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.

[Dwight]

While I agree with Stefan that Graphisoft provided low quality materials, don't be surprised that other rendering applications make better renderings because they assign additional qualities to surfaces, allowing them to interact with light, and that Archicad users who want better renderings need to learn how to manipulate these expanded surface aspects to control better rendering applications.

If you find Archicad's LightWorks material dialog daunting, just study Maxwell's or better, Cinema 4D where numerous pages describe things like caustics and whatnot.

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with stefan when it comes to the textures. The textures will only come out looking like a default diffuse texture which will not cut it. Material Mapping is very important for producing realistic renderings. I took stefans advice and applied some realistic textures to my walls etc...
The only problem i have with maxwell is that studio is soooo slow. I use studio to import 3ds and obj objects to my scene. Importing them into archicad and making them a gdl object is a pain. My current scene that i'm working on has alot of objects so applying hi-res materials to them is key to producing a realistic rendering.

[Dwight]

I'm working experimentally with both Maxwell Edison and his silver hammer, versus Cinema 4D. I prefer Cinema, since it can be distributed over a network when making an animation. It is a modeler AND a renderer with lots of great add-ins like xFrog and other entourage generators.

And its faster.

[Anonymous]

These movies are quite nice in that they show the basics of ArchiCAD/ Maxwell WorkFlow.

by Maxwell Render dot IT

See the links:

http://www.maxwellrender.it/podcast//ArchiMaxwell_basics_Installation_Podcast.mov
http://www.maxwellrender.it/podcast//ArchiMaxwell_basics_Render_Diretto_Podcast.mov
http://www.maxwellrender.it/podcast//ArchiMaxwell_basics_Render_Diretto_con_MXM_Podcast.mov
http://www.maxwellrender.it/podcast//ArchiMaxwell_basics_Render_attraverso_Studio_Podcast.mov

[Rafal SLEK]

You can get the updated plug-in from the usual customers download site: http://download.nextlimit.com/download.htm

After spending half hour trying to instal Maxwell plugin I realized that it is not prepared for Mactel computers.
PC version is not working with localised WinXP, Apple with Mactel (so not only rendering time is very long)
Somebody knows something about nextlimit plans?

[Anonymous]

They are on it...

"We are looking to make it as soon as possible. You know that we had to do very difficult workarounds to get the plugin work in ppc and now we are close to get it in MacIntel too.

Kind regards,

Juan
_________________
Next Limit Team"

[Dwight]

I am glad they have given it more that Juan try.

[Anonymous]

It has been quite easy to use the Maxwell Render engine in ArchiCAD 10. Here are examples of pre-existing archicad models, the addition or remodel areas are in pink, I have done this with design development models so that the client and contractor can easily see the scope of work. They look as if I actually built them and photographed outside on foam board.

I find it easy to set up four instances of Maxwell, each rendering a different view. Several hours later they are all at about 8 or 10 sample levels which is good enough to share with others.

http://www.burginger.com/Maxwell_Renders/Maxwell_Renders.html

[Anonymous]

Camera settings are a mixed bag. Camera position and focal length are set in the camera object. The shutter speed, film ISO and fstop are set in the photo rendering settings. The lat. and long. and GMT are not picked up by the SUN settings in ArchiCAD. They can be controlled in Maxwell Studio for sun studies. They can be input by hand in the Photo Rendering setting dialog box.

[Anonymous]

Setting up Maxwell textures in ArchiCAD is a snap! On this example I added a Maxwell Emitter (light source) to the material list in ArchiCAD. Then I textured the small roof planes you see in the lamps and to a copy of the sign (backlit effect). You can download the resulting animation at:

http://www.Burginger.com/MAXWELL/Light_Test.mov

This is one rendering, took 3 hrs on a Single 1.8GHz Mac, the multilight feature in Maxwell allows you to adjust the lights and output images.