[stanfordr]

Unfortunately, I will likely drop Maxwell from my tool belt this year. The Maxwell plugin for Sketchup was great and I thought the plugin for Revit would be similar in terms of work flow but it has proven to be too time consuming.

I am an architect and the first thing clients notice about a rendering is the landscaping and entourage, especially if there isn't any. Horrible RPC content is better than nothing. We want our clients to talk about the building and not about the lack of trees. It would also be nice to throw in an occasion person for scale too but there is nothing about adding entourage to Maxwell that is easy, which is the first big issue; the Revit plugin doesn't support RCP content. There is almost no entourage content available for Revit, which forced us to try to bring in content from 3dStudio and convert it to mxs and then reference that content into a master mxs scene, which we would then also referenced our architectural model into. The problem is laying out referenced mxs trees and shrubs in Maxwell Studio is difficult and time consuming. It takes a lot of work to ground objects so they don't appear to be floating above a changing topography. Once we added all the entourage to the master file, rendering times would begin to crawl.

Which brings me to the second issue of Networking rendering. Network rendering is a great concept but I was constantly battling the license manager and keeping computers connected to the render manager.

Maxwell grass had great potential and we achieved some great renderings using it but it took a huge investment of time. First, depending on the surface type that Maxwell grass is applied to, the RGB ordinate system is different. Maxwell grass will act differently on a Revit topo surface vs an extruded object vs a massing element.

Another issue, Revit lighting, not all lighting fixtures are compatible with Maxwell. This forced us to create special Maxwell light fixtures, yet again a huge time investment.

Another issue, Revit materials. Not all Revit materials are compatible with Maxwell, especially the more useful materials in Revit that do not use image maps.

The forum for Revit Plugin needs help. I got excellent feedback on other forums here but the Revit forum is pretty dead.

The Maxwell support team has been great to work with. Working with Revit's closed architecture has got to be challenging and applaud them for taking on the challenge.

Because of these reasons and others I personally would not recommend Maxwell to other Revit users.

[Mihai]

This is good feedback, I don't personally use Revit but I do know that 3dsMax has a good connection with it, since both are AD products. I am wondering why you don't do the entourage in 3dsMax, instead of trying to do it Revit which doesn't seem very suited for that. Keep a connection with the Revit scene in case of changes to the building, and do most of the material assignments/editing/vegetation in Max?

For example, Maxwell is compatible with Forrest Pack Pro which is a great scattering plugin for 3dsMax. I've also converted the vegetation libraries from Vizpark to make them compatible with Maxwell and Forrest Pack Pro. And in general 3dsMax has the tools and plugins necessary to quickly put a scene together while Revit is far behind even Sketchup for these things.

[stanfordr]

Mihai, thank you for the suggestions. Unfortunately I feel stretched in terms of becoming fluent in 3ds and additional plugins, although Forrest Pack Pro looks amazing. Almost all of our work is in the desert and it's difficult to find specific species to the region (the Mojave Desert and southern Nevada). Most plant libraries seem to be geared toward more lush environments.