Maxwell Render | Official public forum

I've just re-render a 1.7 scene in 2 for comparison and am using HDR lighting only. I am also using an mxi, screen mapped for the background, rather than rendering with alpha and compositing.

In 1.7 this worked fine but in 2, although the lighting is very similar (but a little warmer) the screen mapped background was very, very dark. I eventually had to turn it's intensity up to 100 (from a value of 1 in 1.7!) to get a similar level to the old render.

Has the intensity scale change from 1 to 100? or is it because I am using a screen mapped mxi? Or is because of the plugin to Softimage 2010? Or is it because I should be using an alpha map and compositing like a normal person!

same problems happened to me, also affected shadows and reflections.
I feel that settings have to be fully explored and re-tuned again. Quite a pity but if progress requires that ...at least we're getting some speed for it.

Paolo

It's true the illumination among emitters and others (sky, IBL, etc) are needed to be calibrated to match. But, for backwards compatibility we built a core level (and also Studio level) translation route for old scenes. It means, when you open and render an old MXS through Studio or Maxwell, any intensity should perfectly match 1.7.1. Although, this conversion may not work if you use a new plugin. To make sure, you can do this: Export an MXS with old plugin and render directly with new core so, it will be able to translate those intensities perfectly. You can also open the same old MXS to check the new matching intensities for each and transfer these values back into your original scene.

I rendered this old 1.7 .mxs (originally exported from Rhino) with both 1.7 and maxwell 2.0, and the results are very different.

1. White balance is different?
2. General brightness (ambient light) is different (and reflections, as a result of that).

This is a multilight scene/render, but none of the lights are changed during or after render, just left at whatever is default. Oh, and they're both rendered for 60 minutes at 1280x960 and then scaled down to 800x600 at my Macbook Pro. The speed increase is not overwhelming in this kind of scene.

3. In what scenes does the speed increase really show best? .. or would the difference manifest itself more if I kept on rendering the image until it's good to go?

1.7 Render:



2.0 Render:



Regards,

- Björn

bjorn.syse wrote:1. White balance is different?

No, there's no change in this area. Version2 is fitting it into sRGB space but it's not enough to explain this blue in any way.

bjorn.syse wrote:2. General brightness (ambient light) is different (and reflections, as a result of that). This is a multilight scene/render, but none of the lights are changed during or after render, just left at whatever is default.

What kind of illumination do you have in this scene? Skydome? Physical Sky? IBL? Do you use Intensity or Color + Intensity option for Multilight? Does it still look blue without Multilight?

bjorn.syse wrote:3. In what scenes does the speed increase really show best? .. or would the difference manifest itself more if I kept on rendering the image until it's good to go?

Depends. But, it's guaranteed it cannot be slower than 1.7 in any case.

Hi Again,

In the prior test, V2 was using Intensity as it's multilight setting. And the scene is lit by IBL + one or two emitters. I tried re-rendering them without using multilight at all, and the cast has disappeared.

15 min render 800x600 downscaled to 640x480, 1.7 to the left.



Lighting is still darker in V2, but I'm not sure if it's only the emitters intensity or IBL aswell.

I think, the difference comes from the materials now. Because, the roughness and BSDF had some valuable improvements. What happens when you replace materials with lambert clay?

Here is a clay render, 15 min, 500x275 px. 1.7 to the left.

2.0 render is clearly darker, but that has to do with the BSDF improvements you mean?

i've just opened an old (actually very recent) v1 3ds max scene and re-rendered it directly in v2 without changing a single thing and it's significantly darker than the v1 render, as in the entire image, not just specific objects/materials.

Oh, surely not. It's because when you open the scene in your host application and render, the plugin saves a new MXS and Maxwell cannot interpret it as an old scene to be matched in intensity. Therefore, you need to re-adjust the desired intensity in your host application prior to render. As a proof, try exporting an MXS using 1.7 and render that MXS directly in 2.0, the results will perfectly match about intensity then.

My scene, is an 1.7 exported .MXS which I opened in 1.7 MxStudio to add a clay lambert material to all triangels. Then I saved it, and rendered that very .mxs with both Mxcl 1.7 and Maxwell 2.0 - and the above are the results.

I'd like to check that MXS in that case because, this is not the thing I expected. Could you send it to me without the building? Only ground is quite enough. Thanks!

OK, the MXS arrived and I see no such difference. Hmm.... what could be the reason on your side.

Yeah, their equal! Weird. Let me run that mxs once again in 1.7 and get back,.

Very weird. I get the same results as before. Please try the .mxs with the house aswell. I've emailed it to you.

btw, mercimek köfte is lovely