Maxwell Render is an unbiased 3D render engine, developed by Next Limit Technologies in Madrid, Spain. This stand-alone software is used in the film, animation, and VFX industry, as well as in architectural and product design visualization. It offers various plug-ins for 3D/CAD and post production applications.

• Maxwell Render Beta Laser Prism 2
• Maxwell Render Software

Credits: Thomas Anagnostou IntroductionTo create a transparent material in Maxwell you must first set the surface roughness (see ) low enough for a typical clear transparent material (roughness 0 - 5) or rough glass (5-25), and then use:. the parameters Transmittance and Attenuation to control the color and transparency of the material.

the ND parameter to control the index of refraction of the material. A list of typical refractive values can be found. the Abbe parameter if you also want to render dispersion effects (see below)TransmittanceThis parameter controls the color of the light when it passes through a transparent material.

Choose a Transmittance color by clicking on the color picker, or specify a texture by clicking on the texture button. The Transmittance color represents the color of the light when it has reached the Attenuation distance (see below). Transmittance must be a color other than black for transparency to appear. Setting a brighter transmittance color results in clearer transparency, but you should remember that this parameter is also tied to the Attenuation Distance. AttenuationGlass, water, or even air are transparent when thin, but become opaque when a specific thickness is reached (different for each material). This is because as light travels through a material, it loses energy. The Attenuation distance parameter allows you to specify how far light can move through an object before losing half its energy.

For example, if you have a 2cm thick glass window and you set the attenuation distance to 2cm, the light shining through the glass on the other side will be half as bright.Attenuation distance and Transmittance work together. You must set the Transmittance color higher than RGB 0 for the Attenuation distance to become active. If your Attenuation distance is very small (for example 1nm) the object will remain opaque because the light can only travel a very small distance into the object, and will not come out on the other side. On the other hand, if you have a 1cm thick glass window and you set the attenuation distance very high (for example 900 meters), and you set the Transmittance color to blue, the glass will not be colored blue at all.

It will be completely transparent because there was not enough distance in the 1cm thick glass to cause any attenuation and reveal the Transmittance color. Attenuation is ruled by an exponential curve, therefore: the thicker the object, the more attenuated the light will be.The cube is 10cm thick. Only the attenuation parameter was changed. From left to right: 100cm, 10cm, 5cm.To better understand the concept of Attenuation, consider sea water. When the water layer is very thin (like water in the palm of your hand) you do not see attenuation: the water looks transparent. When you have more water thickness, you see a typical sea color (grey, dark-blue or light blue-green, depending on deep or shallow waters).

The Transmittance color represents the color that you want to get approximately at the Attenuation distance. Beyond this distance, the light is more and more attenuated, it loses more and more energy, and the view eventually turns opaque if the volume is thick enough.

NDThe ND determines the index of refraction of the transparent material. As light enters an object, it bends, or refracts, because the light slows down as it passes from a less dense medium such as air into a thicker medium such as glass. The higher the index of refraction the more the light bends as it enters the object and produces the typical distortions of objects seen through it.ND changing from left to right: 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0. Note also that the surface reflections are stronger with increasing ND Force FresnelIf the Force Fresnel parameter is checked, and the surface roughness is low (0 to around 15) then the Reflectance colors will not matter - they can be set to any color you want or even at black.

The surface reflectance will instead be determined purely by the ND (higher ND will produce stronger surface reflections). This is because the ND governs the balance between how much of the incoming light gets reflected off the surface and how much of it gets transmitted through the object.

But this 'auto balance' is only really valid for surfaces that have a low roughness. As the roughness increases it is no longer possible to define the surface reflectance based purely on the ND so you have to adjust manually the reflectance colors to produce the look you want. Usually it's a matter of brightening the reflectance colors a bit (if they were black) to bring back some surface reflections for very rough transparent materials:All parameters the same except roughness.

Above: roughness 0, Left: roughness 50, Right: roughness 50 with changed reflectance colorsAbbe (dispersion)Different wavelengths of light can be refracted at slightly different angles as they pass through a material, and this is what causes dispersion, the effect seen when a beam of light passes through a prism and is split up into the different wavelengths of light.The name Abbe comes from the German physicist Ernst Abbe, who defined the Abbe number. Abbe value controls the amount of dispersion.

The higher the Abbe number, the less dispersion will be visible in the render. An Abbe number higher than 60-70 will render as if dispersion was not activated.Glass material with Dispersion calculations disabled (left) and enabled (right).

November 7, 2017,Hello everyone,The series continues, and we are happy to share with you more Maxwell tips by the! Ddo share your own tips and/or techniques in the comments. 🙂 Michael MarcondesSelf-taught Brazilian artist in the field of Computer Graphics, working nationally and internationally over 15 years as a Creative Director, Technical Artist and Art Director.

‘s expertise goes from Virtual Photography, 3D Productions for TV and Cinema to Product Viz and High-Eng Training for the VFX Industry, where he produced dozens of training videos for. In the last years he has been working exclusively with international clients, which brought an exponential growth in visibility globally in the art industry. Today he is the lead professor at the Motion Design Post Graduate program at ESAD and founder of the employment technology initiatives, which in two years of existence registered over 300 job offers in an innovative new platform inspired by the needs of his own students.TIPS:.

Your lights must follow certain rules. Do not choose a light temperature that we only see with low lights in real life on a strong light source. Use blockers, real object lights, real cones, and elements to draw interesting shadows. Instead of cranking up your light strength when it’s all dark, bring another light source on the side, on top, etc., precision, and order in your scene is the golden rule of realism. Use and group by light temperature, intensity, size, and position. Michel Manfrediis a professional photographer with more than 25 years of experience in general image (photography, graphics, 3D ).

He describes himself as a 3D photographer. In his work, Michel applies lighting techniques used in “classical” photography. He has worked for major luxury brands and advertising agencies, in the fields of automotive, jewelry, cosmetics.

Michel lives in France, in La Rochelle, a beautiful seaside town on the West coast. He offers his services remotely to agencies, photographers, and more. He also offers custom Maxwell training to Cinema 4D users.TIP:To give realism to the studio scenes, I use plans with images taken in 32 Bits photo in a real photo studio. The reflections obtained this way are truly realistic!Raul Valverdeis a multimedia artist based in New York. His projects are mostly context-specific and often involve the use of appropriation, illusion and irony. He received a BFA from Complutense University, Madrid, an MA from London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, and an MFA from SVA, New York. Since 2011, Raul has been teaching new media, video and photography at the Fine Arts Department of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.TIP:Keep the light simple.

Most scenes can be illuminated with a three-point lighting setup: one main key light, one fill light (or reflector) and sometimes one back light. Study how photographers/directors of photography use lighting in real situations and try to mimic them. Maxwell is great when dealing with a large amount of emitters, but always think about the three-point lighting method, use realistic light intensity values and change the camera ISO to get the right exposure (ISO does not add noise/grain in Maxwell). Maxwell is faster when only one type of lighting is used: to get cleaner renders in less time, avoid using environment lighting and material emitters at the same time. Arthur Mamou-Maniis a French architect and director of the award-winning practice, specialized in a new kind of digitally designed and fabricated architecture.

He is a lecturer at the University of Westminster and UCL-Bartlett in London and owns a digital fabrication laboratory called the Fab.Pub which allows people to experiment with large 3D Printers and Laser Cutters. Since 2016, he is a fellow of the The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.Arthur has won the Gold Prize at the American Architecture Prize for the Wooden Wave project installed at BuroHappold Engineering. He gave numerous talks including the TedX conference in the USA and has been featured in The New-York Times and Forbes.TIP:Place more lights than needed and then adjust with.

Maxwell Render Beta Laser Prism 2

The more light you will have, the less bounce it will take for the rays to reach your whole scene, the less grainy your image will be!Mirče Mladenovstudied architecture where he discovered his passion for visualizations. He tries to take the skills learned from archviz to the field of product visualization and lately also VR. Mirče has 10 years of experience and has worked on a variety of projects, some of which can be seen on his.TIP:In my workflow I use a program called Polygon Cruncher to reduce polygons of high quality assets. The low polygon version is used as a representation of the Maxwell reference in SketchUp. It benefits you a lot, because by default, every proxy has just a box for representation of the reference in SketchUp, and you cannot really tell much about the shape of the model until you render it.Pablo Zavalahas over 12 years of experience in architecture, interior design, and environmental graphics. He is passionate about exploring and playing with new ideas, visions and concepts. Rapid visualization is the core of his work.

His work ethics is based on parameters of questions that allow him to create a framework of possibilities in the visualization of ideas in design. Playfulness and processes are the core fundamental principles that give life to his creations and methodology of teaching.Pablo shares a passion for teaching and mentoring younger designers. He has taught courses in environmental graphic design using Maxwell as a design tool to visualize the infinite arrays of ideas that can be imagined.TIP:Keep your materials at a minimum, simplify the process, “is real, but doesn’t have to be real, be playful with the process”. Be open to experiment with your ideas, touch and play!RochRoch is an experienced user who has been working with Maxwell Render since 2005. He is part of the Maxwell Render beta testing team. Roch is also a certified trainer, and a well-known face in the French Maxwell Render community.TIP:We now have a large choice when it comes to textures: classic way by using photo, photogrammetric contents, and procedurally generated with substance. Substance designer is not limited to video games and could be great for archviz.

Maxwell Render Software

Even if Maxwell is not directly connected to substance materials, we can use the generated maps and greatly improve our productivity.