[Mike Amos 20200607151930]

G'day,
Still trying to get my head around the whole rendering with Maxwell thing but not sure where I am going wrong apart from everywhere. Any pointers?

This is not exactly going long, about four hours but wanted to get some idea where I am so I can improve. HDRI obviously.

[Mark Bell]

I'm no expert here but have had similar trial and error attempts as I improve. Some tips I've found help with the realism:
1. check the properties section of the HDRI image and sometimes it shows the camera settings used to create the photo. Replicate these in Maxwell,
2. to me, the DOF on the right side of the render looking through to the outdoors seems a bit out of focus? - look at your DOF/camera settings in Maxwell to adjust to match,
3. you can always add a couple of invisible emitters inside for subtle lighting and use multilight so you can have them on/off as needed,
4. use real world values with the camera settings. I've found the render can show a lot more subtle detail towards the 'end' or higher SL., from memory it was around SL 18/20+ then it started to look more like a photo than a render. You can always reduce the overall resolution of the render during test renders so it's quicker, then up the resolution for the final render.

[luis.hijarrubia]

To make it faster: Don't illuminate from outside through a glass if you are doing so. You can use ags (fake glass, very cheap) and add emitter on that same glass that only affects illuminations, hidden to camera. This way, your emitters will be inside the room, not having to go through a glass all the time.

[Mike Amos 20200608100126]

Thanks for the tips folks.

[Mike Amos 20200608100126]

OK, new question. How do I reset all maxwell settings in a model to factory settings?

[Forum Moderator]

Hello Mike,

In the plugin for SketchUp, you don't have a global reset for all the scene, but to the right of each field in the Scene Manager you will find a small dot which will reset each value to the default one; also, in the numeric values, it allows setting the precision (if proceeds) and the increment steps.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Fernando

[Mike Amos 20200609151156]

Thank you, Sir. I think the settings were so very bad the whole scene was corrupted so I shall go back and start from scratch.

[Mike Amos 20200609151156]

How about giving us sketchup users a global reset, please?

[Mike Amos 20200609212142]

I managed to reset the problem areas, I think the camera settings and hdri may have been the problem. Moving on slowly.

[Mike Amos 20200609212142]

Could not attach an image.

[Mike Amos 20200610204041]

How do I best rotate a hdri?

[Forester]

In Studio, there are two "Offset" settings. The left setting rotates the HDRI image in the horizontal plane, and the right setting rotates the image in the vertical plane.

[Forester]

For more fine control over HDRI images in Maxwell, there is always the commercial product known as "HDRI Light Studio."

This is expensive ($140 for personal use and $500 USD for commercial use). But it is a pretty amazing product.

To get a good idea of what it does, take a look at this demonstration video (https://www.lightmap.co.uk/campaign/feature_highlights/)

I haven't purchased it myself, but I did recently download the Trial version and played with it to make sure that it works with the latest version of Maxwell. (It does work with the most current version of Maxwell, as well as with older versions.) I don't think my needs generally require this, but if I was making professional product images all the time, I certainly would invest in this software.

[Mike Amos 20200615103730]

Thanks folks, not likely to be buying that software, rendering is just a hobby and to assist with pain management by distraction.

[LivVis]

To make it faster: Don't illuminate from outside through a glass if you are doing so. You can use ags (fake glass, very cheap) and add emitter on that same glass that only affects illuminations, hidden to camera. This way, your emitters will be inside the room, not having to go through a glass all the time.

How would you do that? Making those settings to an emitter in the material?