Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hey folks:

I'm brand new to this forum, and I've been using Maxwell for SketchUp for a couple years now. I've got a pretty good handle on the basics (I think), but I'm working on a project now in which I'd really like to be able to render a true motion blur. I've searched all over for some sort of tutorial, but can't find one. I understand that some of the other Maxwell plugins have a motion blur option built in, but the SketchUp plugin does not. I'm sure there must, however, be a way to achieve this (other than in post-processing), but I frankly don't know where to begin. If there is a way, can someone explain it to me like I'm 3 years old.

And if there is already a forum post on this topic, I apologize.

The short answer is: there is currently no way to render motion blur from SketchUp. It would be possible in the future to hook some code into the camera transition animation that occurs when you switch between two Scenes, and thereby generate camera-based motion blur, but there being no method for animating objects, object-based motion blur is basically out of the question.

Okay, I was afraid of that. Thanks for the quick reply.

So I imagine there's no work around, or steps within Studio that would allow me to accomplish this?

No, unfortunately, Studio has no animation capability, either. To have motion blur, a camera or object actually needs to be written into the MXS in multiple positions; the engine interpolates between those positions at render time to produce the blur in a physically-realistic way.

Yep, that's what I figured as well. At least I feel better about not being able to figure this out.

Maybe one day a true animation capability will be incorporated into SketchUp. Definitely on my wish list.

Weird i was just wondering about this.

I figured i could render the scene in two parts... one with everything else and one with the item i want moving. Then in photoshop combine them.

Could be a do-able work around. It would give you lots of control over your blur... That's kind of photoshops thing.

Yes, people often do such things in PS. In that case, though, you are not really dealing with 3D simulated reality, like you are if cameras and objects are written with multiple positions and rendered with virtual movement, directly by the engine. Even so, lots of people in VFX still do it the fake way, sacrificing realism for flexibility.