How to resume a render

One of the most useful features of Maxwell render is the ability to resume a render at any time, as long as you haven't changed anything to the MXS scene file and you have kept the MXI file of the render. You can stop the render if you wish to render something else, and come back and resume the previous one, it will continue from where it left off, continuing to increase the Sampling Level.


Do not change anything in the original MXS file or the resume will not work properly. You may get two different renders that look like they are overlapping.

Resuming a render on a single machine

Open Maxwell and you can do one of two things:

  • Go to File>Open MXS and locate the MXS file you wish to resume. Once the scene is loaded into Maxwell, make sure the render output paths point to the same location where the initial MXI file was stored when you first ran the render. Click the Render button and Maxwell will see that there is already an MXI file in the output path with the same name and will ask you if you wish to Resume or Start a new render.
  • Go to File>Resume MXI and locate the MXI file of your initial render. In the "Set new Sampling Level" dialog, enter the new desired SL. The MXI contains a reference in it to the location of the MXS scene file, so make sure the location of the MXS hasn't changed between resumes.


Resuming a network render

Add a network job as usual through the network wizard and if Maxwell detects that there is already an MXI in the output location with the same name as the output specified when adding the job, it will ask you if you wish to resume the render.


In addition to the regular resume functionality, there is also the possibility of "progressive animation rendering", please see the Progressive Rendering Workflow page.