maxwell for archicad

[giza]

hi everybody, news from Next Limit are great soon there will be maxwell plug-in for archicad perfect!!

[Anonymous]

oreopoulos wrote:
yes. It is rather uselless at the moment.
Just a geometry exporter in maxwell's native format.

When it will be usable i will post an update

Maxwell's plugins are freeware
Can you share yours?

[Anonymous]

plugins are free for maxwell users.
I dont know if i can (propably i cannot).
Anyway, trust me. Its useless right now.

[stefan]

zucoc wrote:
Maxwell's plugins are freeware
Can you share yours?

But Maxwell renderer is not...

At least VRay, Brazil, Artlantis etc... provide a demo-version with enough usability to test it.

[Anonymous]

maxwell is not a final product yet, so there cannot be a demo.
I guess there would be a demo asa it is released. (whenever that is)

[stefan]

oreopoulos wrote:
maxwell is not a final product yet, so there cannot be a demo.
I guess there would be a demo asa it is released. (whenever that is)

Possibly, but the beta and alpha versions of VRay and Brazil (starting as 3ds max plugins but getting independent) were free and once the commercial version was finished, they offered both a free demo of the commercial version and a limited freeware version (usually non-commercial).

[Bricklyne Clarence]

stefan wrote:

oreopoulos wrote:
maxwell is not a final product yet, so there cannot be a demo.
I guess there would be a demo asa it is released. (whenever that is)

Possibly, but the beta and alpha versions of VRay and Brazil (starting as 3ds max plugins but getting independent) were free and once the commercial version was finished, they offered both a free demo of the commercial version and a limited freeware version (usually non-commercial).

The difference is that unlike Vray and brazil, Maxwell renderer is not a plugin but an independent command line application that runs outside the host program ( Max, Maya, Cinema 4D etc). The Maxwell plugins are only model converters that convert the model into Maxwell's mxs format and then open the render engine itself in a separate window to initiate the render. Vray and Brazil both run within their host program ( Max) and hence are not stand-alone engines per se ( they both ahve plans for stand-alones coming this fall, but until that changes, you can't run neither without Max). Consequently, that may have something to do with the reason why they can offer free public demos and Maxwell can/does not.

It might also have to do with the fact that since Vray and Brazil are biased renderers you can disable certain features to allow the realease of a 'crippled' demo, and since Maxwell is unbiased and a real-physics render engine, it's not possible to 'cripple' it without affecting how it calculates light in the rest of the scene realistically.

Maxwell version 1.0 final, when it is released in October will essentially be a stand alone and (mostly) complete render engine. I suspect then it may be possible that they may also release a crippled or 'time-bomb' demo as well.

In any case anyone who purchases Maxwell now is doing so largely for the oppoturnity to get a price break on the final as well as the opportunity to be a beta-tester.

[Anonymous]

its not that simple, but better not get into that discussion

[Bricklyne Clarence]

The ArchiCAD plugin is understandably rather raw at the moment and mostly unusable. It was the same case with their Maxwell's Rhino, Lightwave and Cinema 4D (Mac version) plugins when they were first released. They subsequently released updates that cleaned out the bugs and errors in those patches and I don't see why that wouldn't happen with the ArchiCAD plugin as time goes by and they take in feedback from users.

The only thing that worries me, is that the Maxwell plugins works based on the host programs' capabilities. By this I mean, that for a superior modelling application like 3D MAX, the plugin has the benefit of allowing the user to apply, map, scale, manipulate textures, and set-up lighting using Max's advanced interface before the plugin exports the finished model to render. As we all know, ArchiCAD has a horrendous texture mapping interface and basicaly zero bump or clip-mapping. While the plugin might realistically still be improved to allow it to coordinate with ArchiCAD's Sunlight/daylight system, the texture control will always be limited to what you can do with ArchiCAD's texture/materials interface. Someone over at the maxwellrender forum asked if they could instead link the texture mapping to the Lightworks format in ArchiCAD since the Lightworks texture control is slightly superior to ArchiCAD's native internal render engine interface, but I'm not certain if that will be possible, since Lightworks itself is a sort of plugin to ArchiCAD in the first place.

Still, it's yet another reason why Graphisoft should completely overhaul that terrible texture mapping interface and alow the user more control to map their textures specifically. Keeping my fingers crossed for ArchiCAD 10, because Maxwell, seems like a really ideal complement as a render solution for architects more than any other profession; due to the simplicity of it's interface and usage, which don't force one to become an 3D visualization expert just to get quality images.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

oreopoulos wrote:
its not that simple, but better not get into that discussion

I know... , I was just trying not to over-complicate it for people who are not familiar with it. Sorry if I over-simplified it.

[stefan]

You can use the ArchiCAD export plugin to say which materials to use and where they are put. The actual material definition can reside in another file. The exported model only references the actual materials.

These actual materials might use all tricks and features of the standalone Maxwell engine.

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E.g. I wrote a Radiance exporter for ArchiCAD (which is far from finished, but conceptually works - it ignores mapping coordinates unfortunately). I can export all the geometry from ArchiCAD and then reference the used material, but let the actual materials can simply reside in a seperate file (call it a material library). You can prepare this library independent from ArchiCAD itself and let the simple ArchiCAD glass use all the real physical properties of Radiance glass.

You could even write a standalone material editor, to modify these materials.

Remark: I tried to detect actual material properties from the default ArchiCAD materials, but although the ArchiCAD API gives access to material types such as glass, metal etc... most materials in the ArchiCAD library are detected as standard materials.
A workaround is to interpret the material names, which are named reasonably logical, but that leads to translation problems.

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Simple materials and textures have most chance to survive the translation. Lightworks' procedural materials are much harder to transfer: you'll have a hard time translating shaders from one system to another.

The Renderman shader-format was actually a good option since the same code can be used with different renderers which should theoretically give the same results on Renderman, AIR, BMRT, Asqis, 3delight etc... The practice however learns that it's not. In fact, I have a standalone program to make/adjust Renderman shaders and the different renderers can all be called from here (provided you have them available).