Courtesy of Jonatan Sytron | KeyToon
MAX - MAXWELL USER GUIDE
Copyright © Next Limit Technologies 1998-2004
Revision alpha 1.1.4 alpha
Execute the Setup.exe file and follow the instructions. This setup file is only for Windows operative systems and it requires a license key for working.
The installer will create 3 different installation options in your system:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
2 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor, Athlon AMD or better.
Windows NT® 4.0 (Service Pack 5), Windows 2000, or Windows XP.
RAM sufficient to meet your operating system's requirements plus 1 GB application memory
2 GB of RAM memory is highly recommended.
200 MB available hard disk space for installation.
A CD-ROM / DVD drive for installation from Disk.
A color monitor capable of 1024-by-768 and 24 bits of color depth.
Acrobat Reader 5.0 or higher.
Use this parameter to introduce the time that you want to see the render finished, and Maxwell automatically will optimize its internal calculus to obtain the best result in this render time. As you can see Maxwell refresh the frame buffer window to let you see the render result as it is in progress. Notice that the first iterations are faster for a quick preview of the scene and then little by little the iterations get longer and longer up to some few minutes to have a better processor performance.
This value establishes a quality level for the render. This value is useful when you want to render a sequence of frames in different hardware configurations.
If the quality level is reached before the "maximum render time", then the render ends. In the other hand, if the maximum render time is reached before than the sampling level, the render also stop the calculus.
Each increment of the sampling level value is a increment of the 50% in the overall quality of the image. To have an idea of the image quality during the render process you can take a look to the command line window, where the sampling level is being actualized during the render process.
At the moment only the Render System 1 is available.
Low quality
This check is used to control the quality of the render. Low quality is used to make previews. For production renders don't use this option.
Maximum bounces
This value establishes the maximum number of the ray light bounces that the render engine will allow during the render.
The Sky dome is an uniform sky color, in this sky model the light is coming equally in intensity from all the directions.
Enable
Use this check button to activate the uniform sky dome.
Color
This is the sky constant color.
Intensity
This parameter is the intensity of the sky emission.
This sky model simulates the real Earth sky. To activate is, check in the "enable" button. Both skies can not be used at the same time.
Use Sun light
This parameter activates and deactivates the Sun. To have a proper illumination take in mind that you must use big horizontal surface simulating the ground.
The turbidity, ozone and water parameters control the amount of these substances in the atmosphere and they will produce small changes in the sky color.
Coordinates
This parameter establishes the coordinates for the observer in the Earth. You can also select some cities in the city list to automatically obtain the coordinates. More cities will be included in this list soon.
Date and Time
This
values tell the render the "hour of the day", the "day of the year" and the "standard meridian". The
render uses these parameters to calculate
the Sun position for this specific time. The SM parameter is the same that the GMT offset
value for your location. For example:
This specifies how much one Max / Maya unit represent into Maxwell.
Is important to work in real physic units because Maxwell calculates the light attenuation and other parameters in using real scale in meters.
i.e.: 0.01 will export 100 Max/Maya units as 1 meter in Maxwell.
Maxwell parallelizes and distributes the render calculus between all the system available processors. With this option you can limit the render to a number of threads. In case of Hyper threading processors each CPU will represent two threads.
When Maxwell finds some problem during the pre-render phase or it has some important message to tell you, it uses this warning and message window.
With this check button you can disable / enable this alert window.
Maxwell always works with its internal format MSX (Maxwell Scene Format). When you work from the 3D platform, Maxwell first of all has to save the MSX and then launch the render using this file. In case that you only want to save the MXS file, un-check the "Launch render after saving MXS". Once the MXS file is in the disk you can render it directly from the command line application or render it in a server machine. Take care of properly referring all the textures directories when you want to render in a different machine on the network.
Use this button to select where Maxwell will export its MXS file for the current scene. If you want to render a sequence, Maxwell will save a sequence of MXS files adding 5 number characters to the file name. i.e.: scene0000.mxs, scene00001.mxs... scene00025.mxs etc.
To launch from the command line a render sequence you must use the -a option from animation. I.e. "mxcl -mxs:c:\scene\scene.mxs -a:0-100"
This path indicates to Maxwell where to write the render output image files.
These check buttons tells Maxwell the options to export the render layers, such as RGB(render), alpha, Z, cosCamera etc.
Here you can add options to the internal command line call that MAX makes after the MXS file is saved.
Activates / deactivates all the light rays coming directly from the light emitters.
Activates / deactivates all the light rays coming indirectly from the light emitters. This option is oriented to diffuse materials.
Activates / deactivates all the caustic lights, these are all the light rays coming from dielectric materials, reflected or refracted. The direct caustics are the one formed by light bouncing directly from the emitter to the specular / dielectric materials. The indirect caustics are the same, but in this case the light is coming from indirect sources.
Film gamma
This parameter applies a potential function to the irradiance value that is coming to the image pixel. With a value equal to one this parameter creates a linear response to the energy, and produces a very fast saturation in the pixel color. When you decrease this parameter you obtain a very fast increase in the dynamic range and avoiding a fast saturation of the pixels. This effect also produces a reduction of the contrast in the output image.
Contrast
For the value of 0.5 is doesn't apply any change in the image contrast. For values higher than 0.5 it will increase the contrast and for values lower than 0.5 in will decrease the contrast in the output image.
Monitor gamma
This establishes the monitor gamma.
These are some points to have in mind to optimize the render process:
With the "low quality" option deactivated the render will start very dark in the first iterations, but it will have more and more illuminated as the render progress.
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