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The e core rendering application in Maxwell Render (previously called MXCL) is the engine which computes your render and shows you the final image. The component is called Maxwell.exe in Windows, Maxwell.app in Mac OSX and Maxwell in Linux. It provides a standalone interface that allows users to load MXS scenes to render, view the rendering progress and adjust render parameters. Many of these parameters can be adjusted while the render is in progress. When adjusting parameters, the small preview image will show you the results in real-time.

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• It is uncommon needing to render beyond SL 19 - 20.

The advance of the Sampling Level values could get clearer if we check the number of rays that are evaluated in each new Sampling Level. 

The following table illustrates the number of new rays that are evaluated in each new Sampling Level on a generic 1920x1080 pixels render: 

As you can see, in each Sampling Level Maxwell evaluates 1.5 times the number of rays it evaluated in the previous one, so this is the reason why the progression of time is always in a x1.5 ratio. 

Sampling Level vs Time

There are two ways to stop a render in Maxwell Render: by setting a Sampling Level or by setting a Render Time (in minutes). If you set both parameters, the render will stop when the first one is reached. This double approach gives you a lot of flexibility to control the quality and time invested in rendering. For example if you want to quickly compare a few renders of a scene you can set the time low (ex. 10min) and the SL high (ex. 15). In this case it is improbable the render will reach SL 15 in 10 minutes, so the render will stop after 10 minutes. For a final render you should set the SL to the desired level and set the time to a high value (ex. 999 minutes). Maxwell Render will stop when the SL is reached. If the render needed a higher SL you can always resume the render. See How to resume a render for more information.

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*Images with embedded alphas can use the alpha as a layer mask