[desclarke]

Hi all,
It's been a long time since I used maxwell, so I thought I'd run a few things by you. I'm digging out old projects to re-render them in Maxwell.

I want to be able to light a large space at the moment like this swimming pool design I did a few years back.
I know about these things to remember from somewhere..
1) More light = faster clearing & less noise
2) Use low polys for emitters
3) White should not be 255,255,255 (maybe 220,220,220)
4) Use as much direct light as possible
5) Lambert should be avoided (roughness 95 or less is good)
6) Keep out of view geometry to minimum
7) Use AGS glass if possible

I've also Joined the emitters in the lights to be one, and have the emitter material at 500000w, but as you can see, it's making little impression on the sample render. I want the sun to hit the floor/water etc.

My question is, are there any other things I am missing? Very noisy at the moment.. after an hour (SL 11)
Computer is a 5 year old 8core Mac on OSX 10.8 with only 6gig ram. Using FormZ 7.1 with latest FMZ plugin

Thanks in advance..

Regards,

Des

[Sebastien Bernard]

Hallo Des,

not a bad start but SL 11 has always lots of noise especially when you are dealing with a lot of white surfaces.
Some renderings take more than 1 hr to be cleaned.

[RobMitchell]

I think once final materials are put in place and it gets a lot more rendering time, it'll clear up nicely. From your bullet points your set up seems ok.

As a side note, that model is looking really, really good. Looking forward to seeing more of it!

[Sebastien Bernard]

I love FZ

[desclarke]

Thanks guys for the comments, yes I think I should let it cook for longer
And add some detail as well.

I like FormZ too, been trying to get my head around the new version 7 (lazy to adopt), the MW plug-in works like a charm now...

I'll stick another render maybe tomorrow.

Cheers,

Des

[Half Life]

One thing not covered in your list is unevenly powered emitters (eg: sun + emitters).

Maxwell is optimized to clear noise from more powerful emitters first -- in this case the Sun being much more powerful than the interior emitters means that the noise from the emitters will take longer to clear... This is one of the headaches of doing interiors.

Ideally, you would want to ramp up the power of your interior emitters (to match the intensity of the sun) and then reduce them to the desired output using multilight(after/during rendering). Conversely, you could opt to either use a fake sun emitter or IBL so as to have a weaker "sun", thus bringing the power of all scene emitters more into balance... see here for details on creating a fake sun emitter: http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 79#p362279

Best,
Jason.

[Sebastien Bernard]

Still by 5.5 and hesitating to buy the upgrade... But I know someday I will do it..

[desclarke]

Thanks for the suggestion Jason, I would never have thought of that. The physical plane sun is a good idea as well, interesting discussion that...

Sebastien, 5.5 is old alright (I first started on Fz on v3 I think), it looks a totally different program now.
I think I have a vague recollection of you on the Fz forums years ago?

Des

[Sebastien Bernard]

Yes it is quite possible I started with 4.5 a long long time ago...I don't do much FZ forum now.
Just tell me was it long to adjust to V7 ? I tried the demo and also it seems to have rally nice new features
I am still hesitating.

[desclarke]

I'm still in the process, I haven't fully moved over from version 6.7.3, but so far It's cool (almost there though)..
The way of thinking in the 3d modelling is the same, you just have to look in different places slightly.
The general consensus on the Fz forums is good. There are quite a few tutorials on youtube and there is a migration guide as well.

[jespi]

Hi Sebastian and desclarke,

I've been testing formZ 7.1 the last week and I have to say that it's still very buggy, components are full of issues. I've reported lots of bugs to Autodessys, great support I must say, and the told me that the will do their best to solve the issues ASAP. I've decided to wait until formZ will become more solid. But I must say that I really like fomZ!

[Sebastien Bernard]

I have the feeling that we are slowly going into another debate.. Maybe a FZ user Topic but hey anyway thanks for the info I really do appreciate this..
I have not been in the FZ forum esince a long time ago. I realize that V7 is a real change in FZ and of course the beginning can be a bit buggy... As far as
I know when a bug is reported they really work on it real quick untill now their team were always very reactive.

[jespi]

You are right Sebastien, we should create a formZ's topic in the off topic forum

[Mihai]

This will make a great render once finished About point nr 5, you can use roughness 97-98, lower than 95 might start looking not diffuse enough.

Point nr 6, this really doesn't influence the speed, at all. It's not about the amount of polygons Maxwell gets, but amount of direct/indirect lighting that will affect render times the most. So you don't have to worry about cleaning up any geometry that is not visible by the camera. Maybe you were thinking about not having a very huge scene if you are only interested in rendering a small portion of it - such as, don't import a scene with 100 city blocks if you're only interested in rendering a window of one of the buildings, and this is mostly true but it only becomes relevant in exaggerated cases like these. Maxwell still takes into account the lighting calculations that are outside the cameras view ofcourse, so if your scene is more "compact" it can be more efficient - but it's usually not a crucial thing.

[desclarke]

Thanks everyone for the tips and comments. I've started adding materials and did another test render. This one reached SL 15.76 over 16 hours. It's still a bit noisy, but at least going in the right direction. I'm not happy with my materials, but I'm really using this model as a workflow experiment using Maxwell, so I not concerned with interior design just yet.

Regards,

Des