Maxwell / 3D Delight (Little bit of Arnold)- My Choice

[Falam]

I did some heavy reading regarding all the available renders on the market today including GPU renders, interesting stuff, I more or less have a stronger understanding of why some of you love "Arnold" I also know that "Arnold" was named after Arnold Schwarezenegger, which I originally thought, yet no one confirmed this

After comparing 3D Delight and Maxwell, as a personal choice, I decided upon Maxwell, anyone in the Softimage community use Maxwell for Softimage? it has improved it's not geared towards Arch as it once was, it's fairly broad, visual effects, animation etc.

Anyone wondering when will Arnold be available for the mass market, don't hold your breath it appears they are strictly focused on big studios, not small studios or individuals. It is a good render, there are areas it needs improvement including caustics.

I have a question for Mr.Blair himself Are your support people mostly studios ? How has your knowledge of Arnold improved since working for Solid Works ?

[druitre]

Hi Falam, I use both Maxwell and Arnold. What would you like to know about using Maxwell in Softimage?

[Falam]

Hi Falam, I use both Maxwell and Arnold. What would you like to know about using Maxwell in Softimage?

What are some of Maxwell weaknesses within Softimage ? Can all nodes in the RT be used within Maxwell ? How much faster is it in your opinion over Mental Ray ? I'll start with some of those questions

[Kerro Perro]

@druitre: you use both? If i may ask: why use Maxwell? What does it have that arnold doesnt? And don't you find it really slow? I know i do although i havent tried it since the new update but last time i used it i found it really slow to render even a simple clay render pass for a turntable... If i remember correct it took like 12 hours for 200 frames...

[nourvfx]

hello frinds.maxwell is faster and amazing physicall rendering.in interiors shot the maxwell is faster than arnold about 8X faster and maxwell is CPU/GPU rendering but arnold only base on CPU.

[wireframex]

I'm not sure Maxwell use GPU rendering ...

[iamVFX]

hello frinds.maxwell is faster and amazing physicall rendering.in interiors shot the maxwell is faster than arnold about 8X faster and maxwell is CPU/GPU rendering but arnold only base on CPU.

Hello frind! Maxwell is 100% GPU renderer! Arnold is slower because it uses CPU , unlike Maxwell which uses GPU! Bye frind!

[Kerro Perro]

[luceric]

every post should end with "bye frind"

[druitre]

About Maxwell: I use it because I'm only beta-ing for Arnold, don't own a commercial license so can't use it for anything but drooling. (Plenty of that, though.) Maxwell had a 50% discount last summer so I took the plunge, just to have something that can do hassle-free GI and has a IPR that works. Workflow is quite similar to Arnold, BSDF shader that gets you all materials with just one node, at first it's a bit confusing but it quickly becomes very natural.

As far as I know, Maxwell is 100% CPU, no GPU whatsoever. For stills, it's fast enough but for animation you need at least a small farm, IMO. (You get 5 nodes with standard license)
The IPR is brilliant and because you can get to final result so fast it makes up for longer rendering times in many cases. Also, the fact that you just know it's GI will hold steady in animation is also something to take into account.

Kerro: yeah, I think Maxwell is not so optimize-friendly, even simple scenes take time to refine to acceptable levels. On the other hand, adding geo/lights/mb/dof doesn't add dramatically to rendertimes like in MR.

Falam: weakness of Maxwell in Soft is that it doesn't use all the nodes in the RT - you're quite limited. No procedurals, for instance. UV's need to be frozen and coordinates seem to be interpreted differently, I'm having trouble getting consistent results between Maxwell and MR. And Maxwell is geared toward physical correctness, in fact it's hard to make it do NPR stuff.

In fact, I've started to appreciate MR more now that I've been using Maxwell, their strenghts and weaknesses are in such different places that they can complement each other quite nicely.

[Kerro Perro]

That's pretty much exactly my experience - but since i'm now focused on NPR animation you might see that i slightly regret buying it... (and i only bought the educational version so no discount ;) )

[Falam]

About Maxwell: I use it because I'm only beta-ing for Arnold, don't own a commercial license so can't use it for anything but drooling. (Plenty of that, though.) Maxwell had a 50% discount last summer so I took the plunge, just to have something that can do hassle-free GI and has a IPR that works. Workflow is quite similar to Arnold, BSDF shader that gets you all materials with just one node, at first it's a bit confusing but it quickly becomes very natural.

As far as I know, Maxwell is 100% CPU, no GPU whatsoever. For stills, it's fast enough but for animation you need at least a small farm, IMO. (You get 5 nodes with standard license)
The IPR is brilliant and because you can get to final result so fast it makes up for longer rendering times in many cases. Also, the fact that you just know it's GI will hold steady in animation is also something to take into account.

Kerro: yeah, I think Maxwell is not so optimize-friendly, even simple scenes take time to refine to acceptable levels. On the other hand, adding geo/lights/mb/dof doesn't add dramatically to rendertimes like in MR.

Falam: weakness of Maxwell in Soft is that it doesn't use all the nodes in the RT - you're quite limited. No procedurals, for instance. UV's need to be frozen and coordinates seem to be interpreted differently, I'm having trouble getting consistent results between Maxwell and MR. And Maxwell is geared toward physical correctness, in fact it's hard to make it do NPR stuff.

In fact, I've started to appreciate MR more now that I've been using Maxwell, their strenghts and weaknesses are in such different places that they can complement each other quite nicely.

Thanks for the expination, I'm at a cross roads. Anyone care to share personal opinion on 3D Delight, those are the two renderers I'm considering. MR is integrated into Softimage so nicely, it's hard to pull away

NPR Animation ?

[Kerro Perro]

I think Matheus had a thread about 3delight here somewhere - he uses it a lot i think.

Non Photo-Real, basically more stylized cartoony type of rendering. Can be just using the simple toon nodes but can also be more complicated. This is one my favourite NPR animations.

[druitre]

Yes, that one's a classic. Brilliant! I love the way the clouds are done, volumetric but still NPR.

[xsisupport]

I did some heavy reading regarding all the available renders on the market today including GPU renders, interesting stuff, I more or less have a stronger understanding of why some of you love "Arnold" I also know that "Arnold" was named after Arnold Schwarezenegger, which I originally thought, yet no one confirmed this

http://tog.acm.org/resources/RTNews/html/rtnv23n1.html#art3

I have a question for Mr.Blair himself Are your support people mostly studios ? How has your knowledge of Arnold improved since working for Solid Works ?

In support you deal with individuals, and I don't always look up their account details. And sometimes they are using a work email, but often it's a gmail account. But if you've read about Arnold and Solid Angle, you know they started working from the top studios down.

How has my knowledge improved? By understanding the underlying architecture of Arnold, how it's integrated into Softimage and Maya, and how it implements ray tracing And of course, how the licensing system works (RLM is the third licensing system now I've had to support). In general, my learning is directed towards problem solving.

[Falam]

I did some heavy reading regarding all the available renders on the market today including GPU renders, interesting stuff, I more or less have a stronger understanding of why some of you love "Arnold" I also know that "Arnold" was named after Arnold Schwarezenegger, which I originally thought, yet no one confirmed this

http://tog.acm.org/resources/RTNews/html/rtnv23n1.html#art3

I have a question for Mr.Blair himself Are your support people mostly studios ? How has your knowledge of Arnold improved since working for Solid Works ?

In support you deal with individuals, and I don't always look up their account details. And sometimes they are using a work email, but often it's a gmail account. But if you've read about Arnold and Solid Angle, you know they started working from the top studios down.

How has my knowledge improved? By understanding the underlying architecture of Arnold, how it's integrated into Softimage and Maya, and how it implements ray tracing And of course, how the licensing system works (RLM is the third licensing system now I've had to support). In general, my learning is directed towards problem solving.

Thanks for the feedback Blair Those articles you posted, I've read them already, they are great articles