SketchUp to Maxwell Beginner Tutorials

A set of tutorials to learn how to create photorealistic images in Maxwell from Sketchup.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I've been praising how good it is to use Maxwell Render to create photorealistic images. Aidan Chopra posted a link to the tutorials website where you can find an entire set of tutorials to learn how to work from SketchUp to Maxwell to create this images. The tutorials are listed below.

• Getting Started
• Setting Up the Camera
• Environment and Lighting
• Intro to Emitters (Lights)
• Intro to Maxwell Materials
• Render Settings

via Official Google SketchUp Blog.

Show me more...

Maxwell Render 2 is Out!

Finally Maxwell 2 is out. No more waiting, time to give it a try.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
A couple of months ago we saw that Next Limit was getting ready for a new release of Maxwell Render. Well, it is finally out, Maxwell Render 2.0 is here, so it is time to give it a try. So far only existing clients can upgrade.


As soon as I get time to try it, I'll post my thoughts about the new features.

Show me more...

Maxwell Render: New 2.0 Version Coming Soon

Check out the new features of the upcoming version 2.0 of Maxwell Render.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Next Limit is announcing on their website the new features of the soon to be released Maxwell render Version 2. The website has plenty of examples of the improved features comparing them to the latest released version v1.7.
So far, for what I've seen on the website, the speed improvement (one of the weak points of Maxwell has always been speed) is amazing, and the behavior of light sources has also been tremendously improved.
I can't wait for the release of this new version and find out about all the new features.


Show me more...

Maxwell: MXM Material Library

A link to the oficial Maxwell MXM Material Library
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
For those beginners using Maxwell Render like me, it is good to know that the Maxwell Render website has an excellent Material Library.
You will need to register to be able to download materials, but the library is huge and has tones of very good materials ready to be used in your renderings.
To help improve the library, the users can upload materials, but specially useful is to vote if the material is good so others have a reference to know if the material is worth downloading.
Searching the How To section, I found a website with some Tutorials on how to deal with Maxwell Materials, lighting, etc. I think it is worth checking out if you are trying to learn more about Maxwell Materials.

Show me more...

Maxwell Render: How to Make a Transparent Material

A quick reminder on how to turn an opaque material into a transparent one.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I was recently in charge of rendering some quick views of a project we are designing at work. We didn't have much time to spend on it and needed some very basic trees to give the effect of the surrounding site. I had some low polygon trees downloaded from the 3dWarehouse, and wanted to add some leave material but make it transparent so I could see the buildings beyond the trees.
Since I use Maxwell every now and then I had completely forgotten how to add transparency to an existing material. Luckily I got some help. The process is very simple.
Let's use a quick scene to see how to do this. See the image below.

The material shown on the left is the one applied to the cube closer to the camera on the scene. You can see the material has only one BSDF (Bidirectional scattering distribution function, see the wiki link to this topic). To add the transparency, we can either make the existing BSDF transparent or add a new one. Adding an extra BSDF for the transparency has the advantage of letting you play more with the blending of both BSDF.
To add Transparency we have to do the following steps:

1. Add a new BSDF
2. Turn Transmittance Colour to White (100% transparent)
3. Increase the Attenuation to 999m (see that the default units are nm, change that to m)
4. Turn the Roughness of the material to a very small value (i set it at 0 on this example)
   

Having two BSDFs allows us to play with them to reach the material we want. In this case, I want the material to be transparent, but also to show the original brownish colour. To do that I set the blending weight of the transparent layer to 50 and that way I reduce the importance of the transparent layer in the material. Now I get to see again the brownish colour of the material while still having it transparent.

I am still pretty new to Maxwell Render, so please if you think there is a better way to face this process please don't hesitate to comment on this post.


Show me more...

SketchUp: Export to Maxwell Problems

If you can't find the Maxwell type of file when trying to export from SketchUp you might find the solution here.
Català - Castellano
For some reason, me and some other colleagues have been experiencing problems to Export to Maxwell from SketchUp. We followed all the steps to install the Maxwell Export Plugin for SketchUp but for some reason the .MXS type of file didn't appear as a file type in the Export Dialog Box.
For some reason the installation of the plugin didn't work 100%. I got in touch with Next limit Tech Support (that I have to say has a phenomenal response time) an they told me how to solve it. Apparently, the installation of the plugin was lacking one file. The solution is copying the mfc71.dll file from SketchUp installation folder to C:\Windows\System32. That solved the issue.
I haven't figured out if the problem comes from an issue on the plugin setup file, or some problem with our computers, but the solution worked. If you are having a similar problem try this, but first be sure that you check if the .MXS type of file is there or not. It happens to be on top of the list in the export dialog box, so sometimes people think that is not there when the only thing they need is to scroll up on the file type list.
Show me more...

SketchUp: VRAY plugin works also on version 7

ASGVIS has announced that their VRAY plugin for SketchUp is ready to work on SketchUp 7 too.
Castellano - Català - Deutsch
ASGVIS released some time ago a plugin to be able to use VRAY render inside SketchUp. Recently they announced that the plugin itself is ready to be used in the recently released new version 7 of SketchUp.
The only tricky part is that you can not have the plugin running for both versions 6 and 7 at the same time. So, if you are just planning to try version 7 but keep version 6 maybe you want to hold on before switching Vray t thenew version.
I tried it with version 6 some time ago and I sincerely didnñt manage to get good results. But the gallery that ASGVIS has only proofs that it is proably just due tome not putting enough time into it.
You can download a free 30 day trial here and give it a shot. The license is nearly $800 so you better be sure it is what you want before investing that money, specially considering that competing NextLimit sells its software Maxwell Render with far more functionality plus all availale Plugins for $995.

Show me more...

Maxwell Render: Grouping Emitters

Solving some issues with SketchUp exporting and emitters for Maxwell.In old versions of Maxwell Render, all Objects with the same material would be treated as one in Maxwell Studio. In the last version I tried, 1.6x that changed. Geometry is respected and that means that objects don´t get grouped together just by having the same material.
See that my system lately is to model in SketchUp and export to Maxwell to render there. Previously I used to set different emitters for those elements I wanted to control separately with the Multilight feature. That made it very simple to control lighting. If for instance we had 50 street lamps and we set an emitter material in them, we would control the intensity of that material with a simple control slider in Maxwell Render.
What changed in the last version (and I assume that will go on on the recently released version 1.7)
is that if we have 50 objects with the same emitter each object will have a different control slider in the Emixer in Maxwell Studio. Although I understand that more flexibility is always a good thing, it might be pretty annoying to have 50 sliders to control 50 emitters that you probably want to produce the same light intensity.
The solution I found is pretty simple, what I do is I group all the emitters (or all the objects containing emitters) that I want to control with one single button into a Component in SketchUp. That way when controlling the lighting in the Emixer in Maxwell Render, all those objects will be set by one single slider.
Show me more...

New Maxwell Render 1.7

New version 1.7 is readyNext Limit has released the new version of his acclaimed Maxwell Render. Version 1.7 is out first on a client release period and later on available for non client download.
I found this overview of the new features of the new version on the Maxwell Forums.
Can't wait to try it, since my company has 4 licenses we will soon be updated I guess :).
Show me more...