[joaomourao]

What a great buzz around this release! I guess that is a good thing although...
From my point of view, maxwell is not for everyone no matter what they do, architecture, design, etc. I don’t see it as a mainstream software. This is a basic principle from NL guys, their main goal is not money for sure! There are a lot of companies doing just that...
If you think about it a bit, you can easily understand this is the hard way for Next Limit, so they are on it for a reason... a thing they really believe in, QUALITY!

So, the question is... What is your main concern? What are your priorities... Please name them and number them... It will take 5 minutes to do and it will save you a lot of time and frustrations… Doing that we will be more aware of your choices and it will be easier for all of us to understand each other…

Here are my top 5:
1 - Quality
2 - Designed for creativity
3 - Ease of use
4 - Speed
5 - Versatility

Ok, let me dissect this… First things first!
Quality is my goal, the thing I aim for when I use this software, everything else is secondary. They are important, yes but not comparable to quality. If my number 1 priority is another one, I will not use Maxwell Render, will instead go for other ones that you all know of. But I must say that it only happened in the beginning. Quality became so crucial that I work with Maxwell 90% of the time.

Speed? But what is speed? Forget brands… will a faster car get you there first? Is that the only thing you can think of? What about the route? Come to Lisbon and compete with me going from place A to place B in my hometown, and please bring your best sports car… you will need it! And by the way… what about the decision making, so important in our work? You go from A to B and how do you decide to go this way or that way? Don’t you feel lost and misplaced when you dig deep into the array of tricks available in some softwares? Are you a designer/creative or a 3d visualizer that just executes? Just remember your number 1 priority? Just get to it as simple as you can!

So I am no 3D visualization geek… I am an architect and images that simulate reality are one of the many things I have to produce to get my job done… perfect timing to analise priority number 2, design/creative oriented… Let’s think about it… To get to your quality what is crucial, speed or what you show/create on your image? You can have a supercomputer, or better, loads of money to have your images done in 30 minutes via online render farms, but do you think you will kill it just because of that? Now instead of it, you have a nice computer (like most of us) that will render it in about 8-10 hours (don’t you guys sleep?) but meanwhile you use this tool that pushes you to make decisions, to be creative with immediate response and feedback giving you a sense that you just need to render it for post-production. Why and can can you make this? Well, priority number 3, ease of use. No arguing on that I suppose, Maxwell rocks it.

Now its time for my priority number 4, speed… Yes it is important, but it is just a number… in this case a time number. Why do your clients choose you and your fantastic work? Because of priority number 1, 2, 3 or 4? Since it is on priority 4 I do have a limit for this speed thing, if it renders more than a weekend (sometimes I don’t work on weekends) I will rethink of it and about my workflow!
Don’t get me wrong, most of you guys produce great images, but don’t fool me, it has nothing to do with speed! Well just bit, ok…

Do you feel the same way about your priorities, now that you have set them down?

Cheers!

[PA3K]

+1 ... agree, quality is no.1 for me too. Even I understand all the points of view from people on this forum.
I decided to buy and use maxwellrender because "how it is", not "how it could be". In our ages we are forced to do everything faster. But there is a limit. And it is our decision where we set the limit. We are people, not machines. What if client wants to have job done in two days. Then he can ask in one day. Sometimes (often) he doesn`t have any idea how long it could take. And even if the client choose you to do the job, there will always be someone who can do this job faster...
If I have to choose vegetables they grown fast with chemicals, or other, that has grown slowly, I will choose the later one.
If maxwellrender will be faster, OK, nice, I would like it, but if not, nothing happened for me.

“GOOD MORNING," said the little prince.
"Good Morning," said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink.
"Why do you sell these pills?"
"They save so much time," the salesclerk said. "Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week."
"And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?"
"Whatever you like."

"If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked," the little prince said to himself, "I'd walk very slowly toward a water fountain...”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

[Tok_Tok]

I think that Maxwell is already all lot of what your top 5 consists of.

Quality we already had from MR 1.0, over the years the quality only got better.
Designed for creativity, the software is based on real world photography, it doesn't get more creative then that.
Ease of use, compared to other render engines, for example Vray, Maxwell is very easy to use.
Versatility, with MR 3.0 on the way a lot of the gaps are being filled and Maxwell even has some unique features. (Multilight, Simulens)

1. Speed. When it comes to speed MR isn't the best in the business, so this would be my number 1 and only one. But with a little bit of planning you can do the test renders in work time and the final renders overnight.

At this point I can do all the types of product renders I want and the quality is superb. Although I have to say that I had some low moments with Studio; bugs, crashes and a little less Ease of use.
But I can only speak for myself as doing product renders is much less complicated then rendering and setting up a complete animated scene.
I'm not saying that MR is done, certainly not, but as far as my experience goes with software, Maxwell is by far the most user friendly, in many ways.

The only thing I want to push is that the developers should pay a bit more attention to the Wishlist section of the forum. Sometimes I see such good requests being posted and favored by many people but it doesn't make it to the next update. Such a shame as some are so simple improvements but can save a lot of time.

[Asmithey]

My number one is Ease of use. The learning curve to produce "quality" renderings was not a steep one with Maxwell Render. Quality is second. Because no matter what, it seems I can never produce some of the realistic qualities I see in so many other Maxwell renderings from some of the other users. And this is just due to lack of creativity on my part. But quality can be subjective too. My clients love the renderings I produce for them. But I know my renderings can be better. But I feel because of Maxwell's ease of use, it makes it easier for me to produce "quality" renderings. Speed is a non issue to me. But more speed is always welcome. And Maxwell render does equally quality in an over all product and in render out put.

[seghier]

the designer can control speed with quality. if he use displacement and grass and dispersion he want the best quality but with slow rendering
if he want speed rendering . so he reduce the quality
all render engines are very slow with the best quality not maxwell only
and postproduction take long time
----
i see image win in competition created with vray . the final render is not excellent but after use copy paste to modify environement with using of many filters; the render becomes excelent and than i see image created with vray ..... where is photoshop ?
i think maxwell give the best quality and don't need alot of modification in photoshop like we take real photo
personaly i don't like photoshop ; and if i use it i make small retouch or correct errors and contrast ;not to change the render result

[joaomourao]

Yes I am a happy Maxwell user Tok_Tok...
When I asked your priorities, I was well aware that most of them are well represented in previous versions. Forget about v3, v4 or v19... If you have your priorities well covered you have got to be a happy man!

Let's forget that this is a Maxwell Render product for a few seconds...
"This product has so much quality that now what I really need is another thing, speed!"

Sure I also want more speed but not at all costs... some tweaks people are asking may lower the top quality of this software. I just don't want that... An idea, an old one (remember engine 1 and 0?), is using several engines in order to use then when developing projects. Now we have in render options only two, the Production and the Draft (is everyone using Draft as a render option or only FIRE?). Maybe we could have more or even a way to be able to customize your own with checkboxes on and off... For me Draft (same as FIRE) is enough for design development and Production for the final image, though some customizable ones would be nice because projects are always different... different needs and different SLs!

Yes, ease of use is so powerful Asmithey, but that's because you already trust Maxwell's quality

So nice bringing here Saint-Exupéry... Really shows loads of creativity here in the forum. Thanks PA3K!

Seghier, whenever I go to Photoshop I also feel I am cheating... So I try to do it in a "less is more" mode. One of my requests for v3 was a better way of "leveling" the images inside Maxwell, a way to avoid going to photoshop every time...

Overall we all want to keep or even raise a bit the actual QUALITY, and some really need more SPEED or a way to get there faster for design development!

Cheers!

[JTB]

Speed is my No1 too because quality can't be better. Now, with Maxwell, it is only up to the user to make great renders...
But it is not up to me to set the deadline, so I have to find ways to finish the job on time.
For arch renderings and for 95-99% of the clients, biased renders are great. Sometimes, it is even more than they expected because all a building needs is nice grass and real looking trees. So, for my work, it is not always easy to advertise quality, when others can deliver final results in 2 days.
Also, even if I want to do this, I need much more money for CPUs, licenses etc...and I find easier having to upgrade a GPU each 2 years.

That's it, it is so simple... it all depends on who you work with... If you make renderings for Mercedes,for their next models you will have 1 month to give good results and get well paid for that.
For me, that's not the case... I usually work with other architects that don't do renderings or 3d modeling and they are always in a hurry.

[choo-chee]

this top 5 belong 10 years ago.
maybe 7.
by today we already know (and bought) maxwell because of the 1,2,3,5 it gave us.
no it's time to get 4.
that's it.
because others give us 2-5....

[joaomourao]

Fair enough... let's have number 4 boosted but always respecting the ones before
We all know that quality is the most difficult one... Future CPUs and who knows GPUs will do the rest. Unbiased is the way to go!
For know I am amazed by the improvements on FIRE with v3...
Cheers!

[Rafal SLEK]

In my case it is very simple — I choose Maxwell for the Best Quality together with very fast computer
This software is very good for my architectural designs because cover my lack of time for making renders and poor skills
Isn't it too heretic here?

[MartinBrinks]

Interesting topic. But I'm not sure what kind of quality you're referring to. Is it the quality of the software as in stability etc? Or is it the quality of the final renders? And if it's the last (as I assume it is), how come the likes of Bertand Benoit, Guthrie & Alex Roman all use Vray?

In my book quality of final renders do not only stem from the software used but is almost totally a result of the artist's skills and perseverance, despite the tools. And yes, Maxwell is a great tool, but if you look through the galleries you will probably be surprised by how few really excellent renders you'll find. Personally I suspect the main culprit is Maxwell's speed problems. I know it's pretty easy to produce some fairly decent materials, but if you need to dig deep into complex materials, the render speed and the cumbersome material preview is a big problem. I think you can actually see that in the gallery - a lot of the stuff shows how problematic the production was. The results are images lacking energy.

And remember, Maxwell is not the only unbiased render engine on the market. So the quality argument, if it stems from a belief that unbiased trumps biased, well then you have to extend that belief to include at least 3 other engines, some of them fast like you wouldn't believe (in some situations).

I own Maxwell, have used it on quite a few projects. I like it - but I would marry it in an instant if they added across the board faster speed (gpu or subscription based cloud render power directly in studio or whatever).

[joaomourao]

We all know the works of Roman, Benoit and Guthrie... they are really the best out there...
Roman and Guthrie only use Vray as far as I know, but Benoit also likes to play with Maxwell Render! But there are others also amazing and you can check they're work here. I do not agree with you about the images produced with Maxwell when you say only very few of them are exceptional...
http://www.ronenbekerman.com/making-of- ... nd-benoit/

But does that really matter? Are we in a Maxwell vs Vray or any other ones? Vray is well established due for being long years in the industry... It is one of the fastest engines because it is biased and based on "shortcuts" to get it done. Of course the top artists use Vray so nicely that you don't feel artificial imagery. As you said, "skills and perseverance, despite the tools". For sure I would love to see some work from Roman and Guthrie using Maxwell, but because I know what they are capable of...
Here a short interview from "Roman"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYW_SgiWEoo

In the end we all want the same... quality as fast as we can! It is easy to understand what is quality... it is a beautiful photograph or sequence that tells a story! You can get there many ways. Top artists will get there no matter the professional tools you throw at them. As for me I want to get there learning real life, photography and stuff like that. Architecture and Photography are so bonded that I feel natural to use Maxwell. So I ask you... do you know what is speed and what it implies?
Before, I was using Vray and was learning weird names, new technics and tricks everyday. That is not for me no matter the speed, because eventually I will get where I want. This long path I take is what's important. More educative and so much more amazing with Maxwell!
But we are all different, some prefer the technical side of things, getting deep where few really understand it...
Choose you path and have fun with it!

[choo-chee]

In my book quality of final renders do not only stem from the software used but is almost totally a result of the artist's skills and perseverance, despite the tools. And yes, Maxwell is a great tool, but if you look through the galleries you will probably be surprised by how few really excellent renders you'll find. Personally I suspect the main culprit is Maxwell's speed problems. I know it's pretty easy to produce some fairly decent materials, but if you need to dig deep into complex materials, the render speed and the cumbersome material preview is a big problem. I think you can actually see that in the gallery - a lot of the stuff shows how problematic the production was. The results are images lacking energy.
.

+1...
I already mentioned it in the Gallery "titans" section in this forum, the main difference between images there and most other maxwell images is weather the artist had a budget for a render farm...
I never have. No client of mine will pay extra 20-30% to my work for computing the final image. So I have to play with image de-noise tools and loose my physically correctness for "print-resolution is impossible to render" correctness ...

[Polyxo]

I know it's pretty easy to produce some fairly decent materials, but if you need to dig deep into complex materials,
the render speed and the cumbersome material preview is a big problem.

I have to agree with this statement.
Just the other day I used a sss material with a normal mapped microstructure for a plastic part. Otherwisely a
super simple Studio scene. Fire, used with reasonable settings could not reveal that the mxm with the mesh in question
would expose nasty shading defects at higher sampling levels.
In all lower sampling levels heavy noise in the sss material kept me from discovering that problem altogether.
It needed two hours or so until I could even realize that I will need to re-render the scene. But what comes before
re-rendering is of course debugging. What's wrong here? Finding out is damn tough with such delayed feedback. Tough,
even when rendering enlarged details, as even then converging takes too long to efficiently track down sources of defects.

Also inspecting the scene with close ups requires the user to already have a suspicion!
If one doesn't want to wait for higher sampling levels in the entire rendering one only had the choice to render blow ups of all
highly noisy areas before starting the actual shot to inspect them - that's simply impractical.

[eric nixon]

What's wrong here? - your settings/geometry problems, hence the noise, so why let it render? The noise is saying , hey theres something wrong.

simples.