 or so and things start to look normal.

• Scale

ALWAYS check your model in plan view in Studio (if you are importing there) to make sure your building is at the right scale. Lights will not give out enough light if too big and will over power if too small of a scale is being used. From AC10, export using .3ds and select 10 mm for your model and you should come into Studio at the right scale.

• Studio Objects

You can place planes, cubes, spheres etc. from inside stduio. I use planes all the time to place fill lighting in places that need it. You can then, hide the plane from the camera so that it wont appear in the rendering but the lighting effect will. You can also save layers out of archiacd and add them to your scene. For example, if you want to add furniture, just place them in ac 10, turn off all other layers, save as .3ds and import that file right into the open file.

Studio is in its infancy. It may be unnessecary now that there is a direct interface in AC10. However, it is very useful for working on material projectors. You must unlock projectors and change them to cubic if you want to apply large repeating textures such as the concrete wall and flooring in the examples below in my earlier posts.

Studio's interface can be challenging, tough to select items and limited undo actions etc. but all things that "should" improve. The company was so behind the game in getting this release out that it is apparent they released a somewhat incomplete app in order to provide a product. It needs another major update, but it should be soon.

I find that now I am used to the ins and outs and find the program to be great as a rendering interface. Like anything,m you need to learn how to use it before you condemn it altogether. I expect I will continue to use it for editing MXS scenes from AC10.

[Anonymous]

Mark,

You might try playing with the object projects for you grass and roof textures. They appear to be repeating in tiny tiles. selct those objects in studio and you can see the project assigned to them in the OBJECT PARAMETERS window. Double click on the projector and you will get the PROJECT PARAMTERS window. Change from locked to cubic and set the x,y,z, scale to something more believeable. You can judge int he 3d window by enabling the TEXTURED view.

Have fun!