[JDHill]

...I want my plug-in NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Intuition]

Before I start my first complaint about Maxwell let me start by saying that I have always been a NL gusher and have been thankful for Maxwell even when there were reasonable complaints about release dates.

I've been delighted this last year to watch MW change and become something that I didn't think I'd see in 3d graphics for some time. So photoreal that I'd actually have a hard time telling it was 3d.... if I could at all.

I've been scoffed at for kissing NL's butt when everyone was getting upset.

Now, I have a complaint finally.

I think that since Maxwell is a slow rendering process that it would be well to do to be sold with a network renderer. I think that it will be shipped with a Network renderer. Now, the only problem is that the network renderer is really useless since they are charging for a "per render node" basis. I know you can run two processors on one license or something along those lines but I still think this is a really bad marketing move.

Maybe I am biased in my opinion since Lightwave has always allowed infinite nodes with one license. My single purchase of Lightwave (Well I have 2 licenses because I need two workstations) allows me to render on as many computers as I can buy.

Since buying a computer powerful enough to render Lightwave scenes I build is a financial investment, not to mention buying say 8 computers for render nodes priced almost equally the same as the workstation, it is yet again more cash.

Now with Maxwell we are being told you can render a single frame with multiple computers/processors. Yet, what would the cost of a 10 dualcore rendernode setup cost in not only hardware but software?

I am glad, regardless of my disappointment about the rendernode setup, that NL is including an extra license and I guess I better take advantage of it since they have made the offer but I feel that NL would sell alot more Maxwell licenses if they sold it as "unlimited render nodes" as opposed to just selling extra nodes to existing customers.



Looking forward to 1.0 and am happy for NL's success in making a great render engine that really has no peers right now. Yet, despite all my gratitude I feel they are cutting us short by limiting render nodes, which we will be fine with, but really they are cutting thier own potential market share.

Well, here to hoping they are successful anyways.

Thanks for the updates and regardless of my complaint I am hoping Maxwell has agreat future and that Victor, Oscar, Mike, and everyone else here that helps try to appease the lynch mob that us public can be, has success in helping Maxwell take center stage in the 3d industry.

[Maxer]

I don't think this policy is going to change, and to be honest I hope it doesn’t. I've already purchased multiple licenses for the sole reason that I wanted to network render with Maxwell. If they go and change their policy at this point after they've already said many many times that there is no network licensing scheme, I'm going to have lost some serious money. I understand that this sucks for many people but unless there going to offer refunds to those of use with more than one copy I've got to say I'm opposed to this.

[Mihai]

I feel that NL would sell alot more Maxwell licenses if they sold it as "unlimited render nodes" as opposed to just selling extra nodes to existing customers.

You have to make a difference (and most render engines do) about network rendering vs distributed rendering. Distributed rendering is all computers working on the same image. If Maxwell had unlimited distributed rendering, then everybody wouldn't buy more licenses, they would buy 1

Now I think this is a kind of problem for NL, because how can you have a system that knows when a user is doing a network render, or a distributed one, because coop rendering allows you to merge mxi's together. You can simply rename your scene and render it on 15 different quadcore computers with one license, if Maxwell had unlimited network rendering. Then you can just merge those mxi's together=distributed rendering.

[Maximus3D]

Yeap, but perhaps in a future version of Maxwell they could add GPU support so single cpu users could take advantage of their powerful GPU(s) to assist the cpu with the intense math calculations and speed up rendering. It could be a good idea as gpu's in the future will also go dualcore and probably beyond that.. the power is extreme.

/ Max

[Maxer]

The reason they IMO they do it this way is because they believe the quality of Maxwell is enough to offset it's very expensive price (when compared to Vray or Final Render).

By the way I still haven't received an e-mail from NL regarding whether or not I'll get more than one free license.

[HarverdGrad]

Hmmm, the extra license is a nice gesture- but really what does it get us?
If the retail version of Maxwell is missing promised features, will Nextlimit give us free upgrades until everything is working? OR- will they label it Version 2 and charge more money?

If they call it Version 2, then the extra licenses they are giving us will also have to be upgraded to version 2 or else they probably won't work. If this is the case, then the free licenses are really a "play now, pay later".

Personally? I'd rather have free upgrades.
Regards..

[Maxer]

One thing that hasn’t really been discussed is when will NL update it's licensing policy to deal with multi core systems. It seems clear that processor speed will only increase by the increase in the number of cores, not the GHz speed of those cores. This is the way the market has moved because of technical issues, right now we are basically locked in to a certain performance level because a single license can't take advantage of these multiple cores. This will have a big impact on network rendering in the near future as well as every day work.

[frankmeyers]

We now have 2 licences of software that is not yet released ... april 26th ... anyone for a bet?