Maxwell | SketchUp

Maxwell | SketchUp is really simple to set-up–just install the plugin and you're off. Maxwell | SketchUp offers seamless integration with SketchUp Make and Pro, allowing you to work comfortably within the SketchUp interface. This product has been specifically designed for rendering in SketchUp with a simple yet comprehensive Maxwell toolbar. It brings you advanced Maxwell Render technology in a simple, self-contained package.

With Maxwell and SketchUp integration the light and materials of your architectural or interior design will achieve the most realistic image possible. Build easily. Construct without hassles.

Maxwell | SketchUp's render engine gives you a real-time preview of your final image. Every time you change the camera, lighting or materials in your scene, the preview will instantly update. And you can also save rendered images at any time without interrupting the render process.

Highlights of Maxwell for Sketchup

SCENE MANAGER All the Maxwell configuration in a convenient and compact panel. Powerful & easy.	MATERIAL CHARACTERS Give the simple SketchUp materials the realistic character you want; they are automatically translated to super-realistic Maxwell materials. Make them look like plastic, velvet, glass, metal, car paint, translucent,…
FIRE Navigate through your scene, preview the camera shots, the final illumination and materials interactively.	CUSTOM LIGHT OBJECTS Easily place different types of lights accessible directly from the toolbar. Spotlights, HDRI Lights, Projectors, IES, Omnidirectional and Area lights.

What's New in Maxwell

Best lighting engine for designers, architects, and artists from any industry, Maxwell constantly strives to improve the realism quality of the render and make the engine faster and easier to use. Maxwell remains unbiased with an easy transition from GPU to CPU, as well as the best cloud rendering service.

NEW DENOISER IMPLEMENTATION Maxwell 5.2 implements a new way the Denoiser works inside Maxwell. Now Maxwell does not need to run two passes, the Denoiser information is kept in the mxi file, the memory requirements are reduced to the minimum and new fine-tuning options are exposed. This is a more solid, comfortable and easy Denoiser.

Features

UNSURPASSED REALISM Unbiased spectral ray-tracing designed to simulate light and materials exactly as they behave in the real world. No tricks. Just accurate real-world physics.	INTERACTIVE FIRE Maxwell’s interactive engine gives you immediate feedback for adjustments to lighting, materials and camera settings.	THOUSANDS OF MATERIALS Thousands of online materials in our community based library. Materials are based on real optical properties, creating unrivalled realism. A Material assistant will help you create perfectly optimized materials in just seconds!
COATINGS IN GPU A coating is a very thin layer placed on top of a BSDF. It can be used to have a special brightness or to make bubbles. Now supported in GPU as well.	RANDOM COLORS The Random Color procedural creates a variation of color ranges specified by the user in the hue, saturation and value parameters.	DENOISER The Denoiser feature provides faster results (2x to 6x), obtaining higher quality at lower sampling level.
MULTILIGHT Light intensities can be changed during and after rendering, saving out as many images as needed – all from just a single render.	MULTILIGHT -LIGHTS GROUPS Lights can now be grouped and controlled like single emitters in the Multilight ’emixer’. Useful to keep MXI files more compact, reduce memory footprint and decrease complexity in scenes with lots of emitters.	RANDOM UVs The Random UVs procedural texture lets you have random rotation or translation of the textures on each object.
REALISTIC CAMERA MODEL Set optical properties such as f-stop, focal length, shutter speed, ISO, film size, etc. Get DOF, bokeh, scattering and exposure effects to boost realism.	ADDITIVE MATERIALS IN GPU Materials with additive layers are now GPU-ready, increasing compatibility with the majority of Maxwell materials.	ACCURATE 3D MOTION BLUR Accurate 3D motion blur can handle unlimited sub-steps, and can be set for both a still camera to mimic long exposure effects such as trails of light, or a film camera to show the motion blur effect of fast moving objects.
PHYSICAL SKY Wide range of real-life, physically-correct variables to control the look of the sky and lighting, including Earth location, time, sun’s aspect, and atmosphere.	VOLUMETRICS Create large atmospheric haze effects or thick fog, compatible with particles files in several formats including RealFlow .bin, OpenVDB and density fields/voxels directly from Maya and Houdini.	MAXWELL SEA Create realistic ocean surfaces and waves controlling water depth and surface dimensions. From swimming pools to open ocean.
HAIR Photoreal hair rendering, compatible with Maya Shave and a Haircut, Maya hair, 3ds Max hair, Cinema 4D hair, and Ornatrix. Any Maxwell material can be applied.	GRASS AND FUR Create photoreal grass or fur on a selected piece of geometry. Designed to offer maximum control and impeccable detail.	V-RAY SCENE IMPORT Import native V-Ray scenes and convert them to Maxwell automatically. Only supported in Maxwell Studio. Plugin integrations coming soon.

Advanced Features

• REALFLOW IMPORT - Render your RealFlow™ particles directly with Maxwell Render, meshing the point cloud at render time.
• PIXAR OPEN SUBDIV - The Pixar Open Subdiv feature subdivides object surfaces only at render time – saving space and data transfer.
• NETWORKING RENDERING - Render one image using all of your computers, or set each computer to render one animation frame. Complete control and flexibility.
• SUPPORT FOR HIGH RESOLUTION (4K) - Now Studio and Maxwell Render interface are able to accommodate to high resolution displays like 4K or higher.
• IMPROVED WORKFLOW - Nested references allow for better management of large scenes with deep hierarchies, optimizing file sizes. Dependencies are now searched in several subfolder levels, streamlining assets management.
• MEMORY SAVING INSTANCES - Instances are a great way to save memory when rendering. They are great for creating vegetation, bricks, furniture or any other extensively repeated geometry in your scene.
• CHANNELS - Alpha, Z-buffer, Shadow, Material-Id, Object-Id, Motion Vector, Roughness, Fresnel, Normals, etc. Create unlimited ‘layers’ of custom alphas and add any object(s) to those layers to isolate them.
• EXTRA SAMPLING - Define a specific area of your image to be rendered to a higher sampling level than the rest – dedicating all render power to the areas where it is most needed.
• DEEP COMPOSITING - Deep image format stores color as well as depth information per pixel, making it much easier to composite rendered objects together as well as eliminating troublesome edge artefacts. Export to EXR or DTEX formats, in rgba or alpha.
• PYTHON SCRIPTING - The Python SDK allows you to write custom tools such as extracting certain channels from an MXI sequence, creating materials on the fly, network render management and much more.
• ALEMBIC - The Alembic file format allows for very efficient storage of geometry and other scene data, which can now be referenced directly in Maxwell. Support for Alembic includes static and animated geometry as well as particles. It also works with the Exocortex CRATE suite of Alembic plugins.

Specs

Installation Requirements

In order to work properly, your copy of Maxwell | Sketchup requires: 

	Sketchup SketchUp Pro – Subscription Sketchup Pro: The most intuitive way to design, document, and communicate your ideas in 3D.
OR
	Sketchup SketchUp Studio – Subscription Sketchup Studio: Everything in SketchUp Pro + Sefaira for Energy Analysis.

Trial Download

Maxwell Render Free Trial Software Download

Download and test Maxwell Render before you make your purchasing decision.

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HW Specs

Recommended System Specification

Manufacturer's system requirements are generally the bare minimum that you need to run the software and insufficient for effective and productive operation of the product. 

Our suggested "real world" mid-range desktop system key specifications to properly run Maxwell are as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core i5
• Memory: 16GB
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA QUADRO P620
• Hard Drive: 500GB NVMe
• Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Novedge, in partnership with High Speed Computing, can also provide the perfect hardware for your design needs, pre-installed with your software, at a very competitive price. Contact us to discuss custom-configured workstations and laptops.

Suggested Workstation

Silver 3D Workstation CPU: Intel Core i7 Memory: 16GB Hard Drive: 500GB NVMe Graphics Card: NVIDIA QUADRO P1000