@Maximus - thanks for your thorough review...
@mihaiNL - That would be very interesting...

Just wanted to add, NextLimit quickly answered my query about offline activation/licensing/usage and luckily, their system is not dependent on an internet connection.
Hmmm, tempting...

I've started using Maxwell just recently, trying it out on some smaller projects and I have to say that it has worked out better than I thought it would. To be able to start comping while still rendering and stop worrying about FG-flicker is soo nice! The scene setup time is none existing and the network rendering is surprisingly easy to set up. There is a lot of stuff that I like but I can admit that I still use Mental Ray on many projects even if I'm using it less and less.


A tip btw. If you want to shorten the rendertime and get rid of the noise that you get on lower SL-settings this plug works great for me: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/denoiser-II/

Hmm well i nearly sold Though to be honest for the thing i'm working on (and am going to work on for the next year if not longer) i'll probably only use it for a "clay render" GI lighting pass....

I have a little personal test scene i've been using to fiddle with final gather in MR and am going to try out the Maxwell demo with it - see how it holds up!

Also the After Effects and Photoshop plugins for Maxwell seem pretty sweet as well...

EDIT: oops some stuff i forgot: @ MihaiNL can you include some audio/verbal explanation in the video? I hate those silent "just a guy clicking and waving his mouse pointer" ones

And just cause i'm a degenerate gambler: How high do guys rate Spain's chances in ther of the tournament? i.e. what are the odss of more discount?

Hrmph can't for the life of me get the emitter working....



Also when i hook up the "standard" Maxwell Material i get a: "PHEN 0.4 17 MB error 051011: shader "MaxwellMaterial" not found" message...

Maybe cuz i'm on 2013 sp1 and the plugin is for 2012? But that usually doesn't matter much with other stuff...

Hmm, strange. I'm using the same version but it works for me.

Are you applying the emitter to a piece of geometry? Try this:
Select the object, go to Material>Maxwell Layered material
In the RT, click the MaxwellLayer, and click the Add Emitter button.

That should be it.

"MaxwellMaterial" is used for referenced materials.



hehe....well I'm not spanish so I have no nationalistic, moral, sentimental obligations to root for Spain Well, I liked how they played in the beginning but their last two games were really boring.....pass, pass, pass......pass, pass, pass....zzzzzzzz. I thought Italy played with more guts. So just to say that I think it's going to be a really close final.

Yes, I'll do the videos with voice, I don't like the silent videos either.

Ok well right now i'm cleaning my workstation because i want to do a side-by-side comparison with Octane and as said it made it run really hot. I'll try again later tonight or tommorow.

EDIT: ok i got it working now, i needed to change the camera settings because the default is extremely dark! I already like the MaxwellFire thingy - nice fast preview! I should be able to do the side-by-side now but yeah an introductory video showing you how to avoid these type of pitfalls would be cool MihaiNL.

Well i'm pretty sold It's not the fastest but the GI is superclean and as Maximus said setup is a dream!



Haha yeah well "our" team was... I kind of misunderstood the promo btw: i thought the risk was more than 20% vs a base of 10% but it's more like 20% or more vs 0... so i'm trying to buy it now but of course having credit card problems... typical! I should've bought i yesterday from my local reseller, probably won't get any movement on this till monday so now i'm really betting on spain!

Yes, the default camera settings are calibrated for Physical Sky renderings, so when using emitters at normal values, say 3000 lumens for your average softbox flash, you have to adjust the camera accordingly, maybe shutter 60, ISO 200.

A good place to start learning are the online docs, we worked a lot on them to make them clear and structured and easy to find related content. I STRONGLY recommend new users to first read the "Before you begin" section here:

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwelldocs/Before+you+begin

There are only a few key things to keep in mind really, especially about keeping materials within realistic reflectance values to avoid loss of contrast and excessive noise in the renders. For this reason I prefer to set the color chips in SI to Hue Saturation Value (from Preferences>Units), instead of RGB, because I can control the Value independently and it's the Value (or how much light is reflected back from a material as far as Maxwell is concerned) that's important not to go over say 225 which is roughly the equivalent of a bright white piece of paper.

Whoohoo 4-0!

Maybe a good thing the creditcard got blocked this weekend - more discount now!

Btw Hirazi you getting it as well?