[cyberjuls]

100% agree with you mihai. Can't understand people sometime. It's like if they wanted to get always lower prices. We are doing this with research in france right now (what fundamental research is made for? it costs a lot!) but i'm sure all we are doing is losing some futur knowledge that will lead to futur discovers.
What i mean is that NL is at least responsible to do what they want with the money you paid them for maxwell. Except RC1 and maybe some plugins that are not here, we always get a useable program with some restrictions.
So what do peole want? counting money that is going out of NL's bank?

[Rochr]

Mihai,

I perfectly understand your point as well, but my main concern is that the betas were heading in the right direction, and five months later, we still are stuck with a buggy and extremely slow plugin.
And if that´s not enough, now they release something that totally kills the plugin.
Í don´t know what app you´re using, but i´m pretty sure you´ld be annoyed as hell as well, if you were using Cinema.

Although i can´t personally agree about studio beeing very convenient, especially if you´re building detailed cityscapes with thousands of objects, and all geometry.
Modeling a city in the 3D app, then triangulate everything, export, rebuild and texture the scene with all those tiny objects in studio instead of completing the scene in Cinema, would most likely take weeks of extra unecessary time.
And if the client want some changes, you´re pretty much screwed.


Cyberjuls,

My concern has nothing to do with the price. If they release a working plugin, it´s money well spent.
But why is it that they can´t update a plugin in 5 months.
According to you, is a working update to much to ask for?

[DELETED]

DELETED

[Frances]

Many people cry where is my GUI?? (anybody remember the noise buffos made about this?) Others, where are my plugins?

Maybe after another 142 posts regarding this, people will finally grow tired of voicing their precious repetitive opinions and actually start learning how to best use Maxwell.

Next Limit certainly has managed to anger a broad spectrum of it's client base, haven't they? That takes a knack. We were assured that we would be getting a nearly finished, spectacular Release Candidate. What we got was an alpha-stage GUI and a broken render engine. Anyone who has invested in Maxwell should be concerned.

Best use of Maxwell? As it stands today, if Maxwell came in a box, it would make a proper paper weight.

[Micha]

An other fact is disapointing me: NL make big announcement "the plugin ... is ready now". People come and buy Maxwell for the 3D application and than - it dosn't support the current Maxwell. Many features are disabled or the plugin is very bugy.

Why does NL not say, the announced plugins are only bugy alphas and maybe in half year ready to use for the current features? The plugins are announced and should be ready to use so fast as possible. My plugin experience - NL need months to implement simple features and to fix bugs.

[maurizio]

my opinion is that they had a completaly wrong strategy
again look ant splutterfish they are working oon brazil 2...and Richard Annema sayd on the forum "It will be released when it will be released"

look at Chao: everybody asking "when Vray 1.5? when Vray 64 bit? when Vray for Maya? when,when when....no answare at all from Vlado.

All of them started supporting (very well) only 1 app and only now that everybody knows what theese software chan do they are going to support other apps...but 1st they have done a good and robust software with total support of max features.

if olny NL was started developping MR for the 3 most used 3d apps with a good integration and after, starting to support other apps,well.....things can be different now.

A similar mistake was made by Cebas "we are going to release FR ST1"...but after 1 year still no ST1 and their clients starts to fire over them.

in short they has made "the footstep longer then their legs"

(sorry my english is going to get worse)

EDIT:
do not know if I've been clear

[DELETED]

DELETED

[JDHill]

now they release something that totally kills the plugin.

Just wanted to emphasize that this version has only broken pre-release plug-ins.

~JD

[morbid angel]

I agree with all above coments. However we can rant and complain all we want...the real question is: what is NL going to do about it?

[smeggy]

I agree with all above coments. However we can rant and complain all we want...the real question is: what is NL going to do about it?

Whatever they want

[iandavis]

I dont know. NL jumped pretty damn fast after RC1, I'm guessing due to the tsunami of angry posts. I doubt our efforts and thoughts are totally lost... at least I hope not.

Mihai, I honestly remember Maxwell as being described as a 'stand alone render' I read everything on the website 10 times before I ponied up my card.

I bought the plugin for several reasons... the primary being the website. it was professional and had hundreds of stunning images done with this plugin.

I was pleased with the alpha, and how quickly things progressed into the beta. Then... suddenly... nothing. For a couple months... promises about the final... then missed deadlines... then we received RC1 and all my concerns were justified.

RC is not a stand alone render... it's a wannabe 3D app and a broken one at that. Unless it can open my lightwave scenes... modify them... ANIMATE them and do so reliably it's not a rendering engine but a hybrid 3d application...

Sensibly almost anyone who does 3D for a living will tell you (and the city analogy is perfect) that setting up your scene twice is pretty much not going to happen. So, Maxwell is positioning itself to be a one-off tool.. I mean. When I use maxwell now, I pretty much build the scene with a still render in mind... and do animation with the lightwave rendering engine... I THOUGHT that was going to change... I THOUGHT I could integrate Maxwell into my workflow. Now I'm beginning to wonder if that will ever happen. At best I will be using maxwell as a glorified canvas... positioning, texturing and rendering models I have build for the purpose. In effect, maxwell will be CRIPPLED in a HUGE way. It will not see any sort of TV or film use... anyone who wants to use it for motion graphics... forget it... All because they want a stand alone app? Why? is it the communication issues between apps? having to update those every time Lightwave or Max bumps a version might not be fun.

Is it about NL's bottom line? or mine. A great number of aftermarket rendering engines have positioned themselves to integrate into artist's workflows the most complete way possible... which concequently is why a lot are for a select few apps. I would love to play with Brazil... Is it available for Lightwave? How about VRAY? yes, Maxwell would become 'one of those'... however... it WOULD be done right. The fewer people who got to use it WOULD enjoy an order of magnitude increase in functionality. FPRIME for example works right within Lightwave... no ifs, ands or buts.

I don't know. I can see NLs motivation for a stand alone, to service as many people as possible, and to reduce upkeep to only proprietary concerns of only NL's software. However, on the flipside, I do hope the functionality found in the Stand Alone will be eventually found in the plugin, since I frankly never want to use it for anything other then texture building... and I'd rather have THAT within Lightwave as well.



and this is where it's just plain stupid. If NL would address my concerns (and at least 100 others like me) and tell us exactly what kind of functionality we can expect from the plugins and what roll the standalone will play in relation to these plugins and the host application our futures would be at least known. We could at least decide if it's acceptable... we could at least say... nope, not for me... and stop the annoying waiting game. Or... if it turns out to be a positive for someone... they can look forward to getting what they need, and the waiting will seem less. I mean, come on NL... do we not deserve to know what the plan is? In a bit more detail then. "it's gunna be a plugin... and oh, ummm.. something stand-alone-ish as well"... we have been let down AGAIN with this RC... give us a realistic timeline... no need to be exact... and some idea what we are waiting for?

[darinh]

I think the bottom line is that NL have gotten in way over their heads with this, they are a very small company with an existing product that needs their attention.

Bringing a new render engine to market is no small feat, most of the other contenders like Vray or Brazil only (currently) support one app. So to promise a new renderer, plugins for most 3d apps and a complete 3d environment was probably marketing suicide on their part.

I believe the timing of the studio release is a mistake, they should have solidified the renderer and the plugins before going that route. Personally I don't really want to leave my 3d app to light and texture so I'm not so jazzed about the standalone. they should have waited another few months to finalise things in the renderer, add displacement and normal maps, improved the materials and the render times.

Somebody posted a reply maintaining that studio was the only way to build complex shaders and I disagree, that is a choice by NL. There is nothing stopping them from creating a front end in each app to build shaders, the problem they are facing is having to do that for every app they are currently 'supporting'.

There is really nothing we can do but wait and see what happens, when I bought this software it was after a lot of mulling over whether to spend the cash. At the end of the day I decided that $495 was not going to kill me and if the whole thing crashed and burned it's still a good tax write off.

All the people gnashing their teeth and calling for refunds really need to get a grip, I walked into this with open eyes and plenty of experience buying failed software in the past, most of the apps we all use are at pretty high version numbers representing years and years of development at the cost of millions of dollars, we are talking about a beta software here that is being developed by a handful of people probably at a substantial loss into a pretty saturated market.

Frankly, It's going to take a good year or two to refine this technology, look at all the pain people went thru with the early versions of MentalRay, costing some studios big bucks and a lot of wasted man hours.

But NL needs to stop promising the world, set realistic goals and just be honest to the users, if they need six months to finish a feature rich, pretty stable product (no app is 100% stable) then it needs to be said.

[cyberjuls]

Let's wait for RC3 anyway, now studio is working more or less like it should. RC3 should bring huge improvements on RC according to NL communication (ok i know...) and hopefully plugins will all follow behind this release.
I can imagine it is not that intelligent to rewrite parts of the core every week that could have impact on the 15 plugins you're giving on the other side. Maybe they are doing the minimum until they have a rock solid RC on wich they can surely develop plugins without having major changes every days.

Can't put the roof before fundations.

Rochr i agree with you, but may they have well communicate and explained problems and conflicts may we would have understand them. I'm waiting xsi plugin from the beginning, it's hard not getting it too.

[iandavis]

you know what cyberjuls?
You may very well be right... in fact I sure would like to believe the best from everyone... not jump to conclusions...

Having said that... wouldn't it make sense to reveal this strategy to us? Especially when we started taking poles about dropping the RC and developing just the plugs first? Makes us all waste our time, worry for nothing... All they had to say was.. "yo, our development works best to let the dust settle on the RC but we plan of completing the plugins fully once we are satisfied with the core issues on RC"

I doubt, had the come across with something like that it would have been discussed again.

I've mentioned this before, but I believe strongly that a huge portion of our concern and the angry posts could have been eliminated if only we heard more from NL regarding what they are thinking, and what major changes are coming immediately... and immediate explanations to unexpected behaviour, like the omission of the Mac Version, The RC basically one big clusterbug, etc. These would have been much more readily accepted had NL been proactive about the issues, and not waited until paranoia and disappointment whipped up a great big crapstorm. It all could have been avoided.

Originally I was angry with NL for missing deadlines, but as things progressed I got more and more angry with them for their total lack of communication regarding issues we all have. For that I am now very concerned and quite annoyed about.

sorry... this is a rant... stopping now.

[mrcharles]

ian speaks of many concerns that I share.

I want a rendering and material system that blends seamlessly with my 3D application of choice.

I want the control of my modeling and mapping softwares to build and map my models. I don't want to be tasked with that in another 3D application (ala studio).

I want the power and control of real materials and lighting.

I want beta engine back and plugin functionality (improvements were needed here, too) returned in the RC... then make your improvements to the rendering engine as you progress in your rendering technology.

I had a passing thought...

If Maxwell Render was modularized correctly, we could have a library of rendering engines that we could make use of... and not be forced to upgrade the rendering engine when upgrading GUI or plugins. ...

Imagine a rendering system that had creative controls for affecting the character of the engine itself... years in the future we could pull out a vintage rendering engine and plug it into maxwell for nostalgia...