[jurX]

just check,...I use Maxwell for more than 19 Years! ...that´s to long to change!

[Mark Bell]

An amazing piece of software even for those still climbing the ladder with lots still to learn. When I see what our competitors are doing with Enscape / Lumion / Twinmotion I'm happy I stuck with Maxwell....and like the rest of you, wait patiently for some announcement on what the updated roadmap for development is and some news on the next Maxwell release.

[guillermo guillermo]

una pena que los desarrolladores no vean el potencial del soft con actuales pc, y que cada soft tiene su nicho de mercado diferente, espero que puedan desarrollar actualizaciones para los nuevos tiempos...

[choo-chee]

btw NL, this tread views count is over 70k, I guess you can still develop Maxwell and have profit ...

[jurX]

...and 3 Days later, 82.528 Views !!! ...NL, everybody is waiting for some news !

[Mark Bell]

Well, it's up to 93,460 views now suggesting there are plenty of users still with Maxwell. It may be that there is still a large segment of early users (v2-v4) who are satisfied with what it can produce remembering Maxwell was well ahead of its competitors which have played catch up with few being able to match the realism in terms of being unbiased rendering and ease of use. If so, then there is a large portion of Maxwell's user base that if they were to upgrade would provide the revenue to see a revival. The challenge for NL is to provide improvements in the next release that appeal enough to encourage a greater number of older users to upgrade. There was a post from NL a while back noting they were working a new render engine. They've always stated Maxwell has complex code and with AI entering the market this may have added a lot more on their 'to do' list???

Looking at some sites that review market share Next Limit is on the list of top software companies in the world indicating it still has a presence and the visualisation / rendering market appears to continue to grow at a huge rate so one would think NL will continue to invest in their flagship rendering product given the cake keeps getting bigger?

https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/ ... rket/7572/
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/indus ... are-market
https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/ ... -forecast/

....some announcement of some sort would be useful though

[Rita Sipos]

Well they did release Boombox for Android, so there's that going on...

Maybe next release / update / news will be more up to our alleys

Edit:

Not Boombox but Roombox

[Thomas An.]

As an old Maxwell user myself, and far as I know, the original Maxwell software engineers have left (at least since 2018 ?). This means Oscar and Albert are no longer here. They were the soul of the Maxwell "Look". They've been working on their own new engine named Bella. So, it makes sense there's no movement with Maxwell updates. Next Limit would have to hire new engineers and they would need to understand all the old code and figure out how to continue the work. Also, I think Juan has also left for many years now and is working in the US for Unreal engine.

[Brian Buxton]

The only obstacle to my switching to Bella is that I do not use any of the 'Host' applications and Bella GUI is clearly not designed to be used as a standalone interface. Bella GUI is dreadful. A usable GUI and bridge with Blender would put Bella on the map.
Exactly the same can be said for Indigo Render, except that it does work very well with older versions of Cinema 4D. The Blender addon isn't great unfortunately.

[choo-chee]

The only obstacle to my switching to Bella is that I do not use any of the 'Host' applications and Bella GUI is clearly not designed to be used as a standalone interface. Bella GUI is dreadful.

that's exactly what I kept telling them, Bella is just unusable, only because of very poor GUI.
I remember my first "play" with Maxwell 1 (with Maya), I tried the demo for like 5 minuets and told my partner, we buy this and use this only. tried Bella again and again and can't get a decent render no matter what.
I really hope NL will continue dev.

[jurX]

The last update was 07.2021, so who made that Version?…and I can't believe Oscar and Albert are the only persons on this planet who understand the maxwell code!...so there are good programmers out there, so please catch them and keep on the good work!

[Thomas An.]

All the 5.0 releases were done while Oscar and Albert were gone ... but ... notice they are housekeeping releases and we don't see new core render algorithm features.

5.0.0.14 Nested references. New procedural texture: Random Color. New procedural texture: Random Uvs. Emitter groups for Multilight.
5.0.1.16 A couple of bug fixes
5.0.2.21 A few more bug fixes
5.1.0.29 New benchwell tools
5.1.1.33 Mostly bug fixes
5.2.0.45 New denoiser approach
5.2.1.49 Couple of bug fixes

Thing is, the "look" is important (eg illumination balance and color/tones calibration), otherwise there are several other spectral engines now to choose from (FluidRay, LuxCore, Indigo, Octane, Thea, etc)

[Matteo Villa]

They could still catch up without even finishing the V4 and V5 roadmap.

The improved performance managed CPU side could in fact make Maxwell render lasting forever.

GPU side they need just someone to update the code whenever a new architecture came out.

Imagine Nextlimit and Maxwell Render Team starting a collab with Evermotion and create a full ready to use assets library with:

• Objects
• Ready to use scenes
• A complete and fully functional shaders library
( ready to use )
• bring back the possibility to share shaders created by the Community.

Starting to improve and update the social media pages ( Facebook / Instagram ) with our collaboration, posting our project & rendering done within Maxwell.

But firstly over all return to a 24 hour assistance time period when opening a Tech ticket.

The host id reset procedure need to be changed completely, letting users to change them freely without opening a tech support ticket every time.

[Andreas Hopf]

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milking the old cow for a bit 'o cash with zero investment since years.

[miroslavmajdak]

From time to time, I come here to check for a glimpse of something new…. I just wanted you guys to know that, yes, there are probably many more Maxwell users (like me, I never posted anything on this forum, but I still use Maxwell for my projects). It's a shame that probably the most accurate render engine will be forgotten. Seeing other companies adding features we used to have or celebrating things like dispersion or caustics like it is something new or sensational makes me angry and sad at the same time… I would volunteer to help NL bring Maxwell back with all my skills.

By the way, someone wrote about a new Mac Studio. As a Mac user (still on Intel), I was wondering about Maxwell's performance there and whether it is working without any problems or crashes. Thank you for your answer in advance.


Miro