"I come to the CG world from a traditional background that includes photography, design, gemmology, and metal-smithing. My first introduction to rendering was through a biased render engine. Following many attempts and long hours, I became discouraged that the final product – the rendered images - did not look like I had envisioned, designed, or expected, falling well short of mirroring the subtle yet important nuances of the live object. These computer generated images always created a sort of dissonance for me between what I believed I should be creating and what in fact I was producing."

“Once I discovered Maxwell Render I never looked back. Learning and working with Maxwell Render is intuitive because it is rooted in a solid foundation that parallels the real world. It is great for example, to be able to set the camera lens length, f-stop, ISO and shutter speed as one would on a photographic camera. It is instinctive to use principles of physics intrinsic to gemmology to create new gem materials that react with light just like they do in the real world, simply by using a gemstone’s refractive index and dispersion. It is brilliant to be able to apply metal-smithing principles to ‘alloy’ or mix different metal materials to simulate different karats and colours of gold and other precious metals.