[stise]

Where is the support. I have been struggling with Maxwell for some time. I have no idea what is wrong, once more, I cant get any support or information from the company. I use Sketchup and was having tremendous results untill NL monkeyed around with it after the beta, nothing has been the same since. I have never seen a company do as little to support their product or otherwise communicate with their base. Why everyone continues to put up with this situation is beyond me. Yes maxwell is uniqueness is special however the lack of support especially since 1.0 is disturbing. I am now well beyond my patience quota and will soon go on an offensive campaign to to warn others of Next Limits lack of communication and accountability. For those of you using Maxwell I applaud your patience and talents, good luck with this company, you'll need it.

[-Adrian]

They have no personell for this, all employees are coding from morning to evening, except Bazuka, who is the janitor.

Sorry for your troubles Stevo

[Maxer]

Stevo, your obviously new to Maxwell, if you had been around a year ago you would have really known what it was like to not get any information from NL. They are much much better now by comparison but information still doesn’t flow very easily. I would suggest trying to work out your problems in this forum, there are many people who will try and help. What kind of problems are you having?

[stise]

I just cant cant get the emitters to work at all. I have had Maxwell from the beta release through 1.1. I was having some really promising results with the beta but ever since the official release nothing... nadda. I'm a Sketchup user who bought Maxwell as a plugin app, not necassarily for the studio. I have the manual and have read it cover to cover. Its full of info but no instructions specific to my work flow. It's convoluded and overly intense. A simple narrative tutorial such as the one Sheik had prepared for the beta plugin would suffice. It was simple, intuitive and very well constructed. I really dont understand Maxwells mission, my situation is really alarming given I bought the software, I'm motivated, have time, and I will get paid to learn and investigate this potentially great software. It seems to me that Maxwells developers are overly concerned with coding, a company cant do buisness if all they can do is code; especially when their audience is visually graphic by nature. It seems to me they are going in a direction that suggests that Maxwell is strictly intended for rendering, not an iterative product that will support the design community. Everybody knows that designeers are left hemespherical people, the creative processes are at odds with the overly academic structured approach that Maxwell is going in. The whole thing is ass backwards, the tool should be used first as a rudementary tool, one that can be used at its simplist level and then expand as the user developes confidence with it. Simply put, keep it simple stupid. The fact that there isnt support, no simple tutorial, no communication, and little useful documentation is weak and at worse disrespectful. The fact that no one from the company has commented on my inquiry here on the forum is indicative of their continued denial that the software is flawed. I spend all day, everyday modeling architectural projects and investigating design options, my work flow is diverse and is indicative of the small firm I work for. I am fortunate that I have the opportunity to do this, especially given the size of the firm. Is maxwell really more interested in developing a completely useless tool for people such as me, or is it intended as an application for people who are more interested in images rather then design? Im not interested in being an illustrater, all I want as a tool that I can use and use reasonably readily. I know there are many talented peole using Maxwell, I'm curious how many are interested in modeling or are more interested in rendering? is their really a market for a new discipline specific to rendering only? wouldnt it be better to understand the nature of the user base? For me Maxwell holds great promise but as long as its run by mathematicians and coders its doomed, Next Limit, this is your greatest weakness.

[Maxer]

Part of the problem is that Sketchup and other plugins aren’t a priority for NL right now, there to busy just trying to get the engine and all of its features working properly. They have limited resources and people and as a result they rely on the forum and people who are really good with Maxwell to work on technical issues and write tutorials. I don’t see this changing until RS1 is completely finished, but even then they will have to start working on RS2. My best suggestion is to try and work with Studio until they come out with a better Sketchup plugin. Just so you know you’re not the only one who feels like you do, most if not all of us have been saying the same things since NL missed the first release date.
You asked if there is a market for people that just do renderings and little or no modeling, the answer is yes. That’s all I do since my office uses ArchiCAD for all their projects all the models are already created for me so all I do is lighting and materials. I do have a high turn over for renderings; it varies from 2 to 5 a week so I wouldn’t have time to model even if I wanted to.

[stise]

Maxer, I'm not trying to be rude but that is a cop out. Maxwell's specificaly states that it's meant foremost as a tool that is to be integrated into other 3D aspplications. Page 8 of the manual states-

"Maxwell is a stand alone application compatible with Windows, Mac OSX and Linux in 32 bit flavors. A series of plugins connect maxwell to the most popular applications including 3dsmax, Maya, cinema 4D, Lightwave, Houdini, Rhino, Solidworks, Sketchup, Form-Z, Archicad, etc. Although an alternative workflow is possible using Maxwell Studio, a full featured 3D applicationthat includes: light eitors, material editors, render mangement, distributed rendering, MXI viewer, physical sky editor, tone mapping process, etc."

I'm confused it seems they need to understand how the program relates to their stated objectives. To me, they are starting at the wrong end of road, get a simple engine working, develop plugs, and then create perfection. Its simple really. I understand that sometimes things require a step back for every two forward, but this situation reflects something more. How do they know that once satisfied with the core they will then be able to shoe horn the plugs? inevitably somebody, or some application will be compromised. As far as I am concerned they are still in beta stage. If NL, wants to change its mission then they have that perogative, I do however think they owe their community an apology and at this point possibly a refund. Very simply, get back on track or make good on your promise and or refund people, it really is fraudulant to maintain there marketing campaign as they are. If on the other hand they were to be more transparent and forthright about Maxwells current limitations that would suffice, for me, however their ineptitude to communicate in a straight forward manner is really reflecting a degree of contempt for this community.

[Maxer]

Stevo, this is actually really funny because everything your saying has been said a million times in a million different ways ever since the beta/RC debacle happened. I know how frustrating it is to sit by month after month with little or no new information on progress; I still don't know why it's so hard for them to just give us a simple monthly update. It's obvious that the reason you don't get any answers to your questions is because they don't haven any new progress to report.

[stise]

Maxer, tell me about. As I'm writing my diatribe it seems erily familiar. Next Limit is a bunch of tools, how difficult is it to be straight up about whats happening. If I could, I'd grab them all by the ..... and pull real hard. If I had the money I'd buy the company and walk them all out the door.

Artlantis, here I come....

[kraemerJK]

Usually I try to stay away from these type of threads, but :

They have limited resources and people and as a result they rely on the forum and people who are really good with Maxwell to work on technical issues and write tutorials.

Maxer, the maxwell render forum has 23145 registered members. As far as I know, you have to have at least one license to actually be able to register. (AFAIK you have slightly more than that one license ) I think we can safely assume that at least the amount of 10.000 licenses has been sold, which means cutting next limit a lot of slack. Each for 500 bucks. You do the math.

I do not complain about their service, since I managed to get everything done with the help that I got from all the brilliant and helpful people on the forum. Still : On the few occasions that I contacted NextLimit about something (with the exception of actually buying stuff), I got no response.

Again : 10.000 x 500

I agree that the development of such a thing takes years. But I do also think that nextLimit should be able to have people respond to queries, even if it was just a "post your question in our forum, you will find help there". Just some food for thought.

For my needs the forum is more than enough support. Still, that silence from NL sometimes can be annoying.

[Maxer]

Maxer, the maxwell render forum has 23145 registered members. As far as I know, you have to have at least one license to actually be able to register. (AFAIK you have slightly more than that one license ) I think we can safely assume that at least the amount of 10.000 licenses has been sold, which means cutting next limit a lot of slack. Each for 500 bucks. You do the math.

I'm sorry I don't understand what you trying to say to me, why are you saying we should cut NL slack?

[JDHill]

As far as I know, you have to have at least one license to actually be able to register.

You need to be a customer to post here...not to register.

[kraemerJK]

@jdhill : Okay, so scratch what I said.

@maxer : No, I am not suggesting to cut some slack. I was only trying to estimate the no. of licenses they sold to establish the fact that this whole enterprise is not a garage company. Since more than 23000 people are registered I would assume that they sold some 10000 licenses, that would mean that every second person registered would have bought one.

Even if it was only half of that, this is still some serious money that has changed hands. And I think customers should expect more. Again : The forum is a very good and helpful device. And I for one consider the forum as "nextLimit" reacting to my queries. But I think that the fact that you constantly find people who seem to get ignored by nextLimit should not be an issue. Is it really that hard to have a helping hand who replies to e-Mails and steers people in the general direction of the forum ? I do not understand why NL does not seem to care when customers build up frustration.

EDIT : To make things clearer : With a lot of customers and a lot of potentially interested users (why would they register here if they were not interested) I think NL´s policy should be on satisfying those who bought and those wo will buy with quick replies. It does not take that much, does it ? Somebody who steers everybody with a technical question to the forum ?

[juan]

Hello Stevo,

I have answered you in this thread:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 838#184838

I'd like to close this thread so we can respond to you and follow your comments through one thread.

Best regards,

Juan