Maxwell Rendering
 

I downloaded the demo version of Maxwell and I'm pretty impressed. Here's a render with default settings. The play set is from a scene I've modeled but without any textures (except for a simple ground texture). All materials are blinn with color adjustments.

Here's a close-up.

Looks pretty sweet. How long did it take you to render those?

A little less than 30 min (12 samples).

Although it gives really great results i'm still not really convinced with the render times.

You might be right gster123. I didn't pay any attention to how long it took. I was watching tv while it rendered and so I was making a wild guess. I'll test the render time this evening (you've got me curious now).

I was a little excited about the program until I saw the price tag...ouch! However, Maxwell's portfolio is pretty impressive.

Here's the render progression.

How do you know how high to set the SL? You should do a render of this in Maya, and compare the two.

BTW, what are your tech specs?

Again its a long time to wait for a render, I reckon that you could get teh same results with MR in about 5 mins, take more messing about. THe time issues the only thing holding me back form giving it a go.

Have you checked out the demo reel videos on their site?

The demo reel on their site is what convinced me to check it out. Since I'm not very skilled at MR or Maxwell, I'm relying on what I see others do with them. So far I haven't seen anything very impressive with MR. I'll do a web search to see if I can find some high quality renders with MR to do a fair comparison.

My computer specs
Manufacturer: hp
model: a1750y
Processor: Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz (x2)
Memory (RAM): 1022MB (NVIDIA GeForce 7500 LE 2x512)
System Type: 32-bit
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Maya 8.5 Unlimited (haven't installed SP1 yet)

Almost forgot Jr. Who, the default SL is 12. That's why I only did 12 samples. I noticed there are some free tutorials on their site so I would have to watch some to learn the why's. I also checked out their materials (that's impressive too).

Yes, you get great results, with the overhang of a lot of rendering time, which is what I said.

As for not seeing anything impressive with MR, think about movies.

End of the day its a trade off, great results, long render time.

Yes, there is long render times, but you can leave it running during the night, and there’s network rendering.

But I dont want to leave my PC rendering all night, if I did it would be to render an animation not a still.

Also theres no displacement support as yet, which is a big downer to shelling out £1500 (think its that) when I use Maya - Zbrush displacement gen.

Also since ive got mental ray with maya i'll stick to that and learn it.


I'm no way bashing Maxwell, its got briliant results just not the right thing for me, I personally would give render man a bash as i'm starting to get into animation.