- Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:41 am
#3129
After tinkering with Maxwell for a few days this is what I've found so far (I realize that these issues are discussed in various places in this forum)
- working an any other space than centimeters will trip out the camera - if you find your working units are other than cm, change your working units to CM then create a new maya camera to then use as your maxwell cam. One way to double check is to select your camera and look at it's attributes (<ctrl>a) if you see a tab saying something like "conversion" - you need to create a new camera)
-center of interest tip - select the object you'd like to focus on, hit the "F" key to focus that object in your selected viewport (your maxwellized camera). From that moment on, you can move your camera all you like and the focus will stay contrained to your selected object.
-checking maxwell's erroring tip: bring up your MEL scripting window and turn on "echo all commands", I've noticed that every time I've had an issue with entering values ointo the widgets, the script editor is cshowing an infinite loop complaining about Maxwell camera objects. At this point, don't save, open a new scene and then jump back into your previous scene and it should be OK.
-whether it be CAM or GEO errors, I've found that deleting all extraneous nodes in the hypergraph for a "problem object" and then reassigning my maxwell objects or cam usually sets everything straight without having to reopen or exit out and restart.
-I have noticed that as soon as I get a mayall error, I do have to exit out of maya and reopen for Maxwell to work again.
-I've noticed that sometimes I'm unable to continue renders AND write a new mxi file. In other words I'm able to pick up where I left off but if I also add the flag to write a new mxi file the render fails immediately (I've only seen this 3 times - and all the renders were at least 1k - not sure if that has anything to do with it)
-I'm unable to export animtaion (I know, it's a bug) and even when I can do it in chuncks, the first mxs file of each chunk is the only one that will render
-I'm not able to get DOF on a regular basis... I chalk this up to alpha. Having some way to visualize you circle of least confusion would be very helpful.
-get your UV's situated in Maya first, before you throw on the maxwell object Attribute and start creating channels - this will help keep your scene cleaner and easier to understand
-A little photography theory 101 goes a long way in getting gorgeous images out of Maxwell - and, again, I think thats part of it's appeal... you set things up like you would in the real world... schedule a shoot for 11:30 am in Los Angeles... set up my lights...here,here, and here.... set-up my camera and shoot.... and just look at all the real world phenomenas I get for free....
-Here's a question - does Maxwell recognize the maps you put into their materials via the checkerbox (Maya's default mapping system - like the Color attribute found in the Diffuse shader (not the ColorMap widget with the maxwell mapping icon to the right of it)
From a Visual Effects view point:
First let me say we should all keep in mind that this renderer is in ALPHA. so expect many issues to arise, the best way to get Maxwell in a great place is to keep up the great communication. I'd also like to say that even though Maxwell is in alpha, I've seen promise of it doing things other renderers can't touch - And, I mean battle-tested,production renderers like Mental Ray, RenderMan, and Mantra (BTW, Houdini users are in huge demand of late). One of the things that my job entails as a Senior Technical Director is doing R&D for improving our current VisualEffects pipelines... I get to play with all the cool toys!!! For utter photo realistic images, Maxwell has a few things going on that no other renderer can touch. (read that last line again) Please understand, I see that V-ray,Brazil,Final Render can really produce some cool images at good speeds, and each offer some interesting technologies. I can telll you that in Visual Effects speed is an important factor BUT not the only factor - I could easily reproduce those renders (meaning posted VRay/Final render/Brazil images) with RenderMan or MentalRay in most cases more quickly and correctly than any Max plug-in... BUT the point is... speed is important BUT PHOTO CORRECT IS THE HOLY GRAIL!.... This is why I chose to plop down $400 to support the guys that are willing to do things the correct way! Trust me, I work with software designers that create our in-house proprietary tools, I catch them all the time, trying to be clever, using workarounds that they think will be invisible to the users in efforts but are grossly innacurate for real world situations.... so to compare Maxwell to other renders is pointless - if all you're looking for is a fast RayTracer, you might not get excited about Maxwell - but if you've already raytraced everything your eye sees (hehehe) and you're wanting to get involved in the next level of rendering technology on the ground floor, I think Maxwell has great potential - They are doing it right! and trust me with over 5000 procs at our disposal, a 12 hour image doesn't even get a bat of an eye.... on a recent show our ambient occlusion passes alone would sometimes go for 30plus hours.... So when I see a render that can do physically accurate renderings using the correct methods I get very excited.. Consider this - how many packages can deal with participating media and do correct volume caustics? I've been able to get rather nice Volume Caustics out of MentalRay but, I had to do some trickery with tiny hidden photon collectors (culminationn lens) I did get a pretty killer looking disco ball that beams shafts of light around the room as it spins BUT the set-up and trial/error time was unbelievable - does anyone factor that into their render times? I'm happy to spend the same time rendering a 100% physically accurate image rather than slaving away trying to find the magic recipe that works in that particular instance, the rest of the industry is watching. OK, I'm off my soap box
Hope this was useful to someone....
Looking forward to the Feb.l release!!!
where's the spell check?
- working an any other space than centimeters will trip out the camera - if you find your working units are other than cm, change your working units to CM then create a new maya camera to then use as your maxwell cam. One way to double check is to select your camera and look at it's attributes (<ctrl>a) if you see a tab saying something like "conversion" - you need to create a new camera)
-center of interest tip - select the object you'd like to focus on, hit the "F" key to focus that object in your selected viewport (your maxwellized camera). From that moment on, you can move your camera all you like and the focus will stay contrained to your selected object.
-checking maxwell's erroring tip: bring up your MEL scripting window and turn on "echo all commands", I've noticed that every time I've had an issue with entering values ointo the widgets, the script editor is cshowing an infinite loop complaining about Maxwell camera objects. At this point, don't save, open a new scene and then jump back into your previous scene and it should be OK.
-whether it be CAM or GEO errors, I've found that deleting all extraneous nodes in the hypergraph for a "problem object" and then reassigning my maxwell objects or cam usually sets everything straight without having to reopen or exit out and restart.
-I have noticed that as soon as I get a mayall error, I do have to exit out of maya and reopen for Maxwell to work again.
-I've noticed that sometimes I'm unable to continue renders AND write a new mxi file. In other words I'm able to pick up where I left off but if I also add the flag to write a new mxi file the render fails immediately (I've only seen this 3 times - and all the renders were at least 1k - not sure if that has anything to do with it)
-I'm unable to export animtaion (I know, it's a bug) and even when I can do it in chuncks, the first mxs file of each chunk is the only one that will render
-I'm not able to get DOF on a regular basis... I chalk this up to alpha. Having some way to visualize you circle of least confusion would be very helpful.
-get your UV's situated in Maya first, before you throw on the maxwell object Attribute and start creating channels - this will help keep your scene cleaner and easier to understand
-A little photography theory 101 goes a long way in getting gorgeous images out of Maxwell - and, again, I think thats part of it's appeal... you set things up like you would in the real world... schedule a shoot for 11:30 am in Los Angeles... set up my lights...here,here, and here.... set-up my camera and shoot.... and just look at all the real world phenomenas I get for free....
-Here's a question - does Maxwell recognize the maps you put into their materials via the checkerbox (Maya's default mapping system - like the Color attribute found in the Diffuse shader (not the ColorMap widget with the maxwell mapping icon to the right of it)
From a Visual Effects view point:
First let me say we should all keep in mind that this renderer is in ALPHA. so expect many issues to arise, the best way to get Maxwell in a great place is to keep up the great communication. I'd also like to say that even though Maxwell is in alpha, I've seen promise of it doing things other renderers can't touch - And, I mean battle-tested,production renderers like Mental Ray, RenderMan, and Mantra (BTW, Houdini users are in huge demand of late). One of the things that my job entails as a Senior Technical Director is doing R&D for improving our current VisualEffects pipelines... I get to play with all the cool toys!!! For utter photo realistic images, Maxwell has a few things going on that no other renderer can touch. (read that last line again) Please understand, I see that V-ray,Brazil,Final Render can really produce some cool images at good speeds, and each offer some interesting technologies. I can telll you that in Visual Effects speed is an important factor BUT not the only factor - I could easily reproduce those renders (meaning posted VRay/Final render/Brazil images) with RenderMan or MentalRay in most cases more quickly and correctly than any Max plug-in... BUT the point is... speed is important BUT PHOTO CORRECT IS THE HOLY GRAIL!.... This is why I chose to plop down $400 to support the guys that are willing to do things the correct way! Trust me, I work with software designers that create our in-house proprietary tools, I catch them all the time, trying to be clever, using workarounds that they think will be invisible to the users in efforts but are grossly innacurate for real world situations.... so to compare Maxwell to other renders is pointless - if all you're looking for is a fast RayTracer, you might not get excited about Maxwell - but if you've already raytraced everything your eye sees (hehehe) and you're wanting to get involved in the next level of rendering technology on the ground floor, I think Maxwell has great potential - They are doing it right! and trust me with over 5000 procs at our disposal, a 12 hour image doesn't even get a bat of an eye.... on a recent show our ambient occlusion passes alone would sometimes go for 30plus hours.... So when I see a render that can do physically accurate renderings using the correct methods I get very excited.. Consider this - how many packages can deal with participating media and do correct volume caustics? I've been able to get rather nice Volume Caustics out of MentalRay but, I had to do some trickery with tiny hidden photon collectors (culminationn lens) I did get a pretty killer looking disco ball that beams shafts of light around the room as it spins BUT the set-up and trial/error time was unbelievable - does anyone factor that into their render times? I'm happy to spend the same time rendering a 100% physically accurate image rather than slaving away trying to find the magic recipe that works in that particular instance, the rest of the industry is watching. OK, I'm off my soap box
Hope this was useful to someone....
Looking forward to the Feb.l release!!!
where's the spell check?
- By choo-chee
- By Mark Bell