[Thomas An.]

Your question will be better answered next week (Maxwell will get a speed increase with the new beta)

Right now, with the current alpha, it depends.

If you set up Flamingo with soft shadows and glass with 4 or 5 transparency bounces then Flamingo can take 30 hours or more. So in this case (where a lot of glass and transparency bounces are invloved) Maxwell can be faster even now that its still alpha.

Also, if you set up a Flamnigo scene with a few point lights, soft shadows and antialiasing at 16x flamingo will take long. On the other hand Maxwell will take just as long but the light distribution will a world apart in quality of illumination and realism.

[DdR`]

I used to render using Flamingo in combination with UVEclipse (Dome lighting), when I started trying maxwell it gave me a better result in a little less time.
Also the time it takes to get the lighting right in maxwell to get a decent looking render really is a lot less then having to set up a flamingo scene.

That in combination with the fact that Maxwell is a stand alone renderer (I can use it in the different programs I use withouth exporting and importing troubles) and the fact that the educational license is a really good deal convinced me to buy maxwell

[johann.dugge]

DdR, how much did the educational license cost you? Any limits (with rhino, there ain't any, you can even use it commercially! just not resell) I thought it wasn't avail till the final version is out, so I didn't even ask NL. Maybe it would have been a bit hard to convince them anyway, because I'm not a student till october...

[DdR`]

I contacted NL to ask them what the terms and conditions were, and they send me a PDF document with all the info & documents I had to send in.
The license is full feature, but you can only use 2CPU's instead of 4.
You pay $95 (I paid 88 Euro's in total...the price probably varies based on tax and exchange rate) each year and after a period of 3 years you get a full license. If you graduate before these 3 years are over, you can buy the full license for a greatly reducted price.

You need to have enrollement documentation of your school, ID card and sample work in 3D if I remember right.
But I think it is best that you contact NL to ask them about the exact details, communication went very well and very fast. I'm only waiting for my exams to finish now to test a bit more with maxwell

[johann.dugge]

DdR, thanks for the info! The 2 CPUs would not have been a big problem, I won't get to use them for a while anyway. Next time I'll ask first, however I'm just glad the difference in price is not that huge, at least compared to the alpha.
Good to know anyway!