[Steve Jepson]

I downloaded the ArchiCAD add-on and was able to make it function enough to know it is installed and will probably work. Now I want to know how to open the Maxwell Render standalone program. How do I do that, and why is it not obvious. Am I missing someting?

[Steve Jepson]

I think I asked the question wrong. Let me be more clear.

When I downloaded the ArchiCAD add-on, I also downloaded the Maxwell Render Windows 1.2.2a beta and the users manual.

I have installed it, registered it, and can open the Viewer, Server, Manager, Moniter, etc... Everything seems to be installed properly.

I saved my ArchiCAD seen as a .mxs, used the ArchiCAD add-on to render an image with Maxwell Render. I got that far just fine.

My questioin is now what? I open the users manual and it seems to have instructions for a part of the program i have not seen yet.

I am assuming that the beta works only with command line instructions? What are they and where do I type them in? I want to use the beta but I dont know where to find instructions about how to do this.

[Steve Jepson]

fine. forget the manual. How does the beta work? show me a screen shot of what it should look like if i have it installed properly. Does it require magic words? how do you open it?

[Tim Ellis]

fine. forget the manual. How does the beta work? show me a screen shot of what it should look like if i have it installed properly. Does it require magic words? how do you open it?

Ok this is what the M~R beta looks like. http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ror9jm.jpg
[Forgive the fact that it's got an error message and that it's a pirate copy, but it's the only screen shot I can find.]


Standalone examples.

1. If you double click on the Maxwell viewer icon on your desktop or open it through Start>All Programs> Next Limit> Maxwell viewer. This will lauch the standalone beta version of M~R.
You can then open image, MXI & HDR files through the File menu. Once you've loaded a file, you can then change settings in the Image/MXI section in the bottom 1/3 of the M~R window.
When you've set everything as you want it, go to File menu and save MXI. You can now load this MXI file in your 3D application, as an emitter by assigning a Maxwell Emitter material to an object, then loading the MXI file as a map.

2. If you create an MXS file in your 3D application, you can then close the 3D app and start M~R as a standalone.
Find the MXS file you just created and double click it to start M~R. (File associations need to be set if not done during M~R install.)
M~R will now run and start to render the scene. You can change the Render Options in real time using the preview window. The main render window will update any change each time it updates.

I've found that multiple files can be rendered at the same time, by using the methods in 2.


Hope this explains and is of help,

Tim.

[Steve Jepson]

Thanks Tim.

[Tim Ellis]

No worries, glad to help.

Tim.

[Steve Jepson]

test image. Just a test to see if I can post an image on this forum.

This is cool! I think there is a way to also get screen shots into a post like this with just one click. It will be great for asking questions.

[Josephus Holt]

Double clicking the mxs file created inside Archicad is currently the only way to open the standalone render program, although all your rendering parameters have to be set in Archicad. I've been gettting familarized w/Maxwell for FormZ (plugin) and probably works about the same for Archicad. We've had some trouble with the Maxwell setting up the correct path for the mxs file, but once that was manually corrected it worked very well. We just purchased Archicad as our primary CAD program so will be very interested how it works w/Archicad. For FormZ which also uses a Lightworks rendering engine like Archicad, we've found that for exteriors we actually like the Lightworks renderings better and find that the added realism of Maxwell is not particularly desirable (I may change my mind about that as I get more familar w/both programs ), but for interiors Maxwell is absolutely incredible.