Preview scene lighting and materials in seconds with Maxwell FIRE

Maxwell Fire is an interactive preview tool that will significantly speed-up your workflow by allowing you to see scene changes instantly through a floating window inside your normal user interface.

Instead of constantly doing test renders and moving your camera or objects to check where emitter reflections fall on a surface or see how the bumps and color look in your scene, with Maxwell Fire you can get real-time feedback when editing a material or moving your camera and/or objects in the scene.

Compatible with all Maxwell Render materials and features

Maxwell Fire is not a separate product: it is a workflow enabler inside Maxwell Render which has full compatibility of materials and objects, and with the final high quality Maxwell Render engine. Our goal when creating Maxwell Fire was not to cripple your workflow by forcing you to abandon certain material types and features if you want to instantly preview your scenes. Rather, Maxwell Fire supports all Maxwell Render materials (including subsurface scattering, displacement, complex IOR, emitters) and all Maxwell Render features (including instances, depth of field, motion blur, RealFlow Renderkit).

Truly interactive workflow

Maxwell Fire is a truly interactive workflow, available in both standalone Maxwell Studio, and integrated in plug-ins for those that wish to continue to work inside their host 3D application (currently Maya, 3DSMax and Rhinoceros, but the rest will come in the the following months).

Another major advantage of Maxwell Fire over other interactive rendering solutions is that you can manipulate the geometry in your scenes. We realize most users wish to change/translate the scene geometry often, or move an emitter to change the lighting etc. With Maxwell Fire integrated into Maxwell Studio and plug-ins, you can work within a familiar environment and instantly see any changes you make not only to the camera and materials, but also the scene geometry. There is no need to re-export/re-import your scene every time your geometry changes, which could hardly be called an interactive workflow.

Entirely CPU based

Instead of using GPU based algorithms, which force you to buy expensive graphics cards to achieve the desired results, Maxwell Fire is CPU based, and no special hardware is needed.
Maxwell Fire does not require you to purchase additional or specific hardware to get maximum performance. Maxwell Fire works on standard CPUs within your existing machine; it does not require specific hardware or GPU technology.

While GPU hardware has become more capable of handling some of the calculations a complex render engine requires, they are still not ready to efficiently accommodate all physically accurate Maxwell Render features.

No extra cost

Maxwell Fire is included for free in Maxwell Render. It is not a separate application and it does not require a special Maxwell scene file to work. Maxwell Fire is a free update for existing users of Maxwell Render 2.5 or above and will be free inside Maxwell Render for new clients.

Learning Edition users also benefit

Maxwell Fire is also included in Learning Editions of Maxwell Render v2: anybody holding Learning Edition licenses of Maxwell Render 2 will get the full functionality of Maxwell Fire.

Free Demo version of Maxwell Render also includes Maxwell Fire

The free demo version of Maxwell Render 2.5 and relevant plug-ins will also include Maxwell Fire. So anybody wanting to road-test Maxwell Render will also be able to take advantage of this awesome interactive technology. This also means anyone wanting to test Maxwell Fire inside their plug-in and/or Maxwell Studio will be able to check it out for free.

Plug-in compatability

Maxwell FIRE is currently available in Studio and the following plug-ins:

3DS Max
ArchiCAD
Cinema4D
FormZ 7
Houdini
Lightwave
Maya
Modo
Rhinoceros
SketchUp
Softimage
Solidworks

Other plug-ins will see the addition of Maxwell Fire in the near future, subject to SDK limitations.

Demo resolution restriction

Like the free Demo version of Maxwell Render itself, Maxwell Fire inside the free demo version has its rendering resolution limited to 720x576 pixels. You can adjust the rendering resolution in a quality scale (from 1 to 5), meaning that you can easily specify the quality/speed of your interactive view.

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