[wither3d]

I had this idea for a gallery thread for everyone to submit to in celebration of the upcoming maxwell 1.0. I imagine like myself, many of you have gone back to old models and re-rendered them once you got your hands on maxwell. When I look at my old portfolio, it amazes me that I thought my models were really great before. What I want everyone to do is to take an image they were really proud of and then a matching maxwell rendering and place them together something like what I have done. This is not to make fun of our old render engines, but to show the staff at next limit just how much maxwell has revolutionized how we work and what we can produce.

My clients used to like my renderings, and now they are confused how I am submitting to them 'photographs.' Thanks Next Limit.

[giacob]

I had this idea for a gallery thread for everyone to submit to in celebration of the upcoming maxwell 1.0. I imagine like myself, many of you have gone back to old models and re-rendered them once you got your hands on maxwell. When I look at my old portfolio, it amazes me that I thought my models were really great before. What I want everyone to do is to take an image they were really proud of and then a matching maxwell rendering and place them together something like what I have done. This is not to make fun of our old render engines, but to show the staff at next limit just how much maxwell has revolutionized how we work and what we can produce.

My clients used to like my renderings, and now they are confused how I am submitting to them 'photographs.' Thanks Next Limit.

also render times please!!

[ivox3]

damn fine idea.

[jurX]

...nice lamp

[joie]

Yes, the key is the render time, the first Mental Ray render can be easily made better and for sure in a much better render time, of course Maxwell lets you model for more time and less (or even none) render "trial and error", but with insane render times for now, hope Version 1.0 will be faster (but I think this is utopic).

[sejerune]

Could you explain how you set up the light, is it a HDRI?

[Micha]

... nice comparison. But I'm not sure that Maxwell is the great winner here. The environments are not the same and the mental ray image show a nice light (metal) diffuse effect behind the reflections that I miss in the Maxwell image.
Also I see fillets in the Maxwell image and not in the mental ray image. The same with the wall. And if you add a vignettig effect in the mental ray image per free photoshop plugin ptlens, than it would look more real. And what are the rendertimes?

I would say, both images can be show the same quality in this comparison without special effects (caustic, indirect light ...). Mental Ray should be faster than Maxwell. How is the winner? I'm not sure.

Allways critical,
Micha

[wither3d]

Of course you are all right, its not totally a fair comparision. The mental ray one took about 2 hours to render at 1000x1000 but that was on my single athlon system. The maxwell one took about 5 hours at 1000x1000 but that was on my dual xeon 3.6. The mental ray was my first attempth at hdri, but the maxwell one is inside a room with a bunch of objects and an emitter at either end that give a nicer softer effect than the hdri one did.

micha, im not sure what fillets you are talking about exactly--i guess im not seeing them. the inside of the lamp is what i love. the mental ray one has those sharp rigid lines inside and the maxwell one has a nicer softer look. i should also add that the mental ray one has some photosohop work while the maxwell one has none. as far as i feel about rendertimes, i would much rather have the 5 hour time while im asleep than the two and have to waste my time editing it in photoshop after. Also it took me forever to set up a shellac material to get that dark nickel look just right and then id have to wait for 30 minutes to see if it was coming out right. in maxwell it was not the case.

so if you want to add scene setup + materials + rendertime, i wouldnt say the two are that far off.

[Micha]

...
micha, im not sure what fillets you are talking about exactly--i guess im not seeing them. ...

I mean the rectangle object between lamp and wall, the fixage. I don't know how I could call it. Maybe, it is the different environment, that the fillets are not visible in the Mental ray image. This small detail is very important for a realistic look.

I think, a yellowish constant shader with glow could be nice for the mental ray bulb.

[wither3d]

yes, i think thats a fault in my environment, and yes the two are different. i think the backplate on the lamp is on a surface thats not perfectly straight, giving the strange shadow. but the mental ray one has no shadow at all there which looks worse. ill work on it.

[Thomas An.]

My clients used to like my renderings, and now they are confused how I am submitting to them 'photographs.' Thanks Next Limit.

Yes, I agree. The qualities of the Maxwell images are subtle but present.

Particularly the GI. Most render engines right now are often a bit strong on shadows. Maybe its the occlusion mechanism that needs tweeking. Also the color bleeding of the other engines needs tweeking too... or is it Maxwell caustics that give it an edge .... or is it that all these parameters are adjusted automatically and optimally each time ?

Many believe that givan enough effort any engine can reproduce identical results ... I tend to disagree. This is like saying that given enough effort any painter can draw photographs with the use of a brush (and some have come close ... throughout history).

Having said that, yes Maxwell is missing some features ... but these features are coming sooner or later.

[aitraaz]

the maxwell image is fantastic...agree that the mental ray image could be improved a bit, also agree that for overall gi quality maxwell is ahead of the rest

[Basselito]

It's really hard to make a real comparison between. It would need atleast one advanced user from each render to make it as good as possible. But one thing I still have to say that in my opinion is the metal. It's not the first time I see this. Maxwell renders metal extremly realistic.

[wither3d]

I guess no one is understanding what I was trying to compare. I'm not trying to compare what the best mentral ray artist can do vs. what the best maxwell artist can do. Obviously i'm not the best at either. I wanted to show a comparison of what I personally could do with each render engine given about the same amount of time working with each. The beauty of maxwell is in its simplicty of setup. I can model very well--i have the mind for that, but lighting and materials were always my downfall (as visible). This 'before and after' was my way to show how in very little time maxwell helped me get rid of that problem.

Where are all the other before and afters? I want to see everyone else's...

[Micha]

I agree with you, Maxwell is the easiest renderer for best results if the user know little bit about about photography and CG.