By theakita@gmail.com
#365392
One thing that might be useful is if there was a way to use Maxwell fire as a renderer for fast animation previews within Softimage (without launching the external rendering app like for full-on maxwell renders). This would be a good option that would speed the iteration process tremendously I think.

-T
User avatar
By Mihai
#365394
Good suggestion. Where do you think it would make most sense to put it? Under Render options, under Maxwell FIRE? It could have the following options:

frame range
resolution (with checkbox to use or not the scene options res)
output folder (should maybe default to render pictures/FIRE preview or similar)
filetype
SL/Time limit per frame
Checkbox to choose to open or not flipbook once it's done

Btw, just mentioning this in case you weren't aware but you can launch a render with Draft quality set in Render options (instead of production) and it will use FIRE to render the sequence. It's just that you would probably first have to change the resolution, time/SL and probably output paths. Or create a "preview" render pass with these settings.
By theakita@gmail.com
#365422
Mihai -

Yes, having it available under the FIRE render options would be fine. Basically we're kind of mimicking the viewport capture but trying to make up for the fact that FIRE is a CDH window. You do mean the embedded window and not the floating one right? (though I guess either one is okay).

I wasn't aware that it would use FIRE if I set it to "draft" (which is a good tip) - I guess that would suffice as well, but it's nice to have things integrated. Would I still have to go through an mxs export process the way I do for regular renders? Or does FIRE connect to softimage more directly than it does for the full-on maxwell renders?

-T
User avatar
By Mihai
#365439
FIRE still exports an MXS when it renders but usually the export part is very fast. So if you do a preview using Maxwell.exe or directly in the FIRE window Maxwell still needs to export one MXS per frame. I still think though it would be a nice workflow improvement to automate the process for quick animation previews.
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

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