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I would like to see a very basic wire-shader in Maxwell.The option to combine ultra-photorealistic content with wires would be great.
I am familliar with pass-rendering and blending things together in a bitmap-editor afterwards.
This seems currently impossible, at least with Rhino as hostprogram for Maxwell.
The outcome of the inbuilt renderers and Penguin (NPR-renderer) will show exactly, what is shown on screen. Maxwell however, deviates greatly rom the editor-view, especially with short focal lengths.

Therfor I do not see a way to accomplish composite-renderings like the attached from the Rhino and Vray galery.

regards, Holger Jahns

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Holger,

Why do you need to do your wireframes in maxwell? I'd use scanline myself.

J.

Hi j_man!

I tried to explain it in my previous post. I don't use Max as host for Maxwell but Rhino. If I do a rendering with all other renderers for Rhino, it will not at ALL match the Maxwell-rendering, allthough using the same camera-parameters.

Simply impossible to blend them in post.

regards, Holger

Hi Holger,

Sorry, you did say you're using Rhino. I'm not that familiar but I can match a standard camera (to a satisfactory level) in Max without much problem.
Maybe you should try again...

J.

Hi Holger,

I think I saw Micha post that if you set the film dimensions of Maxwell to 24mm x 24mm the render matches the view.

I haven't tried it, though.

Best,

Chris

Chris,
thanks a lot for your comment! Yeah, I also read Michas finding in the Rhino forum. This already helped me a great deal (Thank you Micha!!).
I was pretty busy lately, thats why I didnt alter my request yet.
The problem isn't solved however:
First off, ist this clearly a mistake in the present Rhinoll-version, as Micha already pointed out. (24mm x 24mm=36mmx24mm) And what will we see in the viewport, if I want to obtain the behaviour of a 60mmx45mmm (medium format), or even a a 60mmx90mm (large format) camera? This should also be possible, as it is standard in other packages for many years alreadys.
And finally, a good wire-shader would offer far more options, as we have in Rhino/ Penguin presently. Please have a look at Paul Everetts wire-shader-plugin for Cinema 4D. You find it here: http://www.tools4d.com/ (on the °buy plugins-page°)
I would LOVE the option to combine this effect with Maxwells hyperrealism from any of the host programs.

Best, Holger

Hi Holger

I've had some issues with combining maxwell and silhouette curves from Rhino, too. Now for some reason (I don't really get what the film width / height values do) I got a perfect result when I independently scaled the height and the width of the silhouette curves to fit the rendering.
Just for reference if anyone else is investigating in this, I've used 67.1mm lens ength, may be important as has been noted.

Thanks Johann! Try setting film dimensions to 24 each. That does the trick!

Holger

... hmm, I have combine Rhino wireframes and Rhinoman|AIR outline renderings and it works good (24/24 film size).
Here a new example:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6242

Polyxo, I've had the film set to 24/24, but the result still required the wires to be scaled unproportional.

Micha, that illustration looks very nice, though I wuold not have a clue what it is (maybe it's too late already anyways).

Olitech, Polyxo, I don't think wiretex will be possible inside Maxwell, because it is mesh based, e.g. you wouldn't get those nice NURBS wires but just triangles. I think the most we could get would be tangency / border wires as they could be computed quite easily. But still it is questionable if we want maxwell to be able to do such things, because no one would ever be fully satisfied with it: Once we get basic support we'll want to be able to use different line strengths, dotted lines, hidden lines etc. Better do it with specialized programs compositing what each can do best (Rhino for modeling / wires, maxwell for rendering, illustrator for modifying lines).

Just my thoughts on this!

Johann

Thanks Johann, it is a velvet. It was an old engineering project and I want to show the combination of maxwell and outline, the function is not so important here.

I use Rhinoman|AIR for my outlines and there I have much options for the lines - color, thickness, distancefade - global and object based. I'm not sure too that Maxwell is the right place to generate it. The McNeel Penguin is a good stand alone plugin too.
But if maxwell would implement all this stuff, I would like to see it at a seperate layer.

Micha, that AIR shader sure is impressive! I agree that it would be necessary to have the lines on another layer, maybe even with options like rendering it at a higher resolution than the image itself - for me, scaleing up the rendering by a factor of 2 and then drawing the outlines as vectors on top of that works great. Because they lie on the objects boundaries, it is hard to tell that the rendering itself was done at half the resolution (hope you know what I mean). I'll post a pic once my client is happy with it!

Johann, thanks for your thoughts! My personal point of view is:

Maxwell is a render engine, which is used widely by people involved with product - and architectural illustration. For me - and there I might differ from the approach of some colleagues here - it is not at all upon archeiving the maximum degree of realism in such a rendering. For me it is about information, atmosphere and strong overall graphical appeal.
Too much of detail, people, plants are only distracting in my point of view.
(again:I am only talking about arch-product-viz here)
Depending on the subject, however, lines can increase the readability and also the graphical interest of a rendering a great deal.

I decided to use Maxwell because of its fantastic light. Great both for creating the desired atmosphere and believable volumes. It is also a an icredible plus, that it is possible to test different materials and lighting scenarios in a rendering, as they will pretty much look the way, they would, in real life. What is one of the weak points as yet are illustrative tools, the mentioned wireshader and section-tools à la Scalpel-Max. If Nextlimit decides not to integrate them, blending with renderings of other engines should work reliably under all circumstances.
Also, when I decide to have a 60/90 camera in my composition.


Holger

Holger, I totally agree with your pov. It would totally suffice if blending maxwell with other sources would work neatly without workarounds. This would be necessary should one want to do an animation and script the blending.
Apart from the arch-viz you were talking about, I'm using it on an industrial size textile cleaner and the effect is incredible - I'm getting nice matte reflections on the steel and still get important technical details clear through the outlines. So cool!