[tom]

oh no... posters can be comparable to movies.
i don't mean it's not good enough...

[sqwall]

oh no... posters can be comparable to movies.
i don't mean it's not good enough...

Ohh OK

[n1tram]

Great image sqwall... I didnt mean to downgrade it or anything! Plastic material on that car paint would give you a great solution, just play around with the UV roughness values to control the glosyness of the reflections.

Needless to say... Yo must model something in front of the car so that the plastic has something to reflect

[sqwall]

Great image sqwall... I didnt mean to downgrade it or anything! Plastic material on that car paint would give you a great solution, just play around with the UV roughness values to control the glosyness of the reflections.

Needless to say... Yo must model something in front of the car so that the plastic has something to reflect

I'll try for sure

[psanitra]

Nice done sqwall. I was very clever to do postproduction thist way. Only lammers and amaters are not using postproduction and passes. I don`t like Tom opinion at all. If i were you, i will just tell him to F... OFF.
Anyway, Tom, my mercedes m class was only sample 13 with alpha render 1.33 and NO noise on glass! Miracle?

[tom]

Only lammers and amaters are not using postproduction and passes. I don`t like Tom opinion at all. If i were you, i will just tell him to F... OFF.
Anyway, Tom, my mercedes m class was only sample 13 with alpha render 1.33 and NO noise on glass! Miracle?

first of all, please do read what i wrote exactly.
i called "lame" because he tried to tease and lied, we're not that dumb.
the word "lame" was about his attitude, not the render!
do read my words, not jsut take as you wanted nor bend.
your mercedes is another subject, i won't tell a word here...
and psanitra, don't be rude please...

[x_site]

:: guys lets give it a break... I think tom had to right to make his point.
The fact is i don't think he was talking about the work itself or about the way it was achieved, but about the way it was 'presented' to us. I quite like the work and i am not that puritan about using postproduction to achieve the result i want. But that misses the point.
I also think that because of the nature of this forum, people posting here need to be more 'honest' about how they do their work in order for the rest of us learn with the process. I will not dare to compare my M~R knowladge with that of tom's... and i guess when you know as much as he does the 'truth' jumps straight at him.

But now that 'all' points of view have been expressed, lets not take this topic to another level of insult trading. We all want to learn from each other at the ned of the day... and that is the M~R spirit ::

[psanitra]

ok! Everybody has presented his own opinion, we`re all happy now, let`s go for a beer!Cheers!

[tom]

cheers psanitra!

[jep]

you GUYS must chill...
Sqwall is attempting to show his work and the tricks he did to get a useable image - why all the bashing? seriously, we've all gone through little battles of our own here - back and forth.. and finally I think we all have a mutual respect for one another... until now... You guys should know better - The VFX (visual effects) point of view and approach, although not the dominant audience here, is totally valid - Tom, with all due respect, just 'cause you're not making movies doesn't mean that some of us aren't - It seems that the Maxwell community would embrace people trying new things in different genres - I don't remeber the rule that we had to be doing posters or we were "lame" ... read that again and again until you truly understand... Composting passes it's how it's done - ask any of your bodies that work in a top fx house... seriously - I haven't been on this board for sometime now , however, in the past I've really gained something by reading things that all of you have written, why are you killing this guy? If I didn't know any better, I'd have to say that some of you appear threatened. at the end of the day, an artist uses the tools available to apply his/her craft - many people on this board have faked one thing or another in their images... (and yes, you presented as authentic - so pipe down) the moment you touch it with anything it's no longer Maxwell... who flippin' cares? Do you think the client cares what you did to take the glitches out of your render? It's called Skills my friend.... something we use to get PAID for what we love... some of us are not merely hobbiests with this next-gen toy... we are artists with "a" tool... not "the only" tool... anytime someone starts getting fanatical about one approach only, it more shows that person's limitations than it does glorify the tool....

So learn what you can from everyone - you often learn the most from dissenters - and please don't take it upon yourself to moderate this forum.
Afterall, we still have some GLARING ERRORS - I have no idea why NL doesn't test it's plugins more thouroughly before release - how in the world could the Maya plug-in get out without working with animation???? Is NL serious about supporting all these platforms? or was it a good idea that sounded like great marketing... and why does it take SO LONG to export? I have a home-grown houdini plug-in that BLOWS AWAY the maya and the max plug-in in terms of speed... my point - maxwell has a long way to go... and even if you are a beta tester, glad handing NL doesn't do a damn thing to help the renderer better - if anything you should subject it to higher scrutiny.

There are other NextGen renderers out there now and Maxwell will find that being the first no longer means being the best.

So let's help each other here - we all want the same thing - for maxwell to be as good, as fast, and as cheap as it can! (ok, maybe NL doesn't agree with me about the cheap part!)

[iandavis]

Sometimes people don't even assume it's a 'bad' thing to mix rendering technology. I do it myself... mind you the whole 'processed for unprocessed' thing is a bit shady. (pun)

It's a very most excellent bit of CG work. I for one congratulate Sqwall for actually completing an image of that quality regardless of the methods.

I often colorbalance and tweak my image and pass it off as uprocessed, in my mind processed=composite. adding saturation etc is no different then changing those parameters during render... one is good, the other bad? sheesh.

I used to be a huge image purist. Being a photographer originally one tends to look down on images which are doctored. Doctoring an image from a photographer's standpoint is to hide bad negatives... However, now, I have come to the conclusion, like they say in hollywood.. if it's fake, who cares, it's how the audience views it that's important.

I love your image Sqwall. I looked at it for 10 minutes appreciating the modeling, the rendering, the work in compositing and tweaking to get it just the way you like it. The artist in me really enjoyed looking at it.

and frankly isnt the point to the whole freakin thing?

I'd be happy to look at more work from Sqwall... processed, unprocessed, put through a photoshop paint filter.. I don't care.

[Mihai]

No, it's not the post processing itself that made people....upset. I guess it's the concern that people will post images here which they say is Maxwell just to test the reactions of people and see if they are subjective, meaning you show us a render done by mentalray for example and everybody would go " wow, maxwell is so good, what quality", and in fact it wasn't done with Maxwell.

Certain images, it's difficult to tell what engine rendered what, but for the majority, you can tell it isn't Maxwell.

This was such an image and we were suspicious

IMO, sqwall should not call this image an image rendered by Maxwell because people will think it makes bad reflections, that it's just the same as any other renderer in terms of quality.

He might as well have called it a Photoshop render because it's contribution was even greater than Maxwell's for this image.

[Thomas An.]

You know, one these days I will do just that.
1. Register a new username,
2. Make a couple of posts,
3. Make an image using AIR, or Brazil (add a little grain in pS) and post it here as Maxwell.

I am really curious to see how many people in this forum are indeed sensitive to Maxwell light distribution quality.

[iandavis]

Your right about one thing Mihai (and other things too I bet) but in this case the render is a work of art... but it's a work of art I could accomplish with Lightwave, or with Shade, or with any other pro'ish' renderer, stand-alone or otherwise... so in that respect I agree.

Though Maxwell contributed to the image in a substantial way, perhaps it's more important as an illustration of how Maxwell could be used as part of a process, which is what it should have been labelled with up front.

I do feel it's important for a viewer to be given the goods up front, that is, if I do a render (like my only contribution so far) I would absolutely make mention of how much, if any, compositing or reflection bending was done which was NOT part of the maxwell orginal render.

All that had to be done here, was to post a small (300px or so) image showing the original UNPROCESSED maxwell render, so everyone could look and say, ahhhh... I see how maxwell can be used to create an image like THIS ONE. The omission of this image robs us of seeing what can be done with a raw render... rather then making it about 'good vs. evil' it's more about what part of the production process did Maxwell play here.

sorry. tend to ramble. enough said I figure.

And thomas, if you do... I'LL KNOW... though it may be an interesting experiment. One I have already tried on my own. I tried to do identical renders of a simple object in Lightwave, then in Maxwell. I gave up after watching LW CRAWL through the first 12 polys (out of several thousand) The completed Maxwell image took about 30 minutes, where to get equivilant quality (radiosity, depth'o'field, caustics (which are crappy in LW IMHO), etc) I estimate the same render would have been 5-8 hours! So I gave up.

Cheers all.

[mike]

He's just bitter that he cant make stuff like that.