[m-Que]

If you really want those night/moon shots, Jason, here's what you need to do:
- model the Earth (1:1)
- model the Moon 1:1 (for more realism I would suggest UV mapping it; check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sol ... _moon.html and of course some great materials will be vital here; you'll probably have to use displacement, too)
- do the rest of the Solar system
-place your scene on a appropriate location of the Earth & render...

As simple as that

[Half Life]

For the Earth, Moon, and Mars I could already use alot of the work done on Google Earth -- we laugh now but in 20 years I bet that will not be very far-fetched at all...

Best,
Jason

[brodie_geers]

For the Earth and Moon I could already use alot of the work done on Google Earth -- we laugh now but in 20 years I bet that will not be very far-fetched at all...

Best,
Jason

Quite right. By Maxwell Render v8 the earth will just be another one of the standard primitives you can bring in along with Sphere and Torus. (additional planets to be implemented in a future point release)

-Brodie

[Half Life]

I've been trying some of the techniques outlined here: http://www.hdrlightstudio.com/lesson/en ... vironments and it actually adds quite a bit to my renders for that Sci-Fi/Fantasy look I do... I'll definitely be buying it

Best,
Jason.

[m-Que]

Quite right. By Maxwell Render v8 the earth will just be another one of the standard primitives you can bring in along with Sphere and Torus. (additional planets to be implemented in a future point release)

-Brodie

Yeah, right, and in the year 2000...

[Half Life]

I guess I'd be the poor kid stuck turning the crank

Seriously though -- with Google Earth right now you can go all the way from orbit to street level with full 3D (low poly)... the satellite imagery/terrain they are collecting will only improve as time goes by.

Already in Sketchup you can pull in any chunk of terrain you'd like, complete with satellite photo and render to Maxwell... they've also got similar data for the Moon and Mars -- there's a big push behind this with money to fund it. In 20 years that will definitely be fully mature technology, or even completely outdated...

Placing an object into a real setting and getting back alot of automatic "real-world" data to fill out your scene is going to be absurdly easy.

Best,
Jason.

[snalbandia]

I own HDR Light Studio "Standard". Although I find the standalone HDR Light Studio software somewhat useful, I feel this type of software integrated into Maxwell is excellent.

Having said that, the Standard HDR Light Studio was already expensive enough and now I have to spend another $478 to upgrade to HDR Light Studio "Pro" to use the Maxwell integration? If Maxwell is integrating third party software into Studio and allowing Lightmap to tap into their customer base, the least they can do is negotiate a substantial discount for us loyal Maxwell customers. If not, maybe consideration should be given to developing similar native Maxwell capabilities.

So what happens when Maxwell 3.0 is released, we have to update both Maxwell and HDR Light Studio software?

[Chris Krüger]

+1
I own the "standard" version too

Chris

[Polyxo]

I've tested the Demo of the M~Studio-Bridge to HDR-Studio in the last days.
Would you guys say that it works correctly? I get pretty strange Fire-Previews...
Fire reacts spontaneously on Light additoons or positon-changes, increases
Brightness-Level and shows new Light-Spots/Rims in the very first stages of the calculation.
Then after a few seconds already with raising Sampling-Levels overall Brightness and Contrast
wash out again.
Also just for testing I tried adding so much Light that the whole Scene is overcast.
Seems impossible, even when setting the Exposure to "+9"
Is the Software somehow regulating the User-Input towards something which "makes sense"
or is just the connection not yet "there" What are your experiences?

Another comment concerning loading of HDR-Backdrops-Shouldn't the program allow "Live"harvesting
already existing backdrops from Studio with its rotational and Intensity-Settings?
This also would open up the chance to create some kind of interactive overlay of viewport/camera-orientation
in the Host-Application.
Holger

[Hervé]

If you're using the demo as I did, I think the big red top they added makes it somehow hard to judge...

my 0.2 c.

h/

[Polyxo]

If you're using the demo as I did, I think the big red top they added makes it somehow hard to judge...

my 0.2 c.

h/

Yeah - correct Hervé. Good that I'm not alone with this.
Did you then purchase the full product and it it now works as one would imagine?

[Hervé]

nope.. did not purchased it... a bit expensive for what I need to do in fact.. but who knows.. I never say never.. although someone mentioned the resulting HDRI's look somehow synthetic... no idea...

h/

[Polyxo]

Yeah, the price is indeed incredible - from just tinkering with the Demo probably hard to justify for
a lot of us. On the other hand I guess one either needs a lot of customers or a high price
to justify the Development of such a specialized product.

Maybe some kind of "Dare To Share" adaption could work here as well...
"Get me 1000 Maxwell-Users willing to spend 100$ for that Software" - only if that number
is reached the discount applies...

Synthetic: Yeah - I failed creating extremely contrasty Scenes with the Demo.
One can neither achieve complete Darkness (due to the Red Spot already) nor super-bright and blown out areas.
But maybe I just missed something...

[Gary Bidwell]

Have you seen this?

http://www.ir-ltd.net/sibl_gui-lightsmith-2

[Polyxo]

Have you seen this?

http://www.ir-ltd.net/sibl_gui-lightsmith-2

Wow, that indeed looks like the best of the two worlds for me.
Equally easy placement as in HDR-LightStudio on this virtual environment sphere while having the advantage of looking at the Scene directly...