Great images are everywhere if you wander Maxwell user forum for a while, as if everyone is artist or has a magic button; on the other hand, our VRAY users are more like ‘technicians’…
well I can tell ya that Im starting to be able to recognize maxwell renders pretty accurately before even knowing what was used to render it. That to me isn’t a strength.
Hi Percy, the same goes for Vray ones in many cases…
I don’t agree on the technician comment. I also checked their forum to see some images, but a lot are really dull looking and make me think of 3D from 5 years ago. Also in maxwell it’s the artist that has to do it, not the magical render button imo.
A lot of maxwell images i was pointed to with sentences like “HEY CHECK THIS OUT IT IS SOOO COOOL” were simply put badly crafted. Some Boxes with a concrete map (with horrible uvw mapping and seams all over" and a physical skymodel and nothing more. Dont get me wrong that´s not a maxwell problem, but ppl tend to turn of their brains when things are hype sometimes 
Need an example ? There you go :
http://www.maxwellrender.com/gallery/highres/artistic/arch/archhi11.html
This is featured in the official maxwell gallery and i was pointed at it by a “hyped” friend of mine. Take a look at the textures and the mapping…it´s simply not a good image at all. Textures are streched. Tiling is wrong. There´s seams and errors. Dont need to be a technician to see the problem i assum
Thorsten
thats true I do also recognize vray images pretty easy as well. If its GI, and its arch vis, then 80% of the time, its vray.
wander a little longer then and study the images, not the user comments (most of the time exaggerated)
If you look carefully, the best images on the gallery come from one single studio, that happens to be working very closely with maxwell and a few others that produced stunning images long before maxwell released their first alpha.
keep your head cool and don’t fool yourself with their marketing tricks. 
at the end of the day maxwell and vray are both tools and nothing more, it what you do with them that counts 
Ah… Well…
At the end of the day. Maxwell is still rendering the last 80% of the first immage …
lol.
(dont take it serious)
Tom
if I had a dime for everytime I heard that in a forum…
then you probably wouldnt need to be rendering mate
If I had a dime for everytime I heard you in the forum I would have 306.1$ wooohooow!
Re: Maxwell
Well ..let’s face one important point: vray is a productiontool.. fast ,with nice results and many user who need fast renderoutput have a technical background and also not the time to tweak quality.
I’m also bored of these wip’s which looks so nice but when you ask the 3d artist if he can do it in 2-3 days instead of 2 month you will get so poor results, and i think most of the maxwell renderings are projects for many weeks… no wonder that it looks good.
Another reason why we all think maxwell looks so realistic, are the memories of the first renderings on the website … they looked great - (perfect promotion - created desire) , but nearly all renderings used totaltextures which are superior. All renderings can be done by vray too.
so it’s very relative.. vray is a production tool and maxwell have to be faster to be used by 3d artists which don’t have the time to wait… and then the quality will decrease automaticaly!
that image is AWSOME. COOL. BODATIOUS. GNARLY. COWABUNGA DUDE. ok. ok. ok. ill admit. its sucks monkeys b**ls is that bad. hehe. however people you must remember… vray and maxwell are just tools (heheeh contributing to the “if i had a dime” fund)
haha, I could buy myself a reeeally nice steak dinner, but then Id go home and continue rendering.
My intention was in no way to belittle your point. Its just something Ive seen sooo often these days, that to ME its almost become so self evident, that why bother to point it out? Of course its still a well made point.
I didnt feel belittled at all mate. I’m as fed up as everyone else is with the renderer comparisons.
Here’s a image I did in mw and this was 30 mins of time
nice image. I think the maxwell sky, used by so many is one of the reasons they are easy to recognize. Also, I think alot of people turn on the sky, dont really change the sky settings, which creates the same skylight color, shadows and so on.
You render looks great. I agree with the Maxwell sky although the lighting it generates is fantastic. Once (or if) they get clouds, stars, and the sun then things will get ineresting.
jujubee: ta mate
yeah I agree about the sky…I need to swap it out for something with a bit more life in it
You should see the new Vray Sun/Sky… it looks exactly the same… You know why? Because they are both based on the same freaking Siggraph paper. Same will be true with finalRender one when that comes out.
I challenge all of you… if you think it is the user and not the rendering engine (and I agree with you), then lets all make an effort and push for an updated Gallery. Lets push for higher standards.
BTW… I think it would be really great if we made scene that Vlado and Peter can use for demos. So if you have tried a new feature and like it, as an artist, push it aesthetically and give if to them.