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Some MaxwellZ renders


Des

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The first aerial shot was huge but FormZ handled it pretty well and I was able to navigate pretty easily on an old 2013 iMac. All the trees are using the scatter function in the MaxwellZ plugin to designated areas. Rendered on the Maxwell cloud. I calculated it to cost about €25. All the cars and people are referenced mxs files. The terrain is a combination of nurbs and subdivision surfaces. All materials are referenced Maxwell materials created by me and I was under paid 😂

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  • 7 months later...
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Excellent work Des! I miss working with Maxwell. Maxwell's quality is unrivaled. Today I think D5 although it is the fastest real timer renderer, it lacks the quality inherent in Maxwell renderings. This is why I either use Vray or Lumion's latest RT renderer. They are a good compromise between very high quality and speed.

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In the past I worked in an office with 16 computers. Albeit some were older, combined they made rendering fast. Today I have my own small office, and have only one rendering machine, so faster rendering by using a network is no longer an option. It's all about software now.

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I am/was just about to buy a new MacBook M3 (2023). I have been using FormZ for decades ( sadly enough ), and rendering with Maxwell, all on my Mac Pro ( mid 2012 )2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon. I have fairly recently got Vectorworks 2022 ( the last of the perpetual licences ). It works OK on 10.14.6. but should be far better on the latest OS.

Will FormZ be OK on the M3 ? Or am I buying a load of problems to get around ?

I use Pro v 8.6.5 because I only have Maxwell 3 plugin. It works well and renders over night 3/4 views, all I need for exhibition stands. VW does the drawings nicely.

Being kind of retired ( but skint ) I cannot really afford to invest in new software and learning curves.P2View1.6.thumb.jpg.8c53fa68c134f52706591f7ea5701973.jpg 

 

CarmenBluetop.jpg

Edited by Ged
Image res. was too low.
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FormZ 10 is now released and you can upgrade from v 8 to the latest version and is native and accelerated for use with Apple Silicon M1-M3 and you should see significant speed and feature  reliability improvements. Unfortunatley that is not the case with Nextlimit Maxwell which has not been upgraded for many years and I am not sure if you could use it with this new version. However, formZ 10 now supports direct export to Twinmotion and also RenderZone (not native) still functions as old style renderer but Vray 5 works well and the new Vray 6? is about to be released.

So it is possible to do better images that these good renders in pretty much real time with some conversion and learning.

I am dissapointed that Maxwell never made it in 3D rendering business - technology and software moved faster than they had funding!

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Hi Ged,

Those images are great, especially the photomontage with the high rise buildings. That one is so good I struggle to see which are the modelled buildings! Most of my work is still using the FormZ/Maxwell process. I have upgraded one of my Fz licenses to v10 and will at some stage test its compatibility with Maxwell. I am currently doing some work with Fz to Twinmotion and it's good but no ability to bring in saved views from FormZ so nice matched views like yours is currently not an option. That is why I'll be sticking with Maxwell for this kind of work for as long as possible. I have a Vray license but never really got around to including it in my imaging process. That's something I need to fix I guess.

You should post some more images you have done.

 

Des

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Thank you Des and Smarttec, I used to do these photomontages before I got Maxwell just using Renderzone. I did visual impact accessments too. 

That was over 12 years ago, now its just exhibition stand design. Its a pity we cant do something like what spotify did with music to the software companies.

I am now looking at older macbooks to run the old software I have. By the way, I am Irish too Des, ex. NCAD and what was Parnell Sq.

The architectural images are from 2015, a job in Southend Essex, a sea front planning application which went on for years.

The Dell job was during the deadly Covid times, Barcelona annual Mobile Phone Show. A job we won got built and did'nt get paid the design fees for. 

The last one is from a set of Visual Impact Assessment images ( the local authority select the views and we have to accurately place the proposed into the photographs ) . This job is built now in Acton, London.

I guess I can always use v10 to make the model, then save a v8 copy to run the Maxwell render off, but find it quicker just to work in v8. Maybe a newer Mac will change my work flow. I am hoping to move to laptop so I can work from holiday places.

MPcropCc.jpg

MPcropA.jpg

E.jpg

Dell MWCxRoads.jpg

View 07b low-res.jpg

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Ged,

Your work is truly beautiful!  It's a shame it is taking you so long to render.  To be honest, I about fell over when I read that you still have to render over night.  I also do quite a bit of exhibit design work and after having made the jump to GPU rendering in VRay after a brief time with Maxwell, I have been enjoying sub 2 minute renders for most things lately.  RTX mode in VRay is so incredibly fast.  I think if you are willing to try and step out of your mac walled garden and try Windows 11 with a powerful NVIDIA RTX 4080 or 4090 GPU, you would gain back so much more time that you could potentially make more while definitely reducing your energy usage compared to running rendering over night.  

Twinmotion is another faster modern option but you really need a RTX GPU to take advantage of the greatest version using Lumen.  

Just a thought in case you weren't aware how much faster things could be done with different hardware and software choices that still work with the wonderful FormZ.  Hopefully Apple opens up a bit to allow more compatibility in the future, but for 3D rendering efficiency today, Windows is currently dominating. 

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