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?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. 39 Render Options Tab: setting up the Render Edit Tab: editing the render Pag. 43 2 THE THE RENDER ENGINE-USER MANAL-BETA 1. 2. 00 REALITY 2. 01 2. 02 2. 03 2. 04 2. 05 2. 06 Lighting in Maxwell Render Environment Pag. [. . . ] To do this, add a coating, right-clicking © Next Limit Technologies 2010 Maxwell Render 2. 5 User Manual Chapter 10. Maxwell Materials | 78 on the BSDF component > Add Coating, and then simply hide the BSDF clicking in the visibility column in the layer list to disable it. geometric height you want to displace on your base mesh. This value needs to be greater or less than zero for displacement to appear. Displacement height can be set in percentages or in absolute units: · Percentage (%): Set the desired height as a percentage of the longest edge of the associated object's bounding box. For example, if you have a car of 300 x 150 x 110 cm and you set height as 1, this means the peak displacement will be 1% of 300 (the longest edge of the bounding box) which is 3 cm to be observed as real length in render output. Using relative height is useful when you wish to preserve the same displacement height when scaling the object. Centimeters (cm): Set the height in centimeters to always displace to this given value regardless of object dimensions. 10. 06 Displacement Contrary to bump/ normal maps, the displacement feature simulates real geometry at render time as if it was actually modeled. This feature is very useful for adding fine detail to a mesh which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to actually model. Unlike many other displacement solutions which pre-tessellate the geometry, causing an increase in memory usage at render time, often of hundreds of megabytes for large detailed displacement, Maxwell's unique displacement method allows you to create virtually unlimited detail while using very little extra memory. A displacement component can be added to the material (only one component per layer is allowed) by right-clicking in the Layers list area of the Material editor, or from the Edit menu of the Material Editor. Please note that, although you can have several displacement components in a material, only one of them will be selected for rendering. These three factors play an important role in render times: · · · The base mesh vs. The height of displacement (higher displacements will increase render times). 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). Adaptive The adaptive option locks the precision value to the given texture detail (at half pixel accuracy), which has the advantage of always creating the most detailed displacement that a given texture can provide. The user does not have to guess what the maximum precision value should be for that texture, or worry about exceeding it (which would increase render times but would not necessarily increase image detail, see example above). The adaptive mode should be used with care, because using a very large-resolution texture to represent some simple detail will result in unnecessarily long render times. The larger your texture, the longer the render times with Adaptive mode on because it will always render the maximum amount of detail for that particular texture. Precision The more polygons you have in your base mesh, the less precision you will need to render the same amount of displacement detail. For example, if you are planning to render displacement over a plane, model your initial plane using more than 2 triangles. [. . . ] SDK: Short for Software Development Kit, used by developers to create their own Maxwell Render plug-ins or applications. Shutter: In photography, a shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time to expose photographic film to the right amount of light to create an image. The shutterspeed is usually denoted in hundreds of a second, for example 1/100, which will keep the shutter open for one hundredth of a second. Shutter angle: Film cameras use a rotating disc with an adjustable pie-shaped cut-out in it, which controls how long each frame is exposed. [. . . ]