Everything related to Maxwell Render and general stuff that doesn't fit in other categories.
#397374
Nasok wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:32 pm
I think forums are quiet because of different reason
I'm all ears. Please share your insights.
Nasok wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:32 pm
What you're picking up here is just a surface of the problem
So the situation is actually worse? Like the Rhino plug-in developer who joined in March and already left in May?
Nasok wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:32 pm
If you can't afford it to yourself, if you can't manage client's expectations and your team's project time - that's another question
Since you don't know me and my organisation (in the +5,000 employee category, Northern Europe), you may rather not lecture me about expectation management, for such attitude is aloof and arrogant.

Have a good day.
#397377
Nasok wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:32 pm
I think forums are quiet because of different reason.
What you're picking up here is just a surface of the problem ... and it is childish to blame the developers.
Maxwell never was the fastest render engine. Not then, not now and it never will be. Maxwell is here not for the speed. It's here for the quality which is second to none. Still. Pretty much unmatched.
Honestly, i think this has to stop.
I think the reason why Maxwell lost it is because of this thinking of having the best quality out there, unmatched, super realistic, oh my god and whatnot.
So users loyal to the engine always backed up every problem and every roadblock with this notion of Maxwell being superb, super realistic and all that stuff, which was true, back then.. WAS.

Now im pretty sure developers still hold this thought and still think about Maxwell as a top noch quality render, now the thing is.. its not like that anymore, the sooner people wake up, the better it is, but it appears we already lost the train long ago.

There are a lot of other engines that are more than capable to produce Maxwell quality (if not better) with less headaches, faster and frankly more modern, because maxwell is stagnant. Arnold Vray Corona Renderman even Redshift can match maxwell quality. can produce super stellar superb renders, in less time, with a more friendly workflow, with more modern tools, with more everything.

Now if back then NL came up with a workflow/system/update/whatever you want to call it, to make maxwell a bit less heavy on calculation (by being a bit less attached to this super realism physically accurate crap) and faster, we would be on a total different point.

What im saying here is many years has passed where people asked to have a faster engine over features, and nothing was done about it. Please dont give me this denoise stuff, denoising is just blurring images, and they dont look as good as the non-denoised image. so if you are a maxwell user and use denoiser, just go learn Vray imo. Because your denoising will just destroy your caustic, your light sharpness and all the details you were praising Maxwell for, except some cases and particular scenarios.

Bottom end, i think Maxwell render can not be improved in speed. Because how they coded it at day #1. So this product will never change, otherwise it would already been changed, they added denoising (in a good way too, i admit it) but still.. I dont see anymore reason to use Maxwell over a Vray or Corona or Arnold or Redshift or ....... insert any name, price included.

Its a shame because the best thing Maxwell render have is not Studio, is not its quality its not denoising, its simply the Material Editor and the Multilight system.
the material editor is probably the best thing this software has, and there is nothing else out there in the market, not even close.
Thats why it infuriates me because this engine could be a monster, but its speed and lack of modern structure/feature, is just killing it slowly.

my 2 cents.
#397378
Image This is just a WIP which sums up my mood, the materials are mostly proxies for now.

Feynmans right this time, its bad.

From my perspective as a C4D artist, I dont think we'll see a finished maxwell animation pipeline, until maxwell is sold to a new software house, which probably wont happen.

My current pipeline lacks openVDB (c4d doesnt have that yet) and support for animated materials / movie textures is crude. But having tested other renderers, its still far and away the quickest workflow, and the quality is also far ahead, to the point that the experienced user is VISUALLY able to calibrate the dataset. (light levels, material power..)

I cant imagine having to use nodes to setup every materials in my scene, literally 10x as many mouse clicks involved and a lot of squinting... So for the next decade I expect to use the current software and just upgrade hardware...
#397379
Max wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:10 pm
Nasok wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:32 pm
I think forums are quiet because of different reason.
What you're picking up here is just a surface of the problem ... and it is childish to blame the developers.
Maxwell never was the fastest render engine. Not then, not now and it never will be. Maxwell is here not for the speed. It's here for the quality which is second to none. Still. Pretty much unmatched.
Honestly, i think this has to stop.
I think the reason why Maxwell lost it is because of this thinking of having the best quality out there, unmatched, super realistic, oh my god and whatnot.
So users loyal to the engine always backed up every problem and every roadblock with this notion of Maxwell being superb, super realistic and all that stuff, which was true, back then.. WAS.

I'm totally agree with your statements. The reason why forums are so quiet is because users are ditching Maxwell and moving to other options. The Material Gallery that used to be great now remains almost empty with less than 2000 materials compared with the tenth of thousands in its best times. And the posts in Facebook hardly get 5 likes. Users are not watching at Maxwell anymore.

I'm one of those users that remained loyal to Maxwell because it WAS the best render engine in the market. I still use the 4.2 for all my projects but I'm already considering moving to other options that offer sped and quality as good or even better than Maxwell. I have been considering Octane Render which -by the way- started just back in 2012 and 6 years latter they are launching its version 4 with a fast and high quality engine that use ANY and ALL Cuda capable cards in your PC, don't even have to be the same model! And as other have mentioned there are plenty of interesting alternatives like Arion Render, Vray, etc.
Maxwell was released in 2004, it has more time and more experience than Octane or Arion and I expected awesome things for the future of Maxwell but sadly, it is already behind its competitors.
Users -like myself- have requested a GPU solution for years and NL just answered that they were not moving to the GPU train because the technology was not mature enough and so... Now is too late.
The release of the version 4 with "GPU Support" was really disappointing. Even the GPU engine is slow, it only can use one GPU card and it doesn't even support complex materials or effects... So, it is technically useless.

I don't know what is happening in NL but I fear it is too late to pull up this plane.
I can tell that the next time that I spend dollars in a render engine will be probably for Octane or Vray...
Anyway, thanks for all this years of awesome images NL, I will miss you... maybe.
#397380
Max wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:10 pm
I think the reason why Maxwell lost it is because of this thinking of having the best quality out there, unmatched, super realistic, oh my god and whatnot.
Personally, if Maxwell Render becomes biased to speed up the rendering time (like other software cited),
that's the reason that would make me go elsewhere...


I do not understand the speed bashing that a lot of people do.

The quality of rendering depends on complex algorithms that can not be simplified without altering realism.
NL can at best, decrease the grain on a given SL (it did it on some release with sss)
The only way to speed up the rendering is the hardware, and we come to a time when it becomes interesting...
Seriously, how do you do better than others in less time, it's absurd.


For me the big downside with NL is its lack of communication, especially on the forum.
Fernando is alone to handle this, I would not like to be in his place.
On the Allegorithmic forum, developers respond to some messages, even the ceo comes to post messages...
#397381
Redshift, Octane and Arnold are already out from the industrial and product design software point of view (no OBJ based standalone front-end). That leaves Arion (standalone, accepts OBJ), Corona (no standalone), Indigo (no standalone), Renderman (no standalone), Thea (no standalone) and Vray (no standalone), before having to succumb to the awful Keyshot, but we are not there just yet; looks like Arion is the only current option besides Maxwell (Alias, Catia, Creo, NX, Rhino and SolidWorks environments).

Interesting.
#397383
I just got my Maxwell 4.2 license in hopes to support development. I'm actually a Lightwave user which even mentioning Maxwell in their forums would mean blasphemy since everyone is on the Octane bandwagon. Since I'm not doing animation but stills, I want something that will give me the workflow to think in terms of a photographer rather than a CG artist (worrying about nodes and other complexities). Anyway, I'm looking forward for improvements in speed. Is there any indication that AI technology will eventually be implemented? Until GPU is fully completed for production use for Maxwell looks like it's on the right track - should be the next logical step. For whatever reason, renders on Maxwell look so natural and organic, even simple scenes. Octane to me looks like dry cardboard sometimes, though, which is why I ultimately went for the former (not to say there are no incredible images from Octane...).

A word of similarity: I also bought a license for Lightwave just because I wanted to support them when everyone was saying it's dead - but I liked its pricing point and what it had to offer for my purposes. I'm looking forward for some kind of comeback for Maxwell, too. In the meantime, I love the workflow. I've read that there's a possibility for removing Maxwell Studio and have Maxwell devoted as a plug-in. While I might be a minority working in illustration in Maxwell, Studio is really my only means to render out my compositions. It will really hurt to have that removed so I'll be forced to move on to another engine. I really don't want to work in a program meant to be used for architecture to set-up my scenes.
Last edited by Raphael Tobar on Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:10 am, edited 3 times in total.
#397384
feynman wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:43 pm
Redshift, Octane and Arnold are already out from the industrial and product design software point of view (no OBJ based standalone front-end). That leaves Arion (standalone, accepts OBJ), Corona (no standalone), Indigo (no standalone), Renderman (no standalone), Thea (no standalone) and Vray (no standalone), before having to succumb to the awful Keyshot, but we are not there just yet; looks like Arion is the only current option besides Maxwell (Alias, Catia, Creo, NX, Rhino and SolidWorks environments).

Interesting.
Or you can just rent 3ds max monthly and use the miriad of render engines in there. Hell you could even buy Houdini Indie and use it just to import your OBJ model and render out stuff. Houdini indie is 269$ year.. i mean.. output at 4k and supported engines. from the website: "Houdini Indie works with the following third party renderers: RenderMan, Arnold, Redshift and OctaneRender. V-ray and Maxwell Render will be supported in the future".
Thats just an example. I dont know much about your industrial product design workflow, but if you talk about OBJ, and rent 3ds max monthly for 200$, im pretty sure you'd have way more fun working in there with other engines.

p.s. removing maxwell studio and focusing on some plugins will just declare the death of Maxwell imo. Studio has to stay, actually it needs to receive more focus. I'd personally drop all plugins and focus on studio/materials/multilight/speed/import export/data exchange. Imagine if studio could read data from your software instead of doing the other way around. You import an FBX into studio with Maya xgen, or 3ds max hair, or whatever. They need to make studio a core system, not spreading their resources into plugins imo.
#397385
Everyone here has a piece of truth. I am here since early alpha. Back then it was at least once in a week upgrade circle. Some of you remember "its Friday" sentence. Everyone was eager what is new. Personally I preferred and still prefer features. Every upgrade I am looking on new features. Bug fixes and speed improvements don't interest me as much. I have maybe 40x faster computer, than I had back then. GPU rendering is maybe the future, but since it is "another" software made from scratch, I don't think it was worth of energy put in there in fast evolving technology in GPU segment. I also think, that NL should hold the line of physically accurate approach. They will never take the bigger part of market, but it shouldn't be the main purpose. Everyone has its place an can survive and live on its own ground. Maybe it is time to redefine it again. There were a lot of polls back in alpha/beta days. It is important to listen user base. I am also looking where and how other render engines go. I like corona from early days. They were going by research way. "Their" VCM algorithm took my attention, since known sun caustic though dielectrics limitation. If it can be implemented to Maxwell by unbiased way. Also tonemaping and visual quality close to Maxwell. I was wondering, how good were Corona outputs before they had even sss implemented. But they don't have standalone version and rhino plugin. Also i don't like nowadays subscriptions license systems. But it is also about users. Many talented people were playing with Maxwell back in alpha/beta days. I also remember hot discussions when NL released V1. Users wanted back "beta" look. Very minor difference, but visible to some people. One of the greatest features was release of FIRE in plugins. As a Rhino user I appreciate it a lot. I don't know what is going on in NL, but I was wondering why was V4 released in such a hurry, and when NL sold X-flow the same year, I was almost sure that there are some bigger changes inside. Also coders are 14 years older. It is a big difference in software industry. It is similar to athletes. There are a lot of things I can write here, but it is already long post. I wrote here just some points. There are many users and you can see it from many points of view. I love Maxwell and I will always do. It is very difficult to live in fast and "just good enough society" these days. It is not only in rendering industry, but everywhere you look. But it is not making people happy. One of my friend - artist didn't got the job (painting picture), because customer told him, that another person offered him more square cm for the same price. Blizzard world. But have a nice summertime and stay positive :-). Patrik
#397386
feynman wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:51 pm
lebulb wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:41 pm
I do not understand the speed bashing that a lot of people do.
Moi non plus, mais c'est la vie : )
Just to clarify and answer this. The bashing is because most of the time, FIRE fails so much that Maxwell is left without a real preview.
You need to waste so much time to understand whats your final output gonna be, that is simply frustrating. The whole render is covered by grain, some parameters like SSS caustic and antialias will only be shown at a very high SL leaving you completely blind to whats gonna happen. What if you made a mistake? You gonna re-render hours of rendering?

FIRE is simply not enough, not remotely reliable, and very buggy, crashes a lot.
There are so many times with complex materials with textures, bump height, displacement, sSs when i want to have a better visual of how the render will look that i simply can not. Render preview on maxwell are just full renders. On other engines doesnt work like that.
This slow down the whole proces of rendering by a lot. FIRE is an average tool to understand where the light comes from, but it just can not do anything else than that.
So maxwell just leaves the user in the dark in terms of preview, unless you just use lambertian very clean and simple materials.

Now if you work on PREVIZ with clean materials, not complex scenes (if you have heavy geometry maxwell voxelization time will just drop your mood to the ground to a point you want to shut down your computer and go for a walk by how slow it is) then i hear you, but if you do real complex materials, and complex scenes, you are in for a frustration challenge.


I love maxwell and always will do, im just frustrated because it was my favourite engine and i have a lot of anger due to their price change with v4 and drop of softimage support, which in exchange got me nothing just move me away from it.

I'll give you an example because you might think i only talk bla bla. this is a render i made with softimage and redshift. It took 11 minutes, DOF included, at 4k, nothing has be done in post, with Redshift on 2x nvidia 1080. I tried to do this in maxwell, do you have any idea how much it takes to produce such render in maxwell? If i told you i've done this in maxwell you would believe it, whats the difference in quality? I simply can not justify 11 minutes vs hours anymore. The quality is there.

Image

I dont want to turn this thread into engine vs engine, i have a lot of other images because i constantly render something with Redshift and try to redo it with maxwell, but i'm gonna just show this one and only. I hope u got the idea.
Last edited by Max on Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
#397388
Max wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:04 am
Or you can just rent 3ds max monthly and use the miriad of render engines in there.
That would mean that, only to be able to render, all users would have to learn another software on top of the render software, only for the sake of being an intermediary, a file-translator. That is hard to motivate.
Max wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:04 am
p.s. removing maxwell studio and focusing on some plugins will just declare the death of Maxwell imo. Studio has to stay, actually it needs to receive more focus.
Removing Studio means, as I found out by now, to migrate users to either Arion or Keyshot for 2019, the latter renderer giving me the creeps. One can only hope in that case that Arion will not face the same fate (lack of development, collapsing online user community).

What I find most peculiar is that Next Limit seems intent to alienate a fairly sizeable market segment by pushing industrial and product design departments away. Probably, the architectural visualisation market is far larger, due to the unprecedented real-estate boom since after the 2008 financial crisis. In any case, we won't know the reasons.
#397390
after reading all users opinions here at the tread I've started, I just think, NL must give at least 3 monthes MR free license to new users, I don't think they make any money from MR now so why not give it a shot...
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Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milk[…]