Luxus discussion

mjc1016

chsmo said:

Digital Lite Design said:

chsmo said:

I'm rendering through the LuxRender GUI and my image is pretty noisy. The image attached was rendered with 5 lights, tone-mapping set at Reinhard/non-linear and a render time of 1 hour.

Are there tricks to clean the image up? I've tested all other tone-mapping settings and they are way too bright. Adding lights also results in noisy, but brighter images.

I think I'm not understanding something on a basic level because the images posted so far are pretty clean compared to my grainy look.

Thanks

LuxRender will remain 'grainy' for a little while. It renders until you tell it to stop. The longer it runs, the less noise you will have in your image. :)

TY for such a quick response! I'm aware that renders continue until they are stopped. I just expected a render that took an hour to be less noisy than this. I thought I had done something (or not) to cause this grain issue.

So if I understand correctly, this is the norm when rendering with Luxrender and renders will take 1+ hours to look decent?

5 lights are a lot for Lux...

There's such a thing as having too many lights, with Lux. Not that they can't/won't work, but rather it's a lot more work and will take a lot longer to get a 'finished' render. Some of the best Lux renders I've done have been with the simplest light set ups. IBL/sun-sky lighting is usually quick to resolve. Meshlights tend to be quicker than 'DS lights' converted over and so on.

As to the other tone mapping settings...don't forget that there are exposure options/settings to adjust (in the Luxrender GUI). especially the Linear setting.

nDelphi

chsmo said:

I'm going to try it again with a basic light rig and add to it as I test results. I'll put him a cube and add a floor and wall as well.
Reality never put out this much noise on me and gave decent results in about an hour, so I guess I need to experiment a little.

thanks

In your original post you said you were using five lights, that is too much for that single figure. But we all know why you lit him up so, the lights aren't bouncing from walls or ceilings or floors, etc., so your scene is dark to begin with.

As most have said, think in real terms with LuxRender. I have lighted scenes with one mesh light, but have done so by using a closed room environment with white or light-grey walls, such as in this render: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17205/P165/#259812

Also, there are a lot of LuxRender settings under the hood that I am sure both packages (Luxus and Reality) are setting differently, so that is also the reason why one will be begin more noisy than the other in some instances.

CypherFOX

Greetings,

chsmo said:

I'm going to try it again with a basic light rig and add to it as I test results. I'll put him a cube and add a floor and wall as well.
Reality never put out this much noise on me and gave decent results in about an hour, so I guess I need to experiment a little.

thanks

Also, the render time is not useful; what would be REALLY helpful is how many Samples/pixel (shown as S/p) you got to.

For instance my two renders were QUICK test renders, and got to 27 S/p and 61 S/p in a few minutes on fast hardware before I stopped them. I rarely stop a 'real' render before 500 S/p, and have let some go as far as 5,000 S/p. The great thing about samples/pixel is that it is a hardware independent measure of how far along the image has 'baked'.

So if you can share your S/p, it might help diagnose some of the issues.

-- Morgan

3drendero

The old Luxrender plugin LuxrenderDS, has some scenes and explanations of what works in LuxRender:
The last download here: http://tofusan.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/download.html
The japanese page here: http://tofusan.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2011/09/portrait-lighti.html
http://translate.google.com/

MBusch

This is Genesis with V4 Elite Texture - Lana. 2 Area Lights and no other material adjustments than Cornea and Tear set as Glass. Almost out of box. In fact, I was unable to get a decent image when working with Lux native material. I certainly making something wrong there.

DAZ_Spooky

mjc1016 said:

Most of the time, the DIM IS NOT going to install programs or plugins (I can't think of anything off the top of my head that won't make that 'all the time', but 'most' is the 'safer' option, in case there is something that it will install that I don't know about)...it handles content only.

All of the time is currently correct. At this time Install Manager only handles Poser and DAZ Studio Content, and that does not include properly handling Puppeteer presets and some shaders.

That is not to say this will always be the case but it is the case for the moment.

PDSmith

PDSmith said:

Tinkering with the program and came up with a question i couldn't find in the manual

I have three material's I've converted as a light source.

how do I name each one separately so when exporting to the Luxrender GUI i have more control over the lights themselves.
as it stands they are combined into one file..and named after the set I'm using.

By the way when you convert a texture to a light shouldn't that tell D|S I want the light on...found out the hard way I had to turn it on. after starting a render and seeing nothing.

-Paul

Yes I'm resurecting a post from a few pages back due to I would like to add more questions but I'll reiterate what was asked.

Keep in mind LIGHTING is the core reason most people use luxrender in the first place. REALISM!

So here goes...

1) when you convert a texture to a light source shouldn't D|S turn that on as a light? It is what we wanted in the first place when converting right?

2) When you convert a texture to a light source such as a tv, laptop, iphone wouldn't you want it to keep that diffuse texture as part of the light source and not have to click all over the place to find the original texture and then apply it to the new setting?

3) when sending the scene to luxrender GUI to maintain control over the lights and why are they grouped into one set?. ie allow the user to catagorize the groups of light in the scene. ie ceiling light, tv, touch screen, or allow us to name and assign the lights as groups? if you can do this, I'm not finding it.

4) wouldn't a light tab of been more efficient in co-ordinating all the lights in a scene? In the current layout it's all over the place burried under drop down after drop down menu's. As a light is added or texutre converted to light why not have it added to this new tab/section?

Keep in mind almost all your users of this new plugin are used to the layout and effectiveness of Reality and LuxRenderDS's port to LuxRender. This is a good start and I hope the revised manual goes into more detail and explaination.

-Paul

SphericLabs

chsmo said:

I'm going to try it again with a basic light rig and add to it as I test results. I'll put him a cube and add a floor and wall as well.
Reality never put out this much noise on me and gave decent results in about an hour, so I guess I need to experiment a little.

thanks

The skin you are seeing is probably a glossy translucent with subsurface scattering volume. Or in other words, it takes more computation to look good than a glossy material. Arguably it looks better depending on who you talk to. The key to when it uses the glossy translucent is when "Specular2 Active" is turned on.

SphericLabs

PDSmith said:

PDSmith said:

Tinkering with the program and came up with a question i couldn't find in the manual

I have three material's I've converted as a light source.

how do I name each one separately so when exporting to the Luxrender GUI i have more control over the lights themselves.
as it stands they are combined into one file..and named after the set I'm using.

By the way when you convert a texture to a light shouldn't that tell D|S I want the light on...found out the hard way I had to turn it on. after starting a render and seeing nothing.

-Paul

l

The names of the Light groups are the Labels of the nodes, but I can see that if you have multipe material per node you would probably want to control each of those as a light group. I will make the necessary changes.

Renpatsu

Bought the plugin and I am already seeing quite a lot of things I like. It needs a bit getting used to, certainly, especially if one isn't used to LuxRender already.

I very much appreciate the surface tab integration (just fits my workflow) and the plugin appears to be lean on the memory side as well. The first impression of pwSurface2 shader auto conversion is pretty good (which I didn't expect to work well), but will have to see how the baking goes in the end :)

Anyway, thank you for making the plugin, quite happy with it already :)

PDSmith

SphericLabs said:

PDSmith said:

PDSmith said:

Tinkering with the program and came up with a question i couldn't find in the manual

I have three material's I've converted as a light source.

how do I name each one separately so when exporting to the Luxrender GUI i have more control over the lights themselves.
as it stands they are combined into one file..and named after the set I'm using.

By the way when you convert a texture to a light shouldn't that tell D|S I want the light on...found out the hard way I had to turn it on. after starting a render and seeing nothing.

-Paul

l

The names of the Light groups are the Labels of the nodes, but I can see that if you have multipe material per node you would probably want to control each of those as a light group. I will make the necessary changes.

Thank you. (looking forward to the update.)

ledhead

I believe my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series. I have been reading I need a 3rd party program, Luxrender, in order for Luxus to work. Can anyone tell me if my video card will support Luxrender or not and if so what do I need to do for my video card to work, if not what do you recommend me getting in order for me to be able to use Luxus. Thank you for any help.

SphericLabs

Ledhead said:

I believe my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series. I have been reading I need a 3rd party program, Luxrender, in order for Luxus to work. Can anyone tell me if my video card will support Luxrender or not and if so what do I need to do for my video card to work, if not what do you recommend me getting in order for me to be able to use Luxus. Thank you for any help.

Download luxrender and try it out. Download the Linux version too because it has some samples scene you can try rendering.
-> http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone

BTLProd

Ledhead said:

I believe my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series. I have been reading I need a 3rd party program, Luxrender, in order for Luxus to work. Can anyone tell me if my video card will support Luxrender or not and if so what do I need to do for my video card to work, if not what do you recommend me getting in order for me to be able to use Luxus. Thank you for any help.

Unless you are using the hybrid render engine your video card has almost no significance. If you can run DAZStudio, your video card is more than good enough for Lux render engine.

mjc1016

Luxrender can use CPU or GPU acceleration for rendering. In CPU mode, the video card is not a factor and any card that works with DS will be fine. For the GPU accelerated features the card needs to support OpenCL, which for AMD means a 5000 series or newer card.

Luxrender is available here...

http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone

Choose the correct version for your OS/bit count.

Bobvan

If I am getting the jist of this so far. One cannot separate the lights by their own group and one does not see the full Lux GUI like this o let you control pause render save your render to your desired location (which you kinda need if you want to queue render) use the refine brush which can get rid of noisy areas. Control film response and so on?

Bobvan

Second does one get files lie this in the render location? If so could not one simply resume the render from the luxconsole itself?

SphericLabs

Bobvan said:

If I am getting the jist of this so far. One cannot separate the lights by their own group and one does not see the full Lux GUI like this o let you control pause render save your render to your desired location (which you kinda need if you want to queue render) use the refine brush which can get rid of noisy areas. Control film response and so on?

I am not sure where you read that.
- The light groups are according the the Label of the node that has them.
- Enable the LuxRender Gui option if you want to.

Bobvan

So you are saying that one can export and render with the full luxconsole and save to their desired location?

SphericLabs

Bobvan said:

Second does one get files lie this in the render location? If so could not one simply resume the render from the luxconsole itself?

In the Render Settings Pane
* Render to an Still Image.
* Choose Image File
* enable Use LuxRender GUI

Indigone

Hi,

Quick question.. How do I tell Lux Render which camera I'm rendering from. Seems simple enough...

Indi.

SphericLabs

Indigone said:

Hi,

Quick question.. How do I tell Lux Render which camera I'm rendering from. Seems simple enough...

Indi.

Same one that 3Delight would use.

Bobvan

SphericLabs said:

Bobvan said:

Second does one get files lie this in the render location? If so could not one simply resume the render from the luxconsole itself?

In the Render Settings Pane
* Render to an Still Image.
* Choose Image File
* enable Use LuxRender GUI

Got is I am a reality user but am considering giving this a try too so dont mind all my questions. In reality right now I just go in the light editing tab and give it it's name for example if I use a mesh and curve light I name the mesh top and the curve side you can do this as well?

Edit I downloaded the manual will have a read never know if some stuff dont play nice in Reality its good to have options. I love the luxrender so I am going to look more into it...

SphericLabs

Bobvan said:

So you are saying that one can export and render with the full luxconsole and save to their desired location?

Do:
In the Render Settings Pane
* Render to an Still Image.
* Choose Image File
* Choose a name
* enable Use LuxRender GUI

And you will get one file name.xls in the folder.

If you enable collected texture, you will also get a name_files folder in there too

Indigone

Then I must be doing something wrong. I've got my viewport set up for Camera 1, and it's rendering my perspective view.

Edit: or maybe not, but it's not closeup.. let me play with the camera.

SphericLabs

Bobvan said:

SphericLabs said:

Bobvan said:

Second does one get files lie this in the render location? If so could not one simply resume the render from the luxconsole itself?

In the Render Settings Pane
* Render to an Still Image.
* Choose Image File
* enable Use LuxRender GUI

Got is I am a reality user but am considering giving this a try too so dont mind all my questions. In reality right now I just go in the light editing tab and give it it's name for example if I use a mesh and curve light I name the mesh top and the curve side you can do this as well?

If the mesh and the curve are a seperate object in daz, they will have a different name.

If you have one object with multiple materials, not real common, but it does happen, they will both be the same name. This will be changed so it has the label of the node and the label of the material .

SphericLabs

Indigone said:

Then I must be doing something wrong. I've got my viewport set up for Camera 1, and it's rendering my perspective view.

Edit: or maybe not, but it's not closeup.. let me play with the camera.

Its working for me, but I will see what I can figure out.

Indigone

SphericLabs said:

Indigone said:

Then I must be doing something wrong. I've got my viewport set up for Camera 1, and it's rendering my perspective view.

Edit: or maybe not, but it's not closeup.. let me play with the camera.

Its working for me, but I will see what I can figure out.

I had perspective off on the camera, no idea why. Turned it back on and it's rendering perfectly now. Thank you!! and thanks for making this product so more of us can use it!

Bobvan

Boo your losing me all zhi know right now I can give each light their name in reality and they show up as such in the luxrender BTW this one is baking for just over an hour 2 mesh lights top and side

mjc1016

Indigone said:

Then I must be doing something wrong. I've got my viewport set up for Camera 1, and it's rendering my perspective view.

Edit: or maybe not, but it's not closeup.. let me play with the camera.

Are you sure you are actually viewing through your camera?