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This is just a small sample of the animation I'm currently working on, the project when finished will total over 4 minutes of animation. There are a total of 8 different units in this condo along with some larger spaces and exterior fly arounds. This animation is the result of about 100 PC's rendering out one frame ever 8-10 hours. Each frame is set to reach a sample level of 16, I had it set to 17 but that added about 4 more hours of render time with little pay back on image quality. I've had a few problems with exposure, due to the low light levels relative to the exterior light levels the physical sky will only show up as white through the windows. I've had to apply and HDR image in order to get a background color to show up, and screen mapping doesn’t work well with animations. It takes about 2 hours to export 240 frames; this depends on the speed of your computer but more importantly the speed of your network and the drive that the MXS files are being written to. Anyway I wanted to share this with you guys, there will be more to come. The file is about 6.6 MB and it's a quicktime.


http://www.mega-file.net/video/view.php ... 35e13dbb0a

impressive, dude...

This is a smaller version incase you don't want to wait for the other one.

http://www.mega-file.net/video/view.php ... 225f06a1d3

I don't know, I'd like to see this finished first, but at the moment it doesn't seem to justify 8-10 hours per frame to me. it sounds kind of crazy.

Can you be more specific, what about it is crazy?

yes, sorry about that, I know it wasn't a very clear post. the fact is that the output doesn't seem very photorealistic to me, don't know if it's more a matter of materials, lighting or modelling. more likely it's just that you're still working on it so it's a bit early to tell, but as it is now I guess you could have used another renderer less expensive than maxwell in terms of rendertime and basically get the same result. maybe even something better as long as animation and compositing go (I mean that maxwell is still a bit limited when it comes down to render elements/channels).

You know your response is something I'd expect from people on other forums, I've found that there is a lot of prejudice against Maxwell. Most of the time when I post stuff on CGA and people find out it's done in Maxwell I get the typical responses like “man I would have used Vray, it would have been 10 times faster and looked just as good."

Rivoli, you are familiar with Maxwell aren't you, I mean you do understand how slow it is and that it's rarely used for animations? That's why I can't understand why you think 8-10 hours is a long time and why you think it's important to point out that using another engine would give me quicker render times, or better results. Your comments don't make any since to me.

Sorry, I have to agree with Rivoli - it's not that it's bad... it's just not anything you needed Maxwell for, especially to justify the render times. You had the time to do it... so that's cool... but it really could have been done allot faster with similar results. It actually doesn't even feel like "maxwell" to me...

Your work has always impressed me, so this isn't a slam... it's just that Rivoli has a point.

Yeah, I think he meant that for the quality of the rendering another renderer would have been a better choice in this case. But I'm sure once the whole room is finished then it would make sense.

BTW, is that my end table from TurboSquid? I put them up on there back in May, the whole collection, but this is the first time I've seen them used anywhere.

Ok then I guess i just never expected to be told that I should use another render engine to do my work on the Maxwell forum. Let me be clear, I do understand what you guys are saying about other engines being faster and I agree. I guess what's throwing me off is you guy's are supposed to be supporting Maxwell and at least in this case your actually encouraging me to use something else.

Just so you know what I'm doing, and I don't know if this makes a difference but there are 8 units, each will be showing the living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. I also have an exterior fly around as well as a restaurant, club house, lobby and pro shop that will be animated, all of witch is due at the beginning of December and I'm the only one working on it. For the 8 units I have 4 days in which to do each unit which comes to 1 room per day before I have to send that room out to be rendered. That includes materials, lighting, and adding accessory objects in the room. The main reason I chose Maxwell to do this is because lighting was going to be relatively fast to set up. Do you guy's still think that I could have done all of this work using "something else"?

Oh yea I did get those tables from Turbosquid.

For me it's not a matter of loyalty or anything to Maxwell... I use Vray, Mental Ray, Maxwell ect... I just pick what is best for the current job... If I had your task in front of me - it would be Vray - not because I am a Vray nazi or becuase I don't want to support Maxwell... but because I have to get the job done. Vray would be the tool in that instance that would give me the best chance of tweaking until I liked it and getting the render/anim out on time.

In the same way I would not use Mental Ray for your task... Mental Ray is really strong in certain things and not strong in others. Interiors are one example of where vray takes the cake... it can't be beat IMO.

I use Maxwell on specific things (product shots, still renders ect..) and I honestly try to use it as much as I can because it can really be spectacular.

But at the end of the day, I know for me.... I would not get that job done using Maxwell or Mental Ray and I would using vRay.

For me it's just about picking the right tool for the job.

In my case I don't have Vray or know how to use it, same for Mental Ray so those options are out. I do have Final Render but so far I've been unable to get a flicker free animation out of it and I know that it would take me longer than a day to set up any interior scene to achieve any level of photorealism. I could also use Max radiosity, but with radiosity you usually have long computation times and I've had issues with exposure values before in animations.

Even though Maxwell is painfully slow to render for the time and software I've got at least for me it's the best option. I may change my mind after this and I may never use it again for animations but so far my clients love the quality and the render times I can handle.

Cool man, and that is all that matters.... if the clients dig it and your happy with it and you have the time... that's great.

Just so you know Vray really accels at interior scenes... it feels like it was almost built to do that. So if you have allot of interior scenes coming in the future - believe me it is worth downloading the demo and reading the short tutorial on setting up an interior scene. You will be amazed at the quality that can be achieved with such small render times.

Maxwell is a wonderful product and I think it has more jaw dropping renders than any other renderer out there... it just has to be used at the right times and in the right ways.

Your project, in case I haven't said it... is looking really nice. Great work!

I do plan on learning Vray in the future but for right now and for this project Maxwell is my best option but I appreciate your view on this.

maxer,

i think the point is: if you had posted a frame of this ani as a still image and asked for critics, a lot of people would have said something like it doesn´t look like maxwell, work on the materials ...
the first impression i had watching it: this was not done with maxwell.

so maybe you shouldn´t switch to another renderengine but work on the scene and make some nice stills out of it. and after you have the right atmosphere you go for the animation.
at least this is how i would go on.
advantage is you get more experience with maxwell and the next time you will get better results faster. (wasn´t it you who have something like 100 licences? so stay with them)

hope it helps
michael