[MetinSeven_com]

The price is high indeed, but not higher than the price for a new Maxwell or V-Ray license, and you get lots of speed in return.

But before I start to sound like a Maxwell critic: let me assure you that I still love the quality and interfaces of Maxwell, otherwise I wouldn't have paid € 345 for an upgrade. I only hope they will soon catch up with the GPU / hybrid revolution that has started.

[Richard]

Me too mate though I haven't updated to V2 yet as the SU plugin is still not updated with a working version, I hope this gets fixed before the current price reduction ends. I know there are quite a few SU users who haven't upgraded yet for the same reason.

I wish we could get a time frame for MR to go GPU! Right now with the launch of Fry, Octane now out there and Thea heading that way soon too one has to wonder whether to look for other options as given the speed they produce will pay for themselves in no time! One thing we know for sure is that no other renderer yet matches MR quality, they seem close but obviously that last little gap cant be achieved!

So I'll put the BEG out to NL for some timing so we know whether to wait!

[polmira]

I hope Maxwell wake up and be not only unbiased but unbeatable,

because RandomControl and others are more and more keeping my eyes on his software,

his render speed, quality and tools, features...

[bjorn.syse]

I agree Richard,. Next Limit could really do us all a favour and just give us a hint of whether we can expect something along the lines of this from within the year. If not, that's fine, we just want to know whether to go for something else in the meantime. I for sure would not want to pay 800 euros for Arion and then realise Maxwell release something similar out of the blue 2 months later..

So if you have something, now is the time to spit it out!

[N&B]

Yep, I'd like to know as well if we will have some kind of GPU support in Maxwell in the near future (say this year).
That would be a good hint to help me decide to upgrade my license(s) or not...

[MetinSeven_com]

When Next Limit will upgrade Maxwell to support hybrid CPU / GPU processing, I really hope they will keep full integration in the supported 3D editors, such as 3ds Max in my case. My biggest complaint against a hybrid processing renderer like Arion is that you have to export the scene to the external renderer and then all the changes you make (changing camera, settings, etc.) result in a new scene, so you end up with two versions of the same scene. I dislike that. I would very much prefer integration into Max, for example like V-Ray RT: as an ActiveShade renderer that realtime picks up changes you make to your 3ds Max scene.

[choo-chee]

I too think that the idea of making arion as another product than fry is BAD. I didn't upgrade to V2 since I had problems with it and didn't see much changing (for me at least) since 1.7, but I'm sure that if there will be some sort of "V3" with GPU speed renders like arion and the good connectivity to maya like maxwell has always had, I will not THINK! twice. I suppose the real question is "when" not "if" since users cannot avoid using something 10X faster in this type of work - I guess NL wants to keep it's buyers .... not lose them to competitors. after all the learning curve of unbiased render engines is not steep like in biased renderers.

[sandykoufax]

When Next Limit will upgrade Maxwell to support hybrid CPU / GPU processing, I really hope they will keep full integration in the supported 3D editors, such as 3ds Max in my case. My biggest complaint against a hybrid processing renderer like Arion is that you have to export the scene to the external renderer and then all the changes you make (changing camera, settings, etc.) result in a new scene, so you end up with two versions of the same scene. I dislike that. I would very much prefer integration into Max, for example like V-Ray RT: as an ActiveShade renderer that realtime picks up changes you make to your 3ds Max scene.

Indeed agreed! but it's plugin responsibility. Aren't you Mihnea, Bogdan ?

[Rickyx]

Everyone interested in OpenCl can try the GPU port of the open source Luxrender:
http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php?title=SLG
http://vimeo.com/10974423
Is a work in progress but has the ability to use Cpus, Gpus and network render together.

If you are registered to the forum you can grab the source and binary from:
http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewforu ... 45fa47cb1a

[Michael Betke]

I tried Octane last week and they have a very nice offer now. From usability theres much to do but in speed its unbeatable. So blazing fast in rendering. I tried it with my old 8800GTS and it was nice. With a GTX280 even better.

For doing a pre-viz light setups and so on its very usable or to swtich back and forth unbiased rendering previews with your clients.
I think Maxwell will be left behind if they don't react to this technology evolution.

Having Maxwell with its nice UI and usability combined with GPU or hybrid rendering would be best I can imagine.

[MetinSeven_com]

I really hope Maxwell GPU (if there will be a Maxwell GPU) will make use of the interactive capabilities of the supported 3D editors. V-Ray RT GPU will be completely controllable within 3ds Max (making use of ActiveShade), which is a big plus to me. No external alterations to the scene (camera, settings, etc.) which would result in two versions of your scene.

[Bubbaloo]

From usability theres much to do but in speed its unbeatable.

Someone has posted the results of another test, using Octane's unbiased engine (yes, it has a biased kernel too), with this result:



And here is Maxwell's result after the same amount of time:



This was on my i7 980X.

Strangely enough, Octane's official benchmark scene uses a biased method. It's called "directlighting" and substitutes real bounces with ambient occlusion. Once you set it to pathtracing you need a very fast GPU to outperform a highend CPU. At least a GTX 285 to go noticeably faster than an 8core machine. I doubt many users realize that they are rendering in cheapo mode by default, hence the speed and hype. I can imagine their long faces when they render their first interior, but maybe sphere on a plane is all they need? The advertisement on the side of octane is also rather misleading. They should post a standard machine configuration like a quadcore @ 2.6GHz together with a GTX 260. A typical average Joe computer. Then post results how much faster it is in direct lighting mode versus pathtracing. This would be fair, but then -oh dear!- they can no longer omit the fact that you need an octo SLI GTX 480 system to still be 50 times faster.

[choo-chee]

From my experience I can tell you that those are not the images to compare speed. If you want to see a difference you have to test it on complex interiors with PHYSICAL SUN bursting through windows. Maxwell will clear at SL 22 or more (if ever on some of mine). I wonder how Arion renders such scenes (well if you want to render rings etc. you don't care I guess) and how Ocatne renders such stuff - and keeps the image quality and "real-ness" ...

[MetinSeven_com]

A number of advanced materials and effects are not supported by Arion yet. There's also no option to move anything else in your scene than the camera. On the upside, Arion utilizes both the CPU and GPU, which is the best way to go. V-Ray RT will support OpenCL, so it will also be a hybrid renderer.

What I really dislike about Arion is having to export your scene to an external editor, resulting in a new scene after the realtime alterations. But I've said that twice before in this thread, so I'll shut up about that now.

[Richard]

Either way in the end if the renders to get to final took an hour in comparison I'd care little but given an interactive realtime feedback whilst setting up and tweaking then that's a different story!!!!