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I'm starting to look at Revit as we're seeing that many architectural employment offerings requiring a knowledge of it. Just curious why no Maxwell plugin? Is such a plugin possibly in the works? Joe

steve holt!

This is a long time request that it never was attended. I heard several excuses, incluiding that autodesk revit SDK is not accesible for the developers but I saw a lot of programs and plug ins for revit on the market. I hope some day soon we have a maxwell plugin for revit. The revit market in Usa it's huge as you have noticed on the employeement adds. I hope next limit are paying attention to them.

yolk wrote:steve holt!

wagurto wrote:This is a long time request that it never was attended. I heard several excuses, incluiding that autodesk revit SDK is not accesible for the developers but I saw a lot of programs and plug ins for revit on the market. I hope some day soon we have a maxwell plugin for revit. The revit market in Usa it's huge as you have noticed on the employeement adds. I hope next limit are paying attention to them.

I was an archicad user for several years but seems like the current is strongly headed in favor of Revit. I liked being able within Archicad to put out a rather quick Maxwell render without having to export to another program.

Revit just got an API and it is still not complete... So programming in Revit is something really new... Even Autodesk hasn't been able to add a (fully working - 3dsmax like - with nice results) mental ray edition. You can have really nice results with "Advanced Lighting" for simple presentations...but rendering with Revit can be disappointing. For example there is no way to add a simple background picture or an alpha channel !!!!!!!
Also, a plugin in Revit would be simply an exporter to MXS since Revit has no UVmapping tools, subobject handling,subdividing, smoothing, environment handling, import/export capabilities other than Autodesk formats....
Generally, Revit is a modeler of it's own category...

Revit is not an application that aims to make professional renderings because Adesk wants to sell MAX... The sooner people understand this, the better.

JTB wrote: Revit is not an application that aims to make professional renderings because Adesk wants to sell MAX... The sooner people understand this, the better.

So true! Right now, Revit -> Max -> Maxwell is the best way. Although, the models exported from Revit are shit. Most of the time, I just use the Revit model (from our idiot architects) as a template to remodel in Max.

Bubbaloo wrote: So true! Right now, Revit -> Max -> Maxwell is the best way. Although, the models exported from Revit are shit. Most of the time, I just use the Revit model (from our idiot architects) as a template to remodel in Max.

I never used Max for arch modeling... You use the aec tools? Do you recommend this way for (at least) easy models? I use Max just for rendering and I don't have the time to learn modeling... So, I will have to stay with Revit modeling... Although I think that if you spend time learning families in Revit, you can have very nice building models...

JTB wrote:
I never used Max for arch modeling... You use the aec tools? Do you recommend this way for (at least) easy models? I use Max just for rendering and I don't have the time to learn modeling... So, I will have to stay with Revit modeling... Although I think that if you spend time learning families in Revit, you can have very nice building models...

No, I don't use the aec tools. I just poly model everything. I've gotten pretty fast with it.

When I say Revit models are shit, I mean they come in with unwelded verts, double faces, overlapping faces, etc... Revit is excellent at doing what it's supposed to - Building Information Modeling, construction documents, and simple visualizations. But feeding bad models to Maxwell is like putting low grade gasoline in a Ferrari.

Bubbaloo wrote:No, I don't use the aec tools. I just poly model everything. I've gotten pretty fast with it.

When I say Revit models are shit, I mean they come in with unwelded verts, double faces, overlapping faces, etc... Revit is excellent at doing what it's supposed to - Building Information Modeling, construction documents, and simple visualizations. But feeding bad models to Maxwell is like putting low grade gasoline in a Ferrari.

Interesting comparison, but probably true As far as you can tell, are the issues with double/overlapping faces due to the architects not giving adequate consideration to the need for clean geometry for use in rendering apps, or is it a rather unavoidable "nature of the beast"?

Josephus Holt wrote:As far as you can tell, are the issues with double/overlapping faces due to the architects not giving adequate consideration to the need for clean geometry for use in rendering apps, or is it a rather unavoidable "nature of the beast"?

It is just the nature of the software. The thing that I like about Max is the full control over the mesh. In Revit (and other CAD software) you get what you get. Insert a window or door into a wall, or joint two or more walls, and you have to live with the sometimes messy boolean operation that it creates. The Ferrari will still run, but it won't perform at it's best. I'm talking about highly detailed modeling that CAD programs aren't good at producing.

Yes, I run into somewhat the same issues with Rhino although there are some controls over the mesh that is generated. Meshes created in Cinema4D (which I also have) are much cleaner, but I MUCH prefer to model in Rhino (NURBS) than a polygon modeler probably because of years having used Autocad. However, I've seen some really great architectural models done completely in C4D and of course Max.