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Hello Suppurt, Forum,

I have spent few hours reading docs and forum, yet i am not even near to understand how to solve the basic problem of image output in Maxwell.

I use Maxwell Studio V3 standalone (and the beta too)

We've got used to save diffuse channel (pure self-illuminated bitmap color without any shading), GI Pass, Shadow and reflection pass for the typical CG Productions.

Now, in Maxwell i get:
1) diffuse option but it still saves light and GI in it,
2) diffuse with reflection together (which is mostly useless for composting),
3) 100% white shadow pass (no matter what i do) and
4) a reflection pass only if i disable diffuse color.

All in all, this is nothing we can do our jobs with.

Since i am a new user, I am sure i have missed some basic concepts and work-arounds discussed 5 years ago, as it was introduced in the V2.
I would be very thankful if some veterans here could just write me the sentence or two what have i missed to click in order to get the usable render elements, like we used to output it from Max/Maya etc.

thanks a lot in advance!
best regards
Igor Posavec
3d-io

Hi Igor,

You will find that many concepts from other render engines will not apply to Maxwell. If you are used to deal with a compositing workflow relying on individual passes to create the final output you will have to adapt a new type of workflow.
typical diffuse, GI, reflection, lighting and/ or raw versions of them are not available in Maxwell. This stems from the fact that Maxwell works differently internally and it does not "know" about a GI ray or a purely diffuse component as everything is basically reflected light.
You could mimic a few passes with some extra effort like multiple renders and different setup to mimic a few of the passes you used to work with but I don't think its worth the hassle. Old habits die hard but I found the lack of passes never a concern, quite the opposite actually. A workflow based on passes does not only have advantages after all.
Can you show an example of what you need to do and how you did it in another engine? Maybe we can figure out a different approach.

Regards,

Ben

I also never missed the tons of passes you're used to from other engines.
The maxwell image itself is really good and doesn't need so much pass tweaking. I usually get away with brightness/contrast and slight color corrections, sometimes only for specific materials.

concerning the shadow pass:
You have to select 'Shadow' on each material to activate it for the shadow pass. I find this a bit annoying, but today, I almost have all my materials saved with shadow activated. IMHO there should be an override command which activates the shadow pass for all elements.
But be careful as the shadow pass slows down the rendering drastically

Often the question is not to use passes to add or amplify certain aspects of an image but to construct the entire image out of passes in post. This allows for great control over aspects of the final image at the cost of a more complicated workflow and lots of files. Imagine the art director asking to adjust the reflection on a piece of metal for the 100th time, thats easy to do with passes and often there is no time to fire off another render. Still lots of things need to be considered -bitdepth, color mapping and gamma most importanty- and I greatly prefer to work with as few elements as possible.


Ben

Hello Tora, kami,

hey, thank you very much for the swift feedback, this helps me a lot to understand the situation

Unfortunately, in our case it does not matter if a typical Maxwell artist finds his images without passes more beautiful or comfortable: the problem is that our customers need them. They want separate passes for the color logo on the package, and separate shadow and reflection passes to make it more soften and so on and so on - you know how it is when you do contract work with advertising agencies .
The render pass problem did not exist as i was doing some freestyle, hobby gallery images - as soon as i moved to commercial production with the classic comp pipe-line, this became an obstacle.
I am also quite sure that it is from the code not very hard to add pure color/bitmap diffuse pass into Maxwell. The fundamental base is already there, MW does at moment even more different complicated passes.

Resume:
I have found a small workaround - i skipped using Maxwell Studio, but done everything in Max directly. I rendered in Max with Maxwell, and since the camera position is the same, i have changed the renderer afterwards to mentalray and rendered out the needed diffuse and illumination passes - the position of camera and objects is fitting perfectly. That down side is that i have to covert all materials to MR or scanline.

thanks for your help!
best regards
Igor Posavec
3d-io

It would be nice to have something like this however:

http://blog.irayrender.com/post/7694889 ... xpressions

Igor, have you read/installed this PS plugin; http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mxdocsv3/Photoshop

Reflection pass has to be rendered seperately, like you said, but fresnel pass might work as an alternative.

In the case of reflections on glass, a seperate render is needed, either with a Matt object behind the glass OR by using a black-glossy material as a proxy.

creating final image with artistic touch is not mathematic ... you are free to use any method or create new to get what you want

eric nixon wrote:Igor, have you read/installed this PS plugin; http://support.nextlimit.com/display/mxdocsv3/Photoshop
Reflection pass has to be rendered seperately, like you said, but fresnel pass might work as an alternative.
In the case of reflections on glass, a seperate render is needed, either with a Matt object behind the glass OR by using a black-glossy material as a proxy.

Hello Eric,

finally i have found the correct version of Photoshop plugin (it was in betas) which can open the mxi files - thanks a lot for the tip this is a huge help in the workflow!!

thanks
best regards