Maxwell Render | Official public forum

I was wondering about the upcoming update of Sketchup, most likely in the next couple of months, will I have to anticipate waiting a long time for the Maxwell plugin to catch up. Maybe the current plugin will keep working or maybe not. Has Next Limit anything lined up along with the release of SU6?

Maybe a silly question but it seems so frustrating to have an updated SU and not being able to work with it thinking that might be another test of patience. I am really happy with Maxwell 1.1 UB and the plugin and getting a bit addicted to both SU and Maxwell, just hope this combination will be going stromg for a long time.

same here!

Yes same for me.. It would be nice, to have an answer from "Next Limit"

We are prepared for SU6 and unless something really dramatical happens with SU SDK we can accommodate the new version within a few days.

I've also started to talk to SketchUp people about SU6 just to make sure.

Pavol

would love to know what is:
- new in SU6
- new in MRplug in next version
Nils

happy to see SU6 is under the attention.
would it be possible to fix the mirrored or flipped emitter faces at export. I love to work with components but under export the mirrored emitters faces have their normals flipped. I now explode the mirrored components as a workaround, its a bit of a hassle.

After investing serious time in Maxwell en SU I just hope the two will keep up the good work. I have never had such succes with my work since SU started to get into my workflow. Maxwell is now also a solid part of my work with the same effect.

now i am beginning to understand the complexity of maxwell and how to deal with it i am impressed by the SU plugin and the people who wrote it. Thanks a lot, I am advertising my enthousiasm for SU-Maxwell among my colleagues and fellow architects as much a possible.

I think someon should write a "SUtoMaxwell for dummies" as soon as possible. Maxwell is much easier to use than it initially looks like.

Vray Beta for SU have just been released...

same here...
the fact that i was able to pull out the swedish competition mostly alone with SU+MR, outputting many images that would have cost me otherwise a minimum of 1000 euros each, and at the same time refining my design all the time until the last possible minute was something i never would have considered possible before i discovered the alpha results, and when i invested in the beta time and $$.
With good knowledge of SU and MR, it is now possible for a very small team of architects that are NOT CG specialists but still conceptors of architecture, to output professionnal quality views of their own work. This is a real plus for the workflow, as well as keeping costs down!

Nils
I'll give Vray plug in a look, from all i've seen of vray results, i still prefer the output of MR...if vray cuts the speed of renders by 50% then it might be an alternative..

its a bit of a nightmare to imagine the SU-Maxwell combination would not be continued. sure the nextlimit team seams to be supporting SU and Mac quiet well with the plugin in the latest UB. That was a relieve. I wonder sometimes how large the usergroup is that models in SU and then on a mac. The forum at SU seems to have little interest in Maxwell after the first experiences with the beta releases.
At the forum at SU I see results posted with other renderers that are not at all of the quality I am looking for and getting with Maxwell. I rather keep things sketchy in SU and then add a few amazing renders with Maxwell.

how about 1100 submissions at the design competition in Sweden!! amzing too, I am sure Nils, I can pick your submission out of them by just looking for maxwell output and something looking KIC .....lol. End of the month we can see for ourselfs how about a 100000 hours of design work looks like on the Swedish website. (esitmating about 80 hours avarage per submission)

I would like to add my enthusiasm to this thread.

I also use Cinema 4D and have been with M~R since the beginning, and there has been much trouble getting the integration into C4D right. (I believe we are close however)

In the meantime, the SU plug-in has become very simple and elegant, and I am finding myself doing more and more M~R work in SU. In fact, I can say that M~R and SU are my favorite two apps right now. Sure I need to go into C4D to do animation and compositing, but that represents a smaller percentage of my work.

Thank you NL for continuing to be commited to SketchUP. With SU6 and Grizzly coming up, I can only envision using SU more and more, to the point that I am going to stop using AutoCAD all together. With M~R integrated into my workflow it is the perfect companion.

Thanks!

i'll look forward to your input too not so many maxwell's will be there!
Lets say about 4 weeks / 2 people on each its more like 250 hours per competition i'd say.. ( we were 2.5 doing it full time + week ends and some evenings and spent around 300 hours.)
So 1100 x 250 = 275 000 work hours... this is totally crazy...makes me wonder if its even worth participating to this kind of competitions in the future..

I also agree on what i see on the SU forum: there is competition coming with podium, kerythrea, Vray etc... but none seem yet to be a close competitor in terms of image quality..Anyway i stopped trying to convince my fellow architects using other softwares... they prefer to continue outputing bad lighting... be it! It will narrow the competition .

What is grizzly?
N.

The competition is and was crazy if you expect any kind of profitable turnout, its a hobby project but interesting to see 1100 plans since we have such a good idea about the program and what it was like to design the extension. That makes it very interesting to see this huge effort by all the competitors. I am expecting incredibly imaginative and creative results where as my submission is too much program related and also a bit too restrained architecturaly. Its not a Maxwellian extravaganza at all, would have loved to do that but found myself wondering about the program and the site too much to get into something wild and new as fare as the architecture is concerned. Will do that next competition now that I am getting my Maxwell images looking better all the time.

What is see at the forum at SU is that people are comparing Kerkythea and Podium with Maxwell using examples without any kind of complex textures, no bump or hardly or reflectivity maps, just simple SU textures. In that case Maxwell is not needed or can show its strenghts. Architecture has everything to do with texture and its subtile differences and colours. Usually I am horrified by what others are doing at the SU-forums with their renderings but wisely keep my mouth and keyboard shut not to dissappoint the enthousiastic spirit of all those new comers. Some do manage to get nice looking results but never as stunning as what you can do with Maxwell. Hope Next Limit will keep Maxwell at this top position.

comment on the Su forum: i share your point of view 100%... let them loose time with other software...I'll put up stockholm's renders there once results are announced and we'll see what others can come up to straight out of sketchup with their plug ins ( none of them convincing yet, besides vray which outputs nice lights)

As for the project we both did: I am not a fan of deconstructivist and bilbao style architecture ( its more sculpture to me than architecture) and i do believe in contextualism ( avoid the bilbao syndrome aka parachuted project from space that you can drop basically in any city or landscape). I know this kind of architecture is hype in US arch schools for example ( i spent a few days at Cooper Union NYC and believe me its not like here in europe in terms of teaching ( john Hejduk / eisenmann etc... People there outputed ( 1992) sculpture like deconstructivist projects that were hard to understand )... Now bilbao has come, and every city for a while wants its share of the " i have a cool incredible building lets get everyone to see it".. Once every city has its spaceship, they will get more reasonnable and back to contextual, historically linked architecture ( which is what has been done for milleniums )...
I also did a more reasonable project than a concept stuff, tried to get the program to fit in there, and respect their needs both in urban matters and architectural / functionnal matters...
When will we be able to loose precious hours on their website to see all pdf's?

Nils

end of this month the swedish websit mentioned.

i actually thought myself how to use maxwell because of the competition and couln't even get very basic results before. Now I have clients screaming for my presentations and paying for it. They can not believe the results. Funny also is that now they can see their design beforehand sometimes there is total panic of the results ....not that they critise my work but critise their own design decisions and start doing a lot of redesign even when the construction is already ongoing. So you see what a great design tool maxwell really is. In the past the images looked clearly like glossy computer images but now the textures and lighting is just there to see. I love to work like this and I am happy to see this is possible in my lifetime.

I love all those gorgeously shaped buildings like sculptures. They censor themself of course because of the involved costs. As do those beautiful Maxwell renderings that are way to expensive to pay for in normal projects. I hope the Gaudi's will stay among us with their great examples of crazyness and beauty. Its just less then a perecentage of all building projects. I think in competitions they are after that percentage of brilliant designers that as well have taken the program in a very good understanding. But most competitions end with a very practical design, sometimes completely invisible from an architectural point of view. A jury and organiser looking at hundreds of plans usually do not usually find a lot of confidence. They most probably end with someting that shows a risk free solution from a well know architect who has done libraries before......lol.

http://www.arkitekt.se/s26256
I'm using adobe acrobat pro to load the whole site as one PDF file


no doubt server will be down before a few mins thu!

updated> server down now hehe
N

ps: please post direct links to cool projects here!

i like ( not mine of course):
http://www.arkitekt.se/s26357?skip25556=200