[Mike Amos 20170711101533]

BTW, just in case anyone is thinking of buying or watching the Sean Bean film, Drone, please think again. I did and I have been trying to scrub it out of my mind ever since. it is the cinematographic equivalent of using sandpaper on one's own eyeballs and rinsing them out with listerine and chilli sauce.

[Mihai]

imgur.com

No signup necessary. After upload, click the little arrow in the top right corner of your image > Get share links, and in the new window > Copy BB forums link (or something like that).

[Mike Amos 20170711101533]

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=3B9C5A96A ... 96AA152674

[JDHill]

My guess would be that either the emitters are not of a realistic power, the scene is modeled at an unrealistic scale, or the camera exposure is set for something like the outdoors on a sunny day, instead of artificial lighting in an enclosed space. If it is the latter (looks that way) and you have rendered with .mxi enabled, then you could open the .mxi file and adjust the exposure, and save out another image. I can see from how clean the image is that you've rendered it for some time, so it would be a shame to lose that work -- on the other hand, I see a couple of bright spots that might imply you've done this inside of SketchUp, in the Maxwell FIRE window, instead of rendering in Maxwell Render (which is necessary in order to have/use an .mxi file, see here, and also here, in case you are not yet aware of the Multilight feature), in which case it would be necessary to render again.

[Mike Amos 20170711101533]

I was trying to use FIRE to preview the eventual render, when I get there. I am finding that the documentation does a lot to explain the different aspects of Maxwell renders but finding a page that tells me HOW to change these different settings is where it falls down for me. The documentation is either not there or it is hidden for anyone other than a practiced user. As a noob this is not only not helpful, it is downright obfuscational. I take it we are supposed to be able to learn this without a language and code degree?

[JDHill]

Well, I can tell you that nobody is intentionally trying to obfuscate things for you; there are many parts to the system, and the plugin simplifies accessing them as much as I know how to do, and to the level I consider appropriate to serve the different use cases it must support. Its documentation (here) covers mainly the Scene Manager window, which is the primary tool you use to compose the scene. Additionally, there is documentation specifically on the plugin's menu/toolbar (here), after which you should consider reading up on the Maxwell Render application itself (here), to become familiar with how rendering with Maxwell works in general.

[Mike Amos 20170711101533]

Another attempt. https://onedrive.live.com/?id=3B9C5A96A ... 96AA152674