Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hey all. Finally testing out Maxwell after buying it a long time ago but being put off making the effort due to all the negative chatter I heard about the Mac OSX/Cinema 4d configuration. I've not done much beyond plunder the excellent preset materials (until I get my head around the system), try to suss out camera settings and play with Multilight (how great is that feature?). I still haven't tried using it with Cinema but Studio is working just fine for me.

One thing I've tried that I haven't seen elsewhere is to apply HDR of actual studio Lights to Maxwell emitters. I think it gives a nicer effect on the highlights, softening edges and you get a sense of it being a light behind a diffuser.

This character is a company mascot and they had the idea of making one of those "jelly baby" style lamps. I thought I'd be able to do the same thing in Maxwell with an emitter inside one of the frosted plastic presets but it didn't really work - the light is white hot around the immediate area but doesn't really diffuse through the object itself and make it glow the way it would in real life. On this test the bulb is too small but enlarging it didn't make much difference. I'm sure it's possible and I just need to work on the material more but if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

I hope someone with more experience answers, but here's my idea.
If I understand correctly, (don't know these "jelly baby" lamps) you want light to spread inside your model like if there was a lightbulb in the head.
Maybe SSS is what you need. Maybe you can play with the thickness of the head shell, and the transmittance params.
First of all, make this lamp we see in the first picture, read Tom's tutorial about hidden emitters. Very helpful.
Try to search for SSS posts and trials of others in the forum, I know this can be done with Maxwell but I can't describe the proccess in detail, sorry.
Hope this helps a little...

JTB wrote: Maybe you can play with the thickness of the head shell, and the transmittance params.

The head is just one sided at the moment. I had thought I may need to make it a real shell but that's quite a task on the modelling front. Not so much the head but the body would take a while.

Where is Tom's hidden emitter tutorial?

Thanks

nice tests - now throw some sss at it!