Maxwell Render | Official public forum

The Maxwell option for Display/Object 360 does not work rendering only a single frame.

Normals don't render correctly from FormZ either. No smoothing, so my organic shapes look like badly folded origami, once the noise clears up enough to see polygon edges. Maxwell Studio has a button to recalculate normals, it seems the formZ plugin in STILL unfinished/incomplete.

Without images, hard to say, but when I import "rogue" OBJ files - before hitting that Recalc button, one needs to enter the desired Smoothing angle value first.

But then, I am not a form-Z user.

This is with native formZ geometry. There does not appear to be a recalc normals in the formZ plugin.

I see. I'm using Studio as I have to integrate CAD data from various applications, also many for which no plug-in exists.

Yes the FormZ plugin needs Studio to fall back on. Infuriating that Nextlimit changed the licensing to paying for each plugin and for studio separately.
The formZ plugin is basically USLESS for curved surfaces (issues with normals) and does not work with the object 360 renderer.

Hello,

Regarding “Maxwell Option in display-object 360”: the formZ SDK is not working correctly for Generate Object 360, so we can not support this feature. We have written to the formZ developers asking that it be fixed, or the Maxwell be removed from the pulldown menu.

Regarding the Normals issue, could you please send a file to us that reproduces the issue? Also, a screenshot would be welcomed. It could be the typical shadow terminator issue (at the edge between illuminated and in-shadow areas: https://blender.stackexchange.com/quest ... cts-issues) or a true facetting problem. You can send a download link in a private message to me, if you prefer.

Kind regards,
Fernando

Forum Moderator wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 1:12 pm

Hello,

Regarding “Maxwell Option in display-object 360”: the formZ SDK is not working correctly for Generate Object 360, so we can not support this feature. We have written to the formZ developers asking that it be fixed, or the Maxwell be removed from the pulldown menu.

Regarding the Normals issue, could you please send a file to us that reproduces the issue? Also, a screenshot would be welcomed. It could be the typical shadow terminator issue (at the edge between illuminated and in-shadow areas: https://blender.stackexchange.com/quest ... cts-issues) or a true facetting problem. You can send a download link in a private message to me, if you prefer.

Kind regards,
Fernando

Sorry for the delay responding to this. The artifacts are not where the shadow terminates but rather across the entire surface. it can be hidden or partially resolved by changing the object tesselation in the formZ object attributes (inspector panel). it is easy to reproduce with a simple revolve or swept profile. The appearance is as if phong shading has been set to 0 deg in other applications or as if points are not welded.

Hello Brian,

Here Maxwell seems to react correctly to the different smoothing options offered by FormZ when changing thing in the inspector panel. It would be interesting to see your settings in this panel in the Attributes tab > Resolution and Smooth Shaded sections as well as the Parameters tab.

Best,
Fernando

Forum Moderator wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:33 pm

Hello Brian,

Here Maxwell seems to react correctly to the different smoothing options offered by FormZ when changing thing in the inspector panel. It would be interesting to see your settings in this panel in the Attributes tab > Resolution and Smooth Shaded sections as well as the Parameters tab.

Best,
Fernando

hello Fernando
Sorry, I posted too soon the artefacts are still there. The smooth shading settings are FormZ default and do not cause artefacts when the same object was rendered in formZ Renderzone. The Mesh resolution is just simple recommended default. Smooth shading is also left at the default settings. Exporting the CAD file as Step and rendering in Cinema 4D renders perfectly in Standard, Physical, Redshift and VRay. In Maxwell Studio version 4 there are no artefacts with this geometry but if there was I could recalculate Normals and fix it. I don't have Maxwell 4 for FormZ, if I did I would be using that instead of version 5.1.
Just to be clear - The file renders fine in version 4 but has shading artefacts in version 5.1

Hello Brian!

Could you, please, share the step file that produces that problem? (through a private message if you wish).

Thank you and sorry for the late reply.

Best wishes,
Fernando

Hi Fernando - your date notes Mon Jan. 18, 2021 - it's only Fri Jan. 14, 2021 here!

oops! I was at the airport reading on my phone and the year didn't come up so ignore the last post....

2 years on sigh....
I did not send a step file because it is every file that has shading errors. The issue is probably how Maxwell interprets FormZ normals, If I take the file into another application such as Cinema 4D, re-mesh and remove the normals and apply new normals I can get a good render without artefacts. FormZ does not work well with dense polygon meshes so not only do I have the inconvenience of needing to massage files in another application but performance is dreadful once back in FormZ.
So Nextlimit if you do ever manage to release Maxwell v6, please make sure all licenses include studio as the plugins are not reliable.
Plus after successive removal of plugins/studio from original licenses, then selling the functionality back as an additional license addon at double the price difference, your long-term customers are going to be thrilled or super angry?

The light image with shading garbage is Maxwell 5.2
The dark image with clean geometry is FormZ v9 Native (renderzone)


The scene
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ggh25m1nm5aw ... x.zip?dl=0