• R&D updates: RealFlow4 :: Maxwell Render
• Latest News
• Next Limit meet&greet :: Juan Cañada
• Skill up! :: Maxwell Render tip
• Image of the moment :: Benjamin Brosdau

• The Maya 8.0 plug-in for Windows 32 and 64 and Linux 32 has now been released. The plug-ins for Linux 64 and Mac will soon follow.
• End of October: Release of a new RealFlow4 patch
• 10 November: Release of RealFlow4 for Macintosh
• Other plug-ins have high priority and are due to be released as soon as possible. Keep an eye on www.realflow.com and on this newsletter for updates!

• The Maxwell Render 64 bits version for Windows will get most out of the new hardware and provide users with more memory to create higher resolution images and better textures. Target release: last quarter of 2006
• The Universal Binary for Mac will use the full potential of the new Intel processors. Target release: last quarter of 2006
• Updates for all Maxwell Render plug-ins are at the top of our list, and new plug-ins are due to be released in the coming months.
• We are also working hard to improve Maxwell’s workflow and networking options. Networking will be steadier, faster and easier. Target release: last quarter of 2006. Look out for news at www.maxwellrender.com

• If you haven’t checked the official RealFlow4 website www.realflow.com for a while it is definitely worth doing so. The website has undergone some changes and now features a new demo reel, and a number of interesting case studies (including Poseidon and Heineken).

• We have also launched a new RF4 scripting forum at www.nextlimit.com/phpBB2 entirely dedicated to RF4’s new Python scripting feature. Please note that this forum is for scripting only. If you have any particular technical queries, please contact our techdesk here

• The Maxwell Render free materials website http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com, launched at the beginning of August, has already built up a library of nearly 400 different materials for its 9000 registered users. We have introduced some tools to improve organization. A new search engine gets you quickly to the material you are looking for and the higher 5Mb upload limit allows for more extensive materials to be put online.
  

• Maxwell Render resellers can now find a treasure of promotional material in the special resellers’ section at www.maxwellrender.com. Next Limit will continue to update this section with new banners, images and information.

• After putting out a Maxwell Render manual in Japanese, we have moved on to the next language: French! Our French-language customers can now download the French manual from www.maxwellrender.com.

• Is your academy or institution offering RealFlow and/or Maxwell Render courses? Then contact us at training@nextlimit.com! We can certify your courses and award you official course status, announcing your schedule in our upcoming events calendar and providing you with appropriate logos, banners, etc.  

Name.......... Juan Cañada
Age............. 29
From........... Madrid, Spain

Education: “I studied Industrial Engineering with a focus on sustainable energy and fluids. I didn’t study anything computer-related but I have been programming since I was a child. I started to work for Next Limit in RealFlow but moved on to Maxwell Render.” 

Work: “As the Technical Director for Maxwell I have two different jobs: developing and coordinating. For developing I work on Maxwell Studio, the material editor, the plug-ins and all other main areas of development. For coordinating I manage people and communicate with the sales team and the management.”

Best aspect: “Oh, lots of things. I have the feeling that we are doing something unique with Maxwell Render. And I’m very lucky because I work with some of the most talented people I have ever known, seriously. Also, I love that the creativity of the people could be improved through Maxwell, and the amazing stuff people do with Maxwell Render.”

Worst aspect: “I can’t get Maxwell out of my head. It is too much fun for me as a developer to let me live outside of it. I guess I’m a perfectionist, although not many people will agree with me on that!”

Funny fact: “At Siggraph I met a Japanese girl at our booth and I asked her if she wanted to see a demo for Maxwell. She nodded her head. But after 20 minutes of talking and explaining, I realized she didn’t understand English and had fallen asleep.”

Free time: “If I have free time, I play music. I have six guitars, one piano, two computers that generate power to make music, and I have even programmed my own applications to compose music. I used to be a teacher of electric guitar, but I think I play quite bad now!”

Hi to: “A lot of cool people from Siggraph and to developers of other computer technologies who I met there as well. I really respect their work.”

To increase the realism of walls, ceilings or other large areas that will be uniform in color, you can make a 2 bsdf material that simulates tiny imperfections/reflective "specs" on the painted wall. To do this, start with a base lambert bsdf, set it to the color of the wall. Avoid RGB values higher than 220 as this will add to the render time and make the walls look unrealistically bright. Please note that when lambert is checked, the ND setting can be ignored.

Add another bsdf, which will represent the reflective specs. The color could be the same as for the lambert bsdf. Set its roughness accordingly; a value of 0 will make the specs perfectly reflective which might not look realistic, so a value of 8-15 is a good starting point. ND could be set high around 3 if you want the specs to be more visible. If you wish for the specs to become visible only at high viewing angles, set the ND to 1.5-2. Add a weightmap to this reflective bsdf that represents the specs. Whiter parts of the weightmap will make this bsdf more visible, darker parts will hide it.

Change the blending mode for this material from Normal to Additive, as we want to simulate reflective specs on top of the base lambert. You can find more info about blending modes in the Maxwell Render manual.

An example of a typical architecture wall material can be found on the MXM website here:

http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com/search.php?search=wall&id=274

Image details: Rendered with Maxwell Render version 1.1 on a Dual Xeon 3.2 GHz. No physical sky used, just skydome.

Artist details: Benjamin Brosdau was born in Luebeck, a small town in the north of Germany. He is a 26-year-old freelance artist specializing in medical visualization and environmental design. He has been using Maxwell Render since the early Alpha stage and has become a forum phenomenon, regularly posting amazing new images. For more information on Benjamin’s work, check out www.ag-systems.net

About Maxwell Render: “I immediately appreciated Maxwell’s ease of use and its vastly superior image quality. It does not only provide you with a maximum level of realism but features one of the most natural-feeling workflows as well.”