[Mihai]

The Solidworks plugin is extremely limited, so I have to use Studio to apply textures.

Yes, there needs to be a lot of work done on the plugins and NL is working on it, I assure you, but there seems to be some misunderstandings about certain plugins. You mention the Solidworks plugin is limited because it doesn't allow you to do texturing in Solidworks. This is not the fault of the plugin, but the texturing capabilities of Solidworks, in short, there are none

So for people with modeling programs that don't have texturing capabilities, or very limited, the Maxwell plugin is supposed to export your scene as best possible, and bring it into Studio so you can texture it.

On top of this, you have limitations in the SDK of your 3D package. Some developers decide to open more of their software to plugin developers, and then the integration can work better, others have more messy SDKs, or simply do not expose certain functionality to plugin developers.

The name plugin is a little misleading because it implies "just" pluging in your software to another application, but it's not an easy task at all because the plugin coder has to adapt to the application, sometimes with many awkward tricks and workarounds because the application doesn't allow you to work any other way.

[superbad]

Yes, there needs to be a lot of work done on the plugins and NL is working on it, I assure you, but there seems to be some misunderstandings about certain plugins. You mention the Solidworks plugin is limited because it doesn't allow you to do texturing in Solidworks. This is not the fault of the plugin, but the texturing capabilities of Solidworks, in short, there are none

Didn't say it was anyone's fault, nor was I particularly complaining about the limitations of the SW plugin or the fact that I have to use Studio. As an aside, I don't see why the projection and texturing part of Studio can't be moved over to the plugin- but maybe there is a fundamental reason that can't be done, I truly don't know. My complaint was that the SW plugin crashes consistently and frequently, which tells me it wasn't tested before release, and Studio crashes when I try to reimport modified geometry, forcing me to spend hours duplicating work.

Looks like everyone (with maybe one exception) thinks everything is wonderful. So maybe I just need to readjust my expectations for software QC.

[w i l l]

I dont think that many people are using a Mac. I think there are much more problems with the software for Mac's.

[Maxer]

I'm using the 3D Studio plugin and it has slightly improved since I purchased back in Feb 05. I have made money with Maxwell although I still find it much more difficult to create good materials with the current version than I did with the beta. Maxwell is slowly getting there but the bugs in the plugins are a big problem and aren't being addressed quickly enough in my opinion. It's been several months since 1.1 was released and we have seen very little in the way of updates, I think NL should think about releasing updates as problems are fixed and not waiting for a big 1.2 release to give us all of them. That way at least we feel like there is some progress being made and we're not stuck in this holding pattern all of the time.

[b-kandor]

Superbad, the crashing pluging in sw happens with sw2007, the plugin worked fine in 2006. Something in the new version of solidworks causes the crash and so yes, the pluging needs an update. But this is a frequent scenario with third party apps of all sorts, especially in the cad world. eg. Mastercam is always one parasolid version behind solidworks for several months after a new release, then they catch-up. Nextlimit will catch up to 2007 with the next plugin update.

@Mihai, solidworks has texturing - although it is insulting for sure, it's always 'auto projection' which means it will look 'really bad' oh, yeah, you can scale it, but never small enough, and you can rotate it. It's lot's of fun!! (but really the fact that it exists in a mech. cad app is a suprise at all)

Yes, there needs to be a lot of work done on the plugins and NL is working on it, I assure you, but there seems to be some misunderstandings about certain plugins. You mention the Solidworks plugin is limited because it doesn't allow you to do texturing in Solidworks. This is not the fault of the plugin, but the texturing capabilities of Solidworks, in short, there are none

Didn't say it was anyone's fault, nor was I particularly complaining about the limitations of the SW plugin or the fact that I have to use Studio. As an aside, I don't see why the projection and texturing part of Studio can't be moved over to the plugin- but maybe there is a fundamental reason that can't be done, I truly don't know. My complaint was that the SW plugin crashes consistently and frequently, which tells me it wasn't tested before release, and Studio crashes when I try to reimport modified geometry, forcing me to spend hours duplicating work.

Looks like everyone (with maybe one exception) thinks everything is wonderful. So maybe I just need to readjust my expectations for software QC.

[thxraph]

i am very happy & i'll be ever more when i'll have a linux 64b version!!

thxraph

[superbad]

Superbad, the crashing pluging in sw happens with sw2007, the plugin worked fine in 2006.

I wouldn't say it worked "fine." I had to set it up to load the plugin only on demand, because it was routinely crashing Solidworks. Not in a repeatable way like it does now, but it was crashing daily with 2006, and taking lots of work with it. I saw this reported on the forum here, so I'm sure it wasn't just me.

[b-kandor]

Well, that's strange, because I only crashed the plugin in 2006 if I was exporting to many parts and sw would run out of memory, otherwise it was very solid for me. As mentioned, yes it crashes repeatably in 2007.

Kandor

[michaelplogue]

At this stage, I'm sitting on the fence. I love the quality of the images - I think everyone agrees with that. The ease in setting up the lighting is also a very big plus in my book.

However, I'm not too happy with the workflow. I still wish we could create materials directly from within our apps like we had in Beta. I rarely need to use the advanced options that exist with the "improved" material system, and I could very well do without them (please don't tell me how much better they are over the Beta materials - if I hear that one more time, I'll puke).

I am still extremely displeased with the opacity mapping situation. The weight mapped, dual-layer BSDF work-around is not a solution and simply does not work properly. My only option at this stage is to convert all of my greyscale transparency maps to very large halftone B/W (uncompressed) images and use them as clip-maps. I honelstly cannot understand why this is so difficult. Even the most basic crappy scanline renderer can handle opacity maps........

[aitraaz]

if I hear that one more time, I'll puke

hey, no puking lol...

[JTB]

I am very happy with Maxwell as a rendering engine because it is very fast to setup and I get the best possible results.
HOWEVER, I need more speed and a much better workflow. The plugins should be 1000% stable and usable and I would love to see some other features like RPC, AutoCAD and Revit plugin, hi-res images, etc...
Imagine Maxwell 5.0 with 10 times up the speed, with real motion blur and animation capabilities....!!!!!!! We'll be able to make next Harry Poter film effects from our 8-core PCs

[Maxer]

Yea come back in about 10 years if you want to see a Maxwell 5.

[lllab]

i am happy with most things in maxwell, just the cinemaxwell plugi isnt yet really up to the main app. but i still love to use it.

with speed i am quite happy, but rendering can never be fast enough until its realtime;-)

cheers
stefan

[glypticmax]

With the introduction of quad cores and Maxwell 64 bit on the horizon, I'm not sure we are going to have to wait for V5 to see some real improvements in render times.
And I agree anything short of realtime is time spent waiting for realtime to arrive.

[jdp]

with speed i am quite happy, but rendering can never be fast enough until its realtime;-)

I agree, and even then it will always exists a boss asking for real time modeling, a sort of: "what's the problem? translate my [confused] ideas in a full 3d environment now!"...

for what it worth I'm definitely happy with the workflow which is still one of the most straight-forward I ever experienced, and I find very disappointing when I have to go back to any other GI or radiosity engine.

the only thing I don't like so much at the moment is the GUI design (both studio and plugin): it looks pretty and professional but it still forces too many clicks and steps. Honestly I try to stay with studio as much as I can so that if and when I'll have to switch to other modelers I can keep the render part safe...

As an aside I have happily noticed that my theoric knowledge about lights, photography, materials and physics in general has raised since I started with maxwell, which is kinda useful in my not CG work anyhow...