Model in Blender >Export DXF >Import into SketchUP 5 to assign materials >Export to Maxwell for rendering.
Due to the rendering system in Maxwell, you set a maximum time limit and a sample level before rendering. The longer the render and the higher the sample level, the more realistic and better the results. Lower render times and sample levels result in very noisy renders.
Maxwell gives you the ability to stop the render at any point, in the same way Blender does with full Radiosity calculations.
All rendered at 1000x1000 on a 2.6ghz P4 with 192MB ram, hence high render times.
Suzanne & rings are standard Maxwell metal shaders, silver & gold. Floor is a Maxwell aluminium metal shader with tweaked reflectance to give dull look. Sky box purely there for reflective purposes, I’m still learning SketchUp so forgive the bad practices.
Suzanne in caustic heaven. (8hr render @ 35 samples)
More will follow and will hopefully improve as I learn how to get the best from Maxwell. Unfortunately SketchUp is somewhat limited in material management, so I have to wait till this week for 3dSMax 7 as the material controls for Maxwell are much improved. I’ll still be modeling with Blender though.
I know, I was a little reluctant to display anything yet. However once I’ve got Max 7, the materials will be much improved as will the control I will have over Maxwell. Just trying to get to grips with the system at the moment.
There are only 5 material presets for metals. Every other material has to be created, as SketchUp’s material system isn’t made for material manipulation as such that we are used to with Blender.
Glass test using dielectric materials, brick texture is a SketchUp material.
the graininess of the pics kinda makes it look more realistic an believeable. It looks like someone took a picture with a really crappy camera in poor lighting. Its a neat effect i must say!
hopescoth,
All you need is a photonlamp, and full gi set to render in yafray, and there you get your caustics, both the reflected light ones and the light passing through transparent objects ones
sonix,
I also did a few tests yesterday and in 15 minutes I could get a bit grainy images of four chrome suzannes with caustics. In 9 minutes no grain with cache, tho noticable spots (http://web.axelero.hu/ceze1/caustics.jpg).
I’m not saying that yafray is as good as maxwell, because the demo images on the site are really photoreal, but you can get quite close, especially in 8 hours.
However I am looking forward to the max7 renders, and I honestly hope they turn out really remarkably well, and we can all start envying you for the renderer. I mean this, because it cost you so much, so I really wish you got your money’s worth.
I agree that it is possible with Yafray. Yafray uses photons, Maxwell uses light frequencies. I’m not dissing Yafray because I think it’s one of the best free renderers available for Blender. You can get excellent results from Maxwell straight out of the box, whereas with Yafray I found it took a lot of setting up to get good results. Perhaps this is me though as I’m sure someone else would find it easier than I did.
The render’s you’ve shown are very good and certainly match the caustics I produced.
I now have Max7 installed and have left it running a simple glass scene whilst I’m at work. I’ll post this render tomorrow. I just need to master the Maxwell materials within Max.
Oh and I bought it at 1/2 price as a deal from Next Limit, rather than paying $999.
I agree that what has been posted looks, well, mediocre for the price of the software. However, what I don’t think many of you are taking into consideration is the purpose of this renderer. The renderers you’re used to (blender’s and yafray) are based on approximations. Can you achieve photorealism with that? Yes, but you’ll have to fake a lot of stuff. Maxwell (and a lot of other commercial renderers) provide a high-end solution. Given enough time, these renders would look fantastic. What sonix has been doing (the first post stuff) isn’t really what the renderer was meant for. Let’s say that you’re doing caustics, though. I think you’d be surprised how different the render in maxwell would be from an identical scene in yafray (subdivided + beveled cube anyone?). Yes, yafray can produce a fast result, but I can almost guarantee you that (given enough time) Maxwell can produce a better, more realistic one. Did I mention that Maxwell can automatically do a wide-variety of skies/night/day setups? Anyway, that’s stuff for consideration.
Heres what i got for free with Yafray in 8 minutes render time:
