Speed up render time in Maxwell Render

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Permalink Reply by Disgruntled Postal Worker on December 12, 2009 at 11:59am

Randy,

I have the same problem, but I'm just a student and not a pro with Maxwell Render. But I do know I love this render engine. The only thing I know about the render time is that the difference between renderes such as v-ray and maxwell is that maxwell is a unbiased renderer, meaning that it will calculate the true physical path that lightrays will take while traditional biased renderers (v-ray, mental ray, hypershot, etc.) make a good guesstimate on the light intersections. this is why it takes so long to render with maxwell but it is extremely realistic, since it shows the true physical behavior of light.

Like I said before, I'm not a pro. So I don't know much more about it. I have the problem as-well. When I render exterior scenes it take less time to get a clear rendering then a interior scene. I'm sorry I can't help you. I hope you can do something with this info. And if you have gather any more information about this problem. Please let me know.

Good Luck

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Permalink Reply by Michael Edgett on December 13, 2009 at 2:12pm

Maxwell has a lot of different settings, just like a camera. You need to mess around with the "Camera Parameters" settings to arrive at the most clear image possible in any given time. Shots like you've shown are sensitive to film ISO, environment settings and the way you define your material and lights.

For increased speed the best you can do is to have a quad core system and make sure that in "Render Options" you have "0" under "CPU Threads" as well as unchecking the "Low Priority" box. I do a lot of jewelry and so focusing can be a challenge. I typically right click and choose "AutoFocus", picking the center stone on whatever I've made. I typically use either very simple lights or just light the scene with an HDR image, since this is the easiest type of lighting for Maxwell to calculate. Oh, make sure to turn off "Dispersion" on any materials which may have it turned on inadvertently.

I'm invariably in a big rush to get these things finished and off to the model maker and since the hand finish work on these takes less time than doing all the little details, (filleting, rounding, smoothing), in Rhino, I just forgo most of the niceties on the renders and just get them to the stage that I can get approval from my clients. Here's a couple of recent pieces. I think that these renders took a couple of hours and went to SL18 or so. I then post process them and shoot them to the client for approval. Larger scenes or something really complex could easily take a day I'm sure.

Attachments:

• Ron Final Render.jpg, 27 KB
• Tom K Perspective.jpg, 26 KB

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Permalink Reply by Randy Himawan on December 13, 2009 at 9:59pm

Thank you - Disgruntled and Michael,

Now I am only using dual core processor with nvidia 9 series.I think the first thing should be handled is to leverage my system.

Michael, I have downloaded your attached images. It's a great renderings, and if you're saying that those renders takes few hours - It worth with the final result. Congratulations.

As for the camera matters, if during the renders I adjust the camera settings and (or) environment using multilight tab. Would it increases the render time also?

I have note all your tips and suggestions, Thank you very much :) .

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Permalink Reply by Hooper on December 17, 2009 at 5:24am

Hi Randy,

If you are considering buying a new system, try this company: www.boxxtech.com They make systems just for CAD and rendering and can't be beat. They even offer one system with 32 processors. I can't imagine how blissful that would be to work on. In any case one other option for you might be to purchase an additional render engine for those time crunches. At the company I work for we use both Maxwell and Vray. When we have little time for set up, but can afford more "wait time" (days with lots of meetings for example) then we use Maxwell. Or if we are going to be doing multiple lighting scenarious we use Maxwell. However on days where we need to punch out tons of renderings in a short time frame, we use Vray. Vray has a much steeper learning curve than Maxwell, but you can get terrific quality in a very short amount of time.

These were both done in Vray, the interior took around 40 minutes and the Monitor Kiosk took about 5 minutes. Both were done on a single Quad Core 2.66 Ghz machine, with an original render size of 1900x900 pixels.

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