Maxwell Render | Official public forum

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-rendering/

I saw this too.
It's very useful and interesting.
It mostly about RenderMan and Arnold renderer.

I didn't read the whole thing, It reminds one about all the mystical render settings we needed to worry about before Maxwell.... ah the bad old days.

Sounds like someone should sell the big studios a functional material library then they could evaluate properly, as thats the crucial step to achieve automated rendering workflow.

95% of the materials freely available for assesment (here or mxm gallery) are simply wrong or use additive values going over 100% (The NL presets use additive mixes often, as do the plugins when converting native materials.... WHY????)

This encourages most users to do the same, although the manual correctly warns about this, so my tip is only use additive layers when your really stuck regarding material brightness. It really is rarely needed.

And read the manual (even the old one) and trust to listen to people like Tom @NL, for advanced techniques, but steer clear of most third party info, Remember Forums are quite similar to graffiti on a toilet cubicle.. Philosophically speaking.

BTW, anyone knows what's happened to Hungry Cat render ?