[Josephus Holt]

After purchasing Maxwell during beta stage, I finally have started to learn and use it...spending about an hour a day to do so. I really like the C4D plugin, the Maxwell material system, the lighting, etc, but the render time is just killing me. After several runs I've completed this render on our 8 core 2 Ghz computer (no rocket, but still more than my personal dual core AMD), got only up to SL 17.12 after 65 hours

Here are some specs>
Image size: 3400 x 2200
All glass is AGS except the green glass panel at the rear.
Maxwell sky
5 cube emitters (in the lobby "chandelier") grouped as one emitter object
41 triangular polygon emitters all grouped as one emitter object

I am very pleased for a newb with the results so far...a LOT to learn, especially about the materials...wish there was a comprehensive tutorial for that.

With Neatimage I can clean this up pretty well, but I was really hoping to more like SL 20+ for this amount of render time on an 8 core machine.

Any thoughts...especially encouraging ones would be really appreciated.

Probably most of my renders will be exterior architectural shots with fewer emitters and mostly Maxwell sky.

[4 HeRo]

The cube emitters could do with being planes and group together as 1 object
You could do the same with the other 41 emitters grouping them
should help things, but remember to increase the emittter power.

[caryjames]

Hey Josephus: I was a frustrated Maxwell learner too and have learned a lot these last few weeks.

Do a search on the Rhino forum for JD's post to me about watching Mike Verta's material videos-- they do help a LOT!! I had to open them in Quicktime to be able to see them clearly but they really do help.

I was rendering a high res image with a bunch of different emitters in front of a ring- it took about 48 hours to get to SL 11- and looked noisy as anything. I then watched Mike's videos, bought a book on studio lighting and paid more attention to my setups- I can now render that same scene to SL17 in about 12-14 hours.

It seems like everything you do will increase render time- until you learn the basics (which I am still doing). I decided that before I was going to beat my brains out on one particular render I would take a few days without rendering anything and just read and watch videos.

Also I spend a lot of time reading old posts over and over. At first a lot goes over your head but eventually some will sink in-- at least it did with my thick head !!

Hope that helps, keep at it- your render does look really good!
Cary

[Fernando Tella]

Regarding the noise, sky produces more noise on interior scenes than emitters. Maybe you could replace sky with an image to give reflections or maybe an mxi if some light is needed.

[Josephus Holt]

Cary...thx for the input. I have looked at some of the posts between you and JD on the Rhino forum...will look for more, and I agree, going through old posts is very helpful.

I have already gone through Mike Verta's material videos...did he ever do the third advanced video (I saw the first 2 of 3)? I've also very slowly read the manual (except the Studio part which I don't plan to use).

My ONLY frustration at this point is the looooooooooong render time...I've always known that to be an issue (since I first bought the program back in 05), but had hoped with the program improvements and 8 core machines to be able to get an overnight render. Will keep searching for the things that increase render time.

Fernando...I can only use our 8 core server at night and had alread sent the scene to it before reading your post. I'm running it now to see what impact all the emitters have on the render time....will do the same tomorrow evening with all emitters turned back on but will replace the MW sky with a large emitter. I'm still a bit in the dark as to the advantage(s) of an mxi emitter as opposed to a large poly emitter. Will run some tests at home on that tonight. Will post results.

[Bubbaloo]

I guarantee that your lighting is the main culprit for a noisy scene. Less emitters equals faster renders. That's why interior renders take much longer. Also sunlight through a small opening to light an interior will take forever. Try placing a camera inside a cube with a tiny hole for sunlight to come in...

As a critique on your scene, I would say the focus of your scene seems to be too far away from the camera. The large empty space surrounded by plain storefront is kind of boring. I would either add more objects in the foreground or move the camera closer to the pretty suff.

Dress up the doors if they must be seen to show small modelled details like hinges, handles, etc. Also, a BIG improvement on the storefront system would be to see some black edges where the glass meets the aluminum (sealant).

[Fernando Tella]

With multilight you can test which is the light that takes longer to get clean results turning them on and off.

[Josephus Holt]

I guarantee that your lighting is the main culprit for a noisy scene. Less emitters equals faster renders. That's why interior renders take much longer. Also sunlight through a small opening to light an interior will take forever. Try placing a camera inside a cube with a tiny hole for sunlight to come in...

So the bottom line seems to be that if I need that many lights than I have to pay the price for the long render time. I started last night to run some render time tests with a very basic scene/materials to see what factors increase the render time most dramatically. It was interesting to see that there was virtually no time difference to get to SL10 when using 1 emitter or 100. That may change once I introduce reflective and transparant materials. I'll try the tiny hole in the wall and see what that does to the render time.

As a critique on your scene, I would say the focus of your scene seems to be too far away from the camera. The large empty space surrounded by plain storefront is kind of boring. I would either add more objects in the foreground or move the camera closer to the pretty suff.

I agree with your critique, but that's exactly the view they wanted...actually what I did is import the finished render into Piranesi and then added people to the scene to populate it. What I'm doing now is using the same scene to learn Maxwell better.

Dress up the doors if they must be seen to show small modelled details like hinges, handles, etc. Also, a BIG improvement on the storefront system would be to see some black edges where the glass meets the aluminum (sealant).

I agree with that too...in fact the whole storefront geometry is very simplistic...fortunately when I populated the scene in Piranesi it so happened that a figure was placed to "hide" the handles Funny...I work in a corp building with storefront and never saw the black seal...it's there allright...if I have time will add it in. It's interesting how this work opens your eyes to things you don't normally see.

With multilight you can test which is the light that takes longer to get clean results turning them on and off.

Fernando, do you mean while the render is running or doing separate tests with the same MXS but changing the light setting?

[Fernando Tella]

Launch a render with all lights on and with multilight; while the render is running (or finished) play a bit with multilight controls: mute or isolate some lights to see which are the ones that generate more noise. My experience with later versions tells me that emitters in interior scenes clean much faster than sunlight. Muting sunlight also turns off the noise generated by it.

[Josephus Holt]

Fernando, I'll take a look at that...thx for the suggestion, will let you know what I find.

[Josephus Holt]

It does indeed look like the MW Sky adds a noticeable amount of noise to the interior scene....I replaced it with a large face emitter instead which worked better but need to remember to turn it off from view as it's being reflected in the glass

Will make the last adjustments (per everyone's suggestions) and run this weekend on our 8 core server.