[Richard]

see title

[Bubbaloo]

How is this helpful, really. Not trying to be rude, but don't you think specific problems may be easier to track down than an overall generalization? I have had absolutely no stability problems with 1.7.1 so far. I render through the Max plugin, so maybe your problems are with Maxwell Studio?

[Richard]

Brian

Mate I know it's not helpful but man I've got the shits!

1.6 didn't work for me - 1.7 as well. I can't export from SketchUp anymore. So I am yes forced back into Studio - I get to do one change to the scene then have to save it, close it open it, make another change, save it, close it and then open it again to make another change!

Now all the smoothing has gone out of my geometry!

42 times tonight I've had to go through this process!

Now you might understand why I'm a little GRRRRR!

[Bubbaloo]

Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun!

I hope you get things straightened out soon.

[JorisMX]

I must admitt that I'm experiencing a general shakiness in Studio.

Sometimes its very simple things that make the App act randomly strange and/or Crash.
Just some examples that come to mind:

Grouping certain objects: causes Studio to crash. Don't ask me which ones, it just happens some times,
All I can say is they don't have alot of polygons and they are pretty simple geometric objects.

Cloning objects often results in being forced into move mode as if the left mouse button was stuck.
You click clone and the next mouse movement you make catapults the new clone into orbit.

Some times when grouping one or two of a group get catapulted to a very strange location as well, without being stuck in move mode, just randomly giving objects insane coordinates.
Random crashes with simple scenes, overall unsmooth behavior in scenes, making it almost impossible to work without restarting a few times just as Richard said.
I would accept this if I was using an old G4 or G5.
However Running a Mac Pro with lots of power and a clean system sort of makes one feel uncomfortable.

I've had situations in which I wasn't able to sit down with a client showing them what I do in Maxwell Studio because its so embarressing experiencing all these bugs and crashes.
The last thing you want is a client thinking you're loosing time due to a "bad" software.

I've also experienced multiple crashes in Network Rendering on our Renderfarm even though I cleaned the .mxs and wrote the scene via pack & go to a Network drive.
Most of the time the issue is textures mxcl is looking for, cant find, but are RIGHT there in the same folder where they should be and where mx should be looking for.

I come from a heavy postproduction/preprint background.
This being said, that an everyday task for me is to link an image in an application and edit it a couple of times during the working process until the client or I am satisfied.
Normal workflows like this include replacing an Image on a network path, Indesign aknowloging the fact that the image has been edited and letting me replace the old state with the new one by hitting refresh.
In our case I edit a texture used in Maxwell and Studio often has a hard time noticing this.
It has happened to me various times that I find myself manually reloading images or saving multiple instances of one image to point mxed to the latest version.

Most annoying in this workflow is, if I export via pack & go and the old version is already in that folder, the Image does NOT get replaced when loading the exported mxs on a renderfarm.
This leads to confusion and lots of extra work for something that should be very simple.

Dear Maxwell Team, please don't get me wrong. I love your software.
After all there are very good arguments why we are using Maxwell for our Render output. It's just all these tiny things that sum up that make the working experience very troublesome sometimes.

I too would love a bunch of the new features (I also asked for and) listed on this forum.
But when I think about all these little things, I can only support Richards opinion since I have had several very very long nights and weekend I wouldn't have had to if all these things would be working.
I realize that for approaching bugs/errors/compability issues you need to replicate situations and Hardware. Right now I'm working on a Mac Pro with OS 10.4.11 with MX 1.7 .
However I've had all of the above listed problems on a macbook, mac pro, G5 and also to some extent on a xp64 intel quadcore based system with perfectly clean installation.

I hope this post doesn't just sink to the ground and goes by unnoticed, since this really is a problem!!!

I do not want to sound bitter, so I really must add that the Next Limit team and esp. Mihai and other people on this forum have helped me tremendously!
I wish other Software companies had such a support and community.

Thanks,
Joris

[Stinkie7000]

Dear Maxwell Team, please don't get me wrong. I love your software. After all there are very good arguments why we are using Maxwell for our Render output. It's just all these tiny things that sum up that make the working experience very troublesome sometimes.

+1.

[Richard]

Joris

Well said mate!

I too am an absolute Maxwell devote! I understand the difficulty in harnassing software to multiple platforms (I have absolutely no idea how anyone does it though!).

I really love the idea that new features be added to maxwell - and some of the latest inclusions in 1.7 are simply amazing! The problem I guess for me is that life is short and hours spent each day at the moment dealing with issues created by software is frustrating!

I would also like ou thank Mihai in particular for his continual support to questions and ongoing frustrations!

[JorisMX]

Yeah, Mihai for president!

I believe it must be difficult to produce a software that is sooo acurate but still usable.
Perhaps I' m just stupid for using OSX for everything, but thats what I have to work with!

Richard, Life is indeed short, and eventhough I'm totally IN LOVE with maxwell I have spent an unhealthy amount of work ony the jobs I use maxwell for.
I'm sure if I had tried to achieve the realism in mental ray or brazil or something I would have gone totally nuts.

Still,... my eyes hurt and my friends are starting to forget my name!
Time to be a human... sooon hopefully

[Stinkie7000]

I too am in love with Maxwell. Yes, really. It's an incredible instrument. No doubt about that.

Yet, as I've stated in another thread, I feel there's things that, to say the least, need work. Yes, like the Studio's stability.

I'd really like the Studio become more stable than it is now. And I'd really like to know when NL thinks this'll happen.

'Cause, what NL and I got, is a business deal, clear and simple. I pay, they deliver a product. And that product is supposed to work as advertised.

If it does not, then at the very least I'd like to know when it will. Seems reasonable enough to me.

[yanada]

I must add my vote

[KurtS]

I want new features AND new, stable releases.

[Mihai]

I hope I won't annoy you with saying this is unfortunately the nature of some bugs. Some appear on both Win/Mac platforms and it's easy to catch and fix them. Others appear only on one platform and in special cases while it can also depend on a users specific configuration. These are the most sneaky and hard to find ones. In these cases it really helps us a lot if you can supply as much data as possible and a simple scene so we can replicate the bug/crash.

[Stinkie7000]

Allrighty, fair enough. Will do.

Still ... do you realise NL is the only developer of whom I've actually seriously considered demanding a refund?

And I'm a Maxwell lover! That's gotta tell ya something, I think.

[Richard]

Thanks Mihai

The problem for me is that the bugs in studio as seemingly random. Not file size dependant and don't follow any select workflow progression - in that it just happens and seemingly without cause!

Don't get me wrong I understand how difficult it could be to define why and what causes bugs. My surprise I guess is that NL have no bug tracker built in!