[deadalvs]

i kneel down to any forum member that has more posts than i do ...

[-Adrian]

Yeh apples and oranges again

I always enjoyed using Maxwell and knowing just about everything is taken into consideration, especially AA and GI that can be so tricky to optimize in biased engines.

That being said i've seen Vray in action and am a total fan. I hope Modo's young renderer will do some catching up, or Vray standalone will integrate with more packages in the future.

[JDHill]

Yep...programs are just tools...like hammers and saws. Use what suits the job.

But...don't go to the hammer forum and grumble about how much trouble you had smashing a board in half with your hammer...they just might not care.

[Hervé]

Maxwell forever !!! Vray (viré) means you're fired in french... hehe

anyway, good luck Maya1969

[Frances]

Yep...programs are just tools...like hammers and saws. Use what suits the job.

But...don't go to the hammer forum and grumble about how much trouble you had smashing a board in half with your hammer...they just might not care.

Here's my hammer. It's satin.

[deadalvs]

hehe... hammer...

i just got a spam mail with cialis and viagra... they say it works for 36 hours straight... this might be enough to hump a board in half...

[Xlars]

Yep...programs are just tools...like hammers and saws. Use what suits the job.

I agree totally .. In the end a render is just a tool.

Different renders on the market is just competition and will benefit the users in the end. I also have experienced that clients of mine have different renders in house, or for some reason need to render with one particular render instead of another. I currently have license to 4 diff renders my self.

[Maxer]

everyone who bought a license of maxwell has known about rendering times before it was bought and thus noone can be blamed. and it is a totally different story that NL's development is called slow. i've seen worse. MUCH worse ! (namely art vps)

That is a load of crap, this community was told for months back in 2005 that speed was a very important problem for NL that they were working on it and Maxwell was slow because the code hadn’t been optimized. There were also other clams of speed increases as the RC's were being released, in the end Maxwell isn't much faster than it was when I bought in the Alpha stage. So anyone who purchased Maxwell before Version 1 came out was being told that Maxwell was going to get faster. Their answer to that problem was network and cooperative rendering which you may remember was presented to us with this statement "time barriers are broken and are no longer an issue". They forgot to say that in theory it works but if you try and use more than 10 computers it fails miserably. I've been waiting two years for this network rendering system to work properly; I guess the joke is on me.

[deadalvs]

well, not everyone has access to 80 computers ...

but how much speed increase do You want from a «true photorealistic and unbiased» renderer ? even if You get a factor of ten it's still worlds behind viré ( ), final render or others.

i see Your disappointment clearly. as i said, maxwell still has issues and the ship is just starting to sail.

i think we all are wanting the «perfect image» in no time, but being creative also takes some work and time being invested.
two years is a long time and i've been around nearly two now, but i still think the step i did was a great one to go for maxwell (i started with RC4 or 5).

* * *

and i think that joke makes You rather cry than laugh...

let's have some faith again and wait for 1.2 or 2.0 !

[numerobis]

They forgot to say that in theory it works but if you try and use more than 10 computers it fails miserably.

and they forgot to send us these 10 computers - and another license to use them... i'm still waiting for my farm

[RonB]

I just want a decent rate of speed, it doesn't have to be the fastest, just what will allow me to us MR as a production tool. I do not have extra computers for a render farm, I work on a xeon dual cpu quad core, 2 gig ram, and it should be enough as far as I'm concerned. I also won't even get into the plugin problems...at this time Maxwell does not work for me. I no longer even play around with it...I come here from time to time and read the postings...but mostly now only the Off Topic because of the interesting things posted here.

Cheers, Ron

[pluMmet]

I was really impressed once in a time with the Alpha/Beta renders, and even though maxwell now is capable of more advanced materials, I don't feel the same photorealism in the pictures as I once did. I can´t put my finger on it, but the alpha/beta had a certain look, now they don´t differ much from what Vray etc is capable of.

This I also believe
It's been pushed under the rug but the look I loved is gone, gone, gone.

[deadalvs]

could please one start a thread with sample images that show the difference ? i've never seen an alpha stage image but heard a lot about the difference since now and then...

show us !

[deadalvs]

*mmmmmm*

i'm not sure how much post work there was involved... but yes, they have an extra life in them that is very intense.

might it be the sky model ?

actually, we need a better sky simulator... maybe i'll try hdri again...

* * *

i'm astounded how much geometry alpha could handle !!!

[pluMmet]

This is an alpha image I did


The best I can see between alpha/beta and the RC versions/and on is that the light seems to be brighter in light areas and the shadows are more subtle as well as gradients. The shadow areas are better light in alpha then other rendrers which is true to life regardless of how a camera picks it up.