User manual MAXWELL RENDER THE RENDER ENGINE-USER MANAL-BETA 1.2.00

[. . . ] Most projects don't move this fast however any job we've used Maxwell on resulted in a net time savings. " Ryan Thompson - Giantsteps 1 INTRODUCTION 1. 01 What is Maxwell Render?6 5 CAMERAS 5. 01 5. 02 5. 03 5. 04 5. 05 5. 06 Position Pag. 20 Rotary Disk Shutter Shift Lenses Pag. 21 9 THE CORE RENDERING APPLICATION 9. 01 9. 02 9. 03 9. 04 9. 05 9. 06 9. 07 The The The The The The The core rendering application interface Pag. [. . . ] Smoothing Similar to the object's smoothing angle setting, this parameter controls whether the displaced surface should render smoothly (continuous shading) or render faceted. It is generally suggested you leave this setting to "on", unless you aim to render very sharp, detailed displacements. Please note that the objects smoothing angle will still override the smoothing used for the object's base mesh faces, so if the object's smoothing angle is set to Flat (rendering the object faceted), and the smoothing parameter is set to "on" in the displacement parameters, a smooth displacement surface will be rendered over a faceted base mesh surface. u Height: 25cm Offset: 0 Gain: 2. 5 Height: 25cm Offset: 0 Gain: 12 Height: 25cm Offset: 0 Gain: 32 Tips to reduce the impact on render times: Render times can vary greatly. These three factors play an important role in render times: · · · The base mesh vs. precision value (see below for details). The height of displacement (higher displacements will increase render times). How many displaced surfaces and objects the rendered image contains. For example, a common usage of displacement may be for a brick wall seen from far away, taking up 30-40% of the rendered image. In this case, low height and precision values can be used, and the impact on render times will be minimal. On the other hand, a close-up render of a displacement object taking up the whole image, using high precision values, will need more time to render clean. F. 01 Displacement Test This example shows that going beyond a precision of 32 (in this particular case) would not add more detail (while it would increase the render time). So it is important to avoid unnecessarily excessive Gain values. If you have both the main render channel and the shadow pass channel checked in render options, two separate images will be rendered, one being the main render, the other the shadow pass. The following image demonstrates the procedure to export different channels from Maxwell and the final image after compositing: 1. The background image The ground render The ground alpha The car and ground alpha Objects ID channel Material ID channel Ground shadows Car shadows Roughness channel Fresnel channel Diffuse passs Reflections Pass Z-buffer channel The final composition 10. 07 Special features The "Matte" and "Shadow" options can be found in the Material Properties of the Material Editor. 10. 07. 01 Matte material This option turns the material into a matte material which "cuts" through the entire image and reveals the background; physical sky if enabled; black if no environment lighting is used. This is useful for compositing purposes. For example, if you have columns in front of a character and the columns will be rendered in another pass, you can turn on matte material for the columns, and the character will be rendered with the columns "cut" from the character. The columns will still contribute to the lighting, even with Matte material turned on. © Next Limit Technologies 2010 Maxwell Render 2. 5 User Manual Chapter 10. Maxwell Materials | 81 Remember that during the render, you can display the specific render channels that you've requested by hovering over the channel buttons in the render view. The icons represent: R: Render channel A: Alpha channel S: Shadow channel M: Material Id channel O: Object Id channel M: Motion vector channel Z: Depth channel R: Roughness channel F: Fresnel channel 5 6 7 8 1 2 9 10 3 4 11 12 © Next Limit Technologies 2010 Maxwell Render 2. 5 User Manual Chapter 10. Maxwell Materials | 82 10. 08. 03 The MXM Gallery and Maxwell Resources The Maxwell Render material gallery, called the MXM Gallery, is an online library with over 3. 600 free Maxwell materials available for download. It is an online community where Maxwell Render users share materials for direct use in scenes and projects. The MXM Gallery is part of the Maxwell Resources website at http://resources. maxwellrender. com where you can also find free and downloadable Maxwell skies, illumination pre-sets and HDRIs. 13 14 10. 08. 04 Direct connection between Maxwell Render and the MXM Gallery 10. 08 Useful tools for working with materials F. 01 MXM Gallery button 10. 08. 01 The Material Browser The Material Browser allows you to browse the Maxwell materials available on your system. [. . . ] These effects are a post-process that can be applied to a render inside Maxwell Render. Sky Dome: This is a virtual dome which encompasses your entire scene and can be used for uniform lighting. You can choose the color of the sky dome. © Next Limit Technologies 2010 Maxwell Render 2. 5 User Manual Chapter 18. Glossary | 166 SL: Stands for Sampling Level. [. . . ]