[adri]

hmmm...Overnight render fails on the shadow pass! Shi&!!

Here's the RGB with clear tree shadows:



And here's the shadow pass with no tree shadows:



Can anyone help with this? I haven't a clue what's wrong.

TIA

Adri

[deflix]

I know its probably not helpful but I genuinley think that for an exterior render you should convert your scene to vray and render there - for the sake of an hours work you'll be far more relaxed with both render speed and stability. Maxwell could very likely wreck your job as it has done me on a few occasions. Its just not good enough yet for pro use.

[Bubbaloo]

I know its probably not helpful but I genuinley think that for an exterior render you should convert your scene to vray and render there - for the sake of an hours work you'll be far more relaxed with both render speed and stability. Maxwell could very likely wreck your job as it has done me on a few occasions. Its just not good enough yet for pro use.

I've been using Maxwell exclusively for over a year since V1.0 and have rendered interiors and exteriors on network, with channels, at 15k resolution, etc. etc. with very little problems. I have come across no problems that were "show stoppers". And I've never been late on a deadline because of Maxwell. So... it is ready for pro use. (Ask the guys who did "Benjamin Button"...)

As far as adri's problem, sorry I've never had to use the shadow pass... But a shadow pass will clear up much faster than the rgb render, so if you can get your settings right for the shadow catcher material it shouldn't be too much of a headache.

[kami]

(Ask the guys who did "Benjamin Button"...)

I thought they used Realflow...

[Hervé]

(Ask the guys who did "Benjamin Button"...)

I thought they used Realflow...

and Maxwell ro render the train station..

[Mihai]

Adri, I think the problem is in the material settings.

You need to do two things to render a shadow image for the ground plane:

Turn on Shadow channel from render options (which it looks like you've done)

Turn on Shadow in the material applied to the ground plane:

[deflix]

I've been using Maxwell exclusively for over a year since V1.0 and have rendered interiors and exteriors on network, with channels, at 15k resolution, etc. etc. with very little problems

Don't get me wrong bubba I think its a beautiful renderer in many ways - and without doubt the easiest to use on a first principles basis and it has the best quality by far. Despite this it simply is not 'complete' enough for pro use IMO. What I mean by that is 'robust' and 'feature filled'. There are numerous issus with basic things which are essential for an unbiased renderer like network rendering, stability, camera control and integration with 3d apps like max. When working on complex jobs that require speed, proofability and clarity its just not suited. The initial idea from NL was, I assume, to create an 'automatic' renderer - and in some ways this ethos has backfired by limiting user control (like for example with caustics). It's ideal if you are a freelance/hobbyist artist who has time to kill, playing with the software, and pouring over a project - as is the case with the majority of the 'profiled' maxwell artists.

Clearly they are working on a new release which probably explains why currently at least the forums are very quiet, update information is opaque, and frustrations high..... This must imply (i hope) that there are great things to come.

The basic idea of Maxwell is superb, and with a version 2 I'm sure the user base will jump up in size and the forums will be buzzing all over again!

[vjauregui]

One of the reasons the forums aren't buzzing is because the forum is being moderated by someone on vacation. When you try to post a reply, it doesn't EVER get posted. Also, posts go deleted without warning!!! The community should be given more freedom.

[JDHill]

vjauregui, just for the record, let me point out that you recently sent me a pm regarding an issue completely unrelated to the forums I moderate. Looking back, I see that I responded within 14 minutes, and helped you to resolve the issue over the next two hours, even though I had no special knowledge on the topic, other than what I had read about the issue in other posts on this forum. This took place from about 8-10 in the evening in my time zone. If that is your idea of someone being on vacation then I don't really want to know what it means to be working.

As to posts not being posted, I am not sure what you are referring to; I have made several thousands of posts on this forum and have never had a problem like that. As far as I know, new posts are not moderated in any way, they are directly posted when you click the submit button. If a forum error occurred, I suppose one might not go through, but this would not likely have been caused by any type of deliberate censorship.

As to posts being deleted, I am not sure, but you are likely referring to the bug report you posted in regards to the issue I helped you resolve. I did notice that for even some weeks after I had helped you with this, you had still neglected to go back and remove the [NOT FIXED] label from the thread's title. I finally replied to the thread, indicating that a workaround had been found, and briefly described the nature of the workaround; after that, the post was removed from the bugs forum, and I am not sure where it is located now. Is this what you were referring to, or have you made some other post which has been deleted?

[vjauregui]

I am sorry to everyone who has to read this as it has nothing to do with the shadow channel discussion.

JD:

Paragraph 2 Please note, your reply will need to be approved by a moderator before it is posted in the forum. I made an attempt to answer my post the night after you solved my problem through pm and got the preceding message after I had written a pretty thorough answer. I tried once more to post to it minutes later, and the same thing happened. So then I decided to wait until the next day to see if my response had been posted and it had not. A week or two went by and I believe it was Mihai who replied with an answer as to how to solve the glitch. I tried to post a reply to thank him, and couldn't because I got the same dumb message (I was sooo frustrated). At that time I also changed the [NOT SOLVED] to [SOLVED] and got the same message. So in conclusion, there was nothing I could do to let all users know how helpful the Next Limit team was being.

Paragraph 3 So now, the post which was indeed solved and could theoretically help others seems to have vanished. I dunno where it went!

Paragraph 1 Do you understand why I felt that there was nobody in support of my replies getting posted? I am going to be completely embarrassed when I admit that I thought the moderator that the statement above was referring to was the website operators, and not the NL Team. I made a mistake and spoke out of ignorance. Though, I was super thankful to you. You went above and beyond to help through pm, no doubt. But I felt so disenfranchised through this other end of the spectrum, the actual forum.

I am very sorry that I targeted you by mistake. I just hope you won't punish me and not reply next time I run into a situation that I can't solve.

[JDHill]

Thanks for elaborating, now I think I understand what you were dealing with; it sounds like there may have been a different set of moderation rules in place for editing threads on the bugs forum. From my understanding, setting up permissions on the new forum software can be a bit of a pain, so I'd guess that your frustration was (unfortunately) just caused by a misconfiguration.

Please don't worry about being intentionally ignored in the future, that's simply not a part of the program here. Granted, questions may not always be answered absolutely immediately, but mostly this is due to the fact that a good percentage of the people who moderate the forums here are also the same people who write the code...it is not always easy to shift the mind from the one mode into the other, especially when many scenarios require setting up and running specialized tests, if one means to answer them properly. For myself at this time, there are technical issues involved that require me to completely uninstall a couple of 2.x work-in-progress programs and reinstall the 1.7 versions in order to properly set up these kinds of tests.