>>>Maxwell Render engine??? Final Render Stage 2??? Swiss or cheddar???

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Wow, I could write a book on this topic. 🙂 The short version is, I have both render engines and I would recommend fR-2 for animation or interior GI renders (like architectural visualisation). Normally I would advise anyone to steer clear of Maxwell because it’s extreeeemely slow in many cases and integration with other applications is troublesome. On top of that, the development process has been very rocky and Next Limit has been misleading at best in their statements to customers. Further, there is no demo and if you decide you don’t like Maxwell you can’t get a refund *or* transfer your license.

There are, however, limited situations in which Maxwell could be a good choice:

1. You’re interested in producing the most accurate lighting simulation possible and you don’t care how long it takes;
2. The vast majority of your work will be product-type renders involving small scenes and direct lighting;
3. The vast majority of your work will be exterior renders involving direct lighting.

Note the emphasis on direct lighting. This is because Maxwell render times increase geometrically when indirect lighting is involved. A production quality, print resoution interior render could take 200 hours or more on a fast computer, and that’s no exaggeration. By way of comparison, finalRender could produce an equivalent render in 5-10 hours.

finalRender is much *much* better integrated into Cinema, so that you can almost use it like Cinema’s own render engine. In contrast, Maxwell connects to Cinema via a plugin that has numerous problems. First, it does not support animation or motion blur (in case you *really* have a lot of time on your hands). Second, 90+% of the time you will have to create your materials in Maxwell’s standalone Studio application or material editor. Hopefully these limitations will be corrected, but past experience doesn’t bode well for a quick resolution.

Unfortunately, Cebas(maker of fR-2) hasn’t been the model of good customer relations either. Notably, they still haven’t released their Mac/OSX version and there’s no telling when that might happen.

If you can wait a while, VRay might be the best option of all. It has, in my opinion, the best combination of speed and quality presently available. A Cinema connection is coming, but it’s still in the early stages. You can read more about it here: https://www.vrayforc4d.com/

[Michael Munkittrick]

[Adam Trachtenberg] “the development process has been very rocky and Next Limit has been misleading at best in their statements to customers”

You needn’t say anything further. I can respect any company who strives for perfecton, but not at the cost of customer satisfaction or honesty about their products.

[Adam Trachtenberg] “Unfortunately, Cebas(maker of fR-2) hasn’t been the model of good customer relations either. Notably, they still haven’t released their Mac/OSX version and there’s no telling when that might happen.”

And then you kick me in the teeth…by way of the groin. Man, I was all but sold, but being that I’m a 1/2 Mac and 1/2 PC studio (at least this year), that would leave me somewhat lopsided. I’ve heard that Final Render 2 has a pretty loyal customer base, but that would prove pretty complicated if I should be in the rare, but still necessary position of doing a cross platform render if there isn’t a solid user base from which to build my understanding.

I’ve built a 12/12 (Pentium 4 HT) proc “blade” type render system, but it uses PC guts and a lot of special rigging…and I don’t mean that as a professional term. And to say “built” might actually be a bit misleading as well, as much of the materials came from machines that had all but died in their other useful abilities.

Here’s the thing Adam, I don’t anticipate being a 3D wizard. Hell, I’m truthfully going to feel blessed if I can get the stuff installed without tech support, but I do want to build something reliable and worthy of the time that I do foresee myself trying this out. If you’ve read any of the recent posts in the business & marketing forum, I am near the closing of the sale of my video production and post business and more or less want to use my free time to learn something that I had told myself wasn’t possible…in effect, proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks. I suppose I could overlook the need for cross platform-able software solutions as long as I can rest confidently on the stability of one or the other.

That being said, if you had to build a system for creating 3D product shots and speed was of importance but stability is paramount, what would you build? Should I consder something like 3ds Max instead of Cinema 4D? I was once a pretty good Lightwave user, but I don’t think like an artist as much as I do a money-crunching creative. What would you do and what would you use, no holds barred?

PS, thanks so-o-o-o much for your time.

Michael Munkittrick
Gainesville, Florida USA

[Adam Trachtenberg]

To be perfectly honest, based on your criteria I would stick with Cinema and Advanced Render. AR’s only real weak spot is GI, and in particular GI animation, but it’s more than sufficient for product shots. That, and it doesn’t support bucket rendering (automatically splitting a still image across a network). You can render a still in slices across a network, but then you have to assemble the pieces in Photoshop.

Advanced Render has some of the best lighting features around and it’s still one of the fastest raytracers. The material system is flexible but still powerful, and relatively user friendly. You can use it on mixed networks and you don’t have any compatibility headaches. Maxon’s tech support is good (and free!). IMO it’s the most stable 3D application around.

If I was going to recommend something else it would probably be 3dsMax with VRay, but neither of those will run on a Mac. Max is a good program, but personally I just don’t care for the GUI and workflow. That’s more of an individual thing, though. Definitely try the demo for yourself if you’re thinking about it.

You might also wait on the Mac port of finalRender. I can’t imagine it will be *too* much longer. I haven’t had stability problems with fR’s bucket rendering but I’ve seen several complaints about it.

Something I didn’t mention about Maxwell is that it’s network rendering is a real PITA to set up. I know a guy who bought 32 licenses and as of now he’s more or less determined that they’re unuseable due to the work required. Something else to consider is that you don’t get any break on NET render nodes; you pay $1,000 for four cpus (dual-cores count as two), period, so you can do the math.

Why is nothing ever easy, eh?

[Michael Munkittrick]

Thanks for the advice Adam. I’ll look into the advanced render module.

Michael Munkittrick
Gainesville, Florida USA

[Evalric]

Final Render for cinema is a very buggy piece of software, which should be defined in terms of beta versus it being on sale. I have used (or tried to use) Final Render for now over 4 weeks, and the experience has not been a pleasant one.
What is wrong with it you say? Well not to sound bitter let me talk about the very good, what a very nice render it is and almost as good as Maxwell but much faster, and i must say i was very exited when i first saw the speed and the quality, my potential architetural dreams went over the moon, and thats where they have stayed and on the darkest side at that.

But lets keep on the positive before the due bashing. Easier to set up than Maxwell, and with a very good Cinema feel and integration, you are quicly on your way, blazering render on a simple low poligon Architectural scene (that before i discorved all the droped geometry which worked fine with cinema)

Yes i was over the moon, and i thought architectural animations here i come! Stills with Maxwell and beautiful animations with FR2. HAHAHAHA!!!!

Okay now the reality check. Numerous crushes, dropped geometry, animation flickering, physical sky, which does not work and only gives a shity grey Dahhhhh?!!??! White screens, black screens, droped frames, AND THE LIST GOES ON and ON! Black patches because it does not like the geometry, and all on the same scenes that cinema did effortlessly if longer. Hallo Moron attack?!?!!?

And what about setting it up of Final Render, A NIGHTMARE you have to be a rocket scientist. Has anyone heard about IP clamp?? You will after you have battled your way through the instalation. A bitch to set up, you have to be a real tech head to make sence of it AND I AM NOT! And when final Render is set up it is physically locked to your computer, meaning if your mother board fries, dies or what ever, you have to rebuy Final Render 2 or convince Cebas that has truly died (And how do you do that? or how do you upgrade your machine?) and maybe they will give you an other, no I am not kidding! What a sick joke!

So if you happen to be on the move like i am, you cannot take it with you unless you put it on a lap top. But you can share it on a network, like most Cinema users work on large networks DAHAHAAH?!?!?!
(And it is also tempermental on network rendering crushing for no apparent reason).
Okay so the solution is to get in touch with cebas, who at first were nice (cause i rang them direct from Australia because i could not install IP clamp properly, after that I sent a couple of urgent emails to Cebas re my problems who never responded. I then went on their forum where some great poeple took their precious working time to help me through some of the problems that i had and thank you so much to them. AND IT SHOULD NOT BE THE WAY CEBAS SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!

But when i started reading the forum closely, i realised that i was not the only one, and most importantly most of my problems were bugs, and it seems that Cebas is doing little if northing to fix these bugs even after 9 months Final Render 2 for Cinema has been on the market, and as one user said “it seems that cebas is using cinema 4D users as their beta testers for Maya” while an other recommented “Ho my Cebas really is taking a bashing on the forum”. While 3DS Max users have been waiting an eternity for their update of stage 1 and just got it FRIGHTENING!

So for US $700 you would expect much better.

Yes there is no doubt that Final Render 2 is potentially a great renderer that cinema 4D truly needs, but not the US $700 beta version that they presently using to solution starved Cinema 4D users.

I dared to call Final Render “shity, a retard and needed an update urgently” on the Cebas forum, and Cebas’s responce was not to get in touch with me to see if we could rectify the problem. Their responce was to bar me from the forum, which is the only tech support they offer (an other large complaint from the forum users). I sent them an email at in at info@cebas.com and it bounce back, please read message below:
“Hi. This is the qmail-send program at cebasserver.de.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

Does this make you reassured after aving spent $US 700?

On the other hand, i get a 24 hour turn around from Maxwell next limit on any tech questions that i have. (and this not a software war as both have their places in a production cycle if only Final Render worked properly). AND i would gladly use it and recommended it any one if only it did work properly.

I will totally agree that some of the problems may have been through some of my lack of knowledge and inexperience with the software, but most were not, and battling bugs days on end for little result and loosing a client for failing to deliver, is not my idea of fun, especially at $ US 700 for beta testing!

In my limted experience of Final Render, it seems to be stable with very nice small geometry and after that well its a suprise, animation definitely is very temperamental.

The bottom line is about counting on a software on dealine that does what it says on the package, day in day out, and thats what cinema 4D does or it gets very quickly fixed. Final Render does not do that and does much worse and it has cost me a job, which has never happened to me before.
So if you are thinking of buying Final Render for large architectural work and have read this, then YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. stick with Cinema (bake)for animation for the time being.
If you do not, It could be a very costly mistake, and one where you will have no support and no money back!
eric valric