Luxus discussion

3dtoday

SphericLabs said:

3dtoday said:

Bobvan said:

I know that but I was referring to making the BG invisible like if you wanted to just render a character lets say to add as a PNG file

Here is something I made in my 1st few days SLG rendered the room and added character as a separate PNG render & PS magic

http://fav.me/d4somlh

COOL. How are u guys getting SLG to work? I downloaded the test build, but dont know what settings to use?

thanks

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18543/P165/#273349

thanks!

but I'm just getting a black screen. do i need to change the lights over?

I'm having trouble with these directions:

Ensure your light is selected in the Scene Pane(Tab).
3. Add LuxRender settings. Parameters Pane → Options Menu → “Luxus – LuxRender Light”.
4. You will see a dialog asking you to select an option. Choose “sun sky2”.

I cant find the Options menu, for starters.

thomas.alenfors_687cd07385

But Luxrender support alpha rendering ;)

Bobvan

You can also export as low ranged tone mapped image

thomas.alenfors_687cd07385

Regarding black screen issues.

Try rendering with "Use LuxRender GUI" ON

Don't know if its a bug or feature.. bought Luxus today ;)

Male-M3dia

One more quick play before I get back to what I'm supposed to be doing....

2 area lights, changes to cornea and tears to architectural glass, brought spec way down on dress and converted buckle to metal. Skin was converted from the HSS settings. Then used a sharpening filter in post on the image as most luxrenders come out a little on the out of focus side.

Czexana

SphericLabs said:

I like the render settings idea. The gamma correction is based on that Texture Gamma settings. A texture Gamma of 1.0 mean no gamma correction, which is the default.

But sounds like you only want the Texture Gamma to apply to diffuse?

Yes, but perhaps an option box by the texture gamma with choices for applying it to 'All Maps', 'All maps with colour multiplier' and 'Diffuse colour maps only' might be the way to go, so folk can choose what look they prefer? :cheese:

thomas.alenfors_687cd07385

Luxus 1 min test render with alpha ;)

marble

3dtoday said:

thanks!

but I'm just getting a black screen. do i need to change the lights over?

I'm having trouble with these directions:

Ensure your light is selected in the Scene Pane(Tab).
3. Add LuxRender settings. Parameters Pane → Options Menu → “Luxus – LuxRender Light”.
4. You will see a dialog asking you to select an option. Choose “sun sky2”.

I cant find the Options menu, for starters.

I had the same problem until I realised what the Options Menu is ...

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18543/#272645

I'm also having the same issue with Black renders if I follow those instructions for the Luxus - LuxRender Light.

3dtoday

I had the same problem until I realised what the Options Menu is ...

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18543/#272645

thanks! that fixed it.

I'm also having the same issue with Black renders if I follow those instructions for the Luxus - LuxRender Light.

I finally got an image. its totally gold/ yellow. { some kind of filter on it? }

I got this in the log: Writing Tonemapped PNG image to file

??

Mattymanx

3dtoday said:

I got this in the log: Writing Tonemapped PNG image to file

Thats just LuxRender updating the PNG file that is your render.

3dtoday

I'm also having the same issue with Black renders if I follow those instructions for the Luxus - LuxRender Light.

not sure. You dont need the luxrender gui for slg i found.

Im gettign the same gold. yellow image in the luxus panel - lol.

DraagonStorm

SphericLabs said:

Salem2007 said:

I apologize if this has been asked and answered already--there are a lot of threads for Luxus right now. I bought this yesterday and it seems to be working pretty well. I loaded the Ready to Render scene from Daz Studio (the dragon in the alchamy chasm) and got some decent results---biggest issue was a general washed out look. I noticed that the promo image for Luxus was the same dragon scene--if the person who rendered that in Luxus reads this, would you share the settings you used? It helps me to see examples with the settings so I can correlate the results.

Thanks in advance.

Lets see if scene sharing really works. Here is thea zipped up duf file.

-> http://sphericlabs.com/scratch/dragonslayer.zip

Although on this one I adjusted the lighting after the fact in the GUI. I changed the Tone Mapping kernel to Linear and then adjusted the SunSky light down and the Distant Light up.

The scene sharing works great! Also I verifies for me how to do the atmospheric stuff ;)

Any chance you have a shader for water? Or what the settings should be?

DarkStarr42

Ok got one to work thanks for the input had to reload the right vers of luxrender. Still needs work to get what I want but not bad.

3dtoday

NICE render Male-M3dia

nice lighting.

I am bad at lighting!

What i would pay TODAY for a new PLUGIN FOR LUXUS LIGHTING!

LUXUS RIGS!

40 Pre constructed Lighting Rigs!

closeups, modeling poses, beauty lights, kitchen / bedroom lighting.
spookY lighting, very scary creepy lights, lighting tunnels. lighting big scenes, street lights, lighting outdoor,
lighting tv news, lighting a diner, lighting two people talking { eating, or standing}, club and disco lighting,
romantic lighting { living room couch, outdoor patio, moonlight}

Fully adjustable! Easily tweak for your particular scene.

Available today

only $ 6.95!

marble

3dtoday said:

I had the same problem until I realised what the Options Menu is ...

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18543/#272645

thanks! that fixed it.

I'm also having the same issue with Black renders if I follow those instructions for the Luxus - LuxRender Light.

I finally got an image. its totally gold/ yellow. { some kind of filter on it? }

I got this in the log: Writing Tonemapped PNG image to file

??

I'm not sure how you got an image. I haven't had chance to play with it today but, form memory of my efforts yesterday, there are two ways I tried to set up lights: one was to set up the Daz Studio lights as for a 3Delight render and just let it do the job. The second was to follow the manual and select one or another option for the Luxus LuxRender Light (in the Parameters tab, with the light selected). The second method resulted in black renders whatever I tried. If I turned up the gain (power, I think it is called) to maximum I managed to get a few speckled outlines on a black screen. I still have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I know I didn't block the camera view with any "invisible" objects ... I had thought of that.

By the way, this thing about setting to invisible by clicking the little eye icon in the scene tab ... I read in one of he posts that this has no effect on the LuxRender. Nevertheless, if I tried an interior scene with and without making one wall invisible, the brightness shines in when I have the wall "invisible".

cwichura

3dtoday said:

I am bad at lighting!

The thing to remember is that light in LuxRender behaves like light in the real world does. Go buy a book on studio lighting for photographers (or Google around for tutorials on the web) to get a better idea of how you should be setting up lights for LuxRender. As a general rule of thumb, though, less is more. Studio (& Poser) pre-loads that have tons of lights are NOT what you want for LuxRender. The first thing to do when you load a pre-made Studio scene is delete ALL the lights and start from scratch with lighting for photography in mind.

3dtoday

cwichura said:

3dtoday said:

I am bad at lighting!

The thing to remember is that light in LuxRender behaves like light in the real world does. Go buy a book on studio lighting for photographers (or Google around for tutorials on the web) to get a better idea of how you should be setting up lights for LuxRender. As a general rule of thumb, though, less is more. Studio (& Poser) pre-loads that have tons of lights are NOT what you want for LuxRender. The first thing to do when you load a pre-made Studio scene is delete ALL the lights and start from scratch with lighting for photography in mind.

thanks, but nah, I know how to light for photography. But moving lights in the viewport is much harder for me.

I will pay for someone to do the hard work. this is what I want!

LUXUS RIGS!

40 Pre constructed Lighting Rigs!

closeups, modeling poses, beauty lights, kitchen / bedroom lighting.
spookY lighting, very scary creepy lights, lighting tunnels. lighting big scenes, street lights, lighting outdoor,
lighting tv news, lighting a diner, lighting two people talking { eating, or standing}, club and disco lighting,
romantic lighting { living room couch, outdoor patio, moonlight}

Fully adjustable! Easily tweak for your particular scene.

Available today

only $ 6.95!

Ippotamus

Geminii23 said:

Bluebird 3D said:

(Copied here from the MO forum to help with the discussion. Forum admins - So sorry for the duplicate! I hope it is okay!)

I’ve had the pleasure of testing this plugin over the past few weeks leading up to it’s release. Here is a summary of my experience thus far:

- Luxus translates Studio materials well but you still have to tweak some settings. This is due to the differences between the way biased and unbiased render engines work. The easiest example I can share is having to change the default diffuse color to anything but pure white (IE: 255, 255, 255) in the Studio surfaces tab. Since a lot of PA, myself included, do not bother changing this default color when we are using a texture, there are a lot of adjustments to be made here. It only takes a couple of minutes, depending on the complexity of your scene.

- Luxus exposes all of the native material options available in LuxRender. If you do not want to use the Studio settings, you can just choose one of them instead and it will override the Studio material for Lux.

- Luxus defaults to a decent set of render parameters right out of the box which means that provided you have a decent lighting rig, you can expect to see predictable results. However, if you do not have a decent lighting rig, there is nothing this plugin can do for you to fix that. There is no getting around good lighting.

Training is coming!

I am making a video tutorial series to help out with all of these questions. I expect to have it wrapped up and shipped to Daz by Friday and from there it is up to them when it will be released.

.... On a personal side….

I love this plugin. It stays out of my way and lets me focus on what I want to do, which is to create fun renders. I don’t care about mathematical light scatter theory or detailed explanations of what different surface types mean to the physical laws of nature. I speak this language: Less shiny. More shiny. Okay that’s pretty…. Luxus allows me to think the way I think and then it goes off in the background and stays quiet.

I’ll leave you with some of my own renders in progress. These were done in LuxRender via the Luxus plugin.

~Bluebird

I grabbed the plugin before it was too late, but haven't had a chance to play with it. Your renders look beautiful. I really want to be able to achieve more natural and lifelike looking renders. So I can't wait for your tutorials.

Thanks.

Same here, I grabbed it and put it in a safe place while I wait for the tutorials.
I definitely hope they are of the Luxus for Dummies variety because I can not understand 80% of this thread. :)

DestinysGarden

Kattey said:

Rareth said:

Kattey said:

Anybody had the problem when after using Luxus and switching back to regular 3Dlight DS stucks on "optimization of textures" part if any other shader (uberSurface, pwSurface) were later applied?

you might try saving the scene, closing DAZ and then relaunching it.

Yes, I did that but it is uncomfortable
Is this is a known issue?

Hmm, this happened to me last night too. I went back to 3Dlight, had something with ubersurface and it optimized forever so I closed and reopened DS and all was good. I didn't think much of it, but if we find it is always occuring and reproducible, we should place a report on the bug tracker.

Adding some general comments, I really enjoy the Luxus interface and the fact that all the tweaking occurs within studio. I very much like all the parameters showing so it will force me to really learn what setting effects what in the picture and how. I found it easy to get started with very much room to grow.

Thanks also for the extra setting space and those that put codes up for new options. I look forward to trying some of them out.
Great job Spheric.
cheers!

3dtoday

Hybrid mode is faster than Sample mode, the better your video card the more speed you get. LuxRender isn't like 3Delight so a render is never "done," you just stop it whenever the quality is at a point you are happy with - hybrid will get you to that higher quality faster. You loose some options running hybrid, so if it's worth the increase to you or not depends on what you're rendering and how much you want to tweak.

SLG will work with Luxus as soon as LuxRender 1.3 is released. Render speeds with it using a decent video card are crazy fast, but SLG lacks a lot of material and lighting support at the moment so it's effectively great for quick test renders but probably not what you'll want to use for a final.

@30s was shorthand for at 30 seconds. Basically I let the render run for 30 seconds and jotted down what the numbers were. You can see given the numbers I posted that with that particular scene Hybrid was giving around a 40% increase in speed which seemed consistent in the short tests I ran (3 minutes) but I don't know how this holds up on longer renders (hours) or with very complex scenes.

s/p is shorthand for Samples per Pixel. It's basically a determination of quality for a render. The more samples per pixel the more detailed, accurate, etc. the render will be. The higher the number here the better! As I said before a render with Lux is only done when you say so, but if you find a quality you're happy with (say 1.5K s/p) then you can set it to always stop at that number.

BiDir and Path are different rendering options in Luxus that determine how it renders light on the materials. Without going techy BiDir is pretty much the standard clean high quality renders, but it's certainly not the fastest. Path is generally faster but more prone to artifacts and noise. Essentially BiDir is good for quality renders while Path is better for short test renders. SLG cheats on this a bit though, because it can render Path so quickly (achieve very high s/p in short times - kind of using quantity over quality to some extent).

THANKS MUCH kinglord!

Bea

SphericLabs said:

Bea said:

MangeyDesigner said:

Bea said:

OK, what am I doing wrong?
I have added a light to the scene and I tracked down the luxrender light settings
but when I go to render I pick luxrender via luxus and hit render and I get the message that it can't find the application. what should the path be?

have you downloaded and installed Luxrender?

if so you need to set the path to the folder you installed luxrender into in the advanced render parameters.

if you haven't downloaded and installed luxrender read the documentation PDF that comes with Luxus as it talks you through what to do to get a test render with a primitive going and from there it is over to you and your scenes.

:)

Yes I had done that :) I set the path to the program file and it started to work but then it stopped and the log said

[2013-03-12 23:31:52 Severe error: 43] SPPM renderer requires the SPPM integrator.
I don't know what that means?

Change the renderer to to sampler.

thank you :) :)

Khory

The skin tones with this are A-MAZE-ING! I did have a special moment though when I did a render with a dress that uses the ubersurface as part of the surface set up though. It caused some near transparency where the fabric was close to her skin. Sold with a simple change the the default shader however.

SphericLabs

DraagonStorm said:

SphericLabs said:

Salem2007 said:

I apologize if this has been asked and answered already--there are a lot of threads for Luxus right now. I bought this yesterday and it seems to be working pretty well. I loaded the Ready to Render scene from Daz Studio (the dragon in the alchamy chasm) and got some decent results---biggest issue was a general washed out look. I noticed that the promo image for Luxus was the same dragon scene--if the person who rendered that in Luxus reads this, would you share the settings you used? It helps me to see examples with the settings so I can correlate the results.

Thanks in advance.

Lets see if scene sharing really works. Here is thea zipped up duf file.

-> http://sphericlabs.com/scratch/dragonslayer.zip

Although on this one I adjusted the lighting after the fact in the GUI. I changed the Tone Mapping kernel to Linear and then adjusted the SunSky light down and the Distant Light up.

The scene sharing works great! Also I verifies for me how to do the atmospheric stuff ;)

Any chance you have a shader for water? Or what the settings should be?

Water would be a glass2 with a clear volume, set the index of refraction to 1.33.

linvanchene

I was able to follow the 15891_luxus-manual.pdf and set up the test scene with a sphere and a plane and the suns sky 2 light.

The scene started rendering fine with the Renderer set to "sampler"

I then wanted to go on and test the "hybrid" mode.

As far as I understand this lets one use the graphic card.

I use a Geforce GTX 660Ti because the Cuda Cores of those Nvidia cards are supported by Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.

The issue is that with the rendered set to "hybrid" the render stops immediatley and yields a black screen as soon as all assets are loaded.

One of the last messages on screen is that the Geforce 660 was being used to render.

Then there seems to be this error message:

"Error 3: The direct light sampling strategy must sample a single light not 2."

Are there any other settings I need to change when trying to use the hybrid renderer?

Attached 2 screenshots. One showing the test screen with the renderer settings. I only changed one to "hybrid". The other shows the error message.

Update Edit:

When I select a distant light or infinite light the "hybrid" renderer seems to work.

It seems the "Suns Sky 2" light suggested in the tutorial does not seem to work with the hybrid renderer. Any ideas why?

SphericLabs

I am pretty sure you can only use one light with hybrid. Sun Sky2 is 2 lights.

linvanchene said:

I was able to follow the 15891_luxus-manual.pdf and set up the test scene with a sphere and a plane and the suns sky 2 light.

The scene started rendering fine with the Renderer set to "sampler"

I then wanted to go on and test the "hybrid" mode.

As far as I understand this lets one use the graphic card.

I use a Geforce GTX 660Ti because the Cuda Cores of those Nvidia cards are supported by Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.

The issue is that with the rendered set to "hybrid" the render stops immediatley and yields a black screen as soon as all assets are loaded.

One of the last messages on screen is that the Geforce 660 was being used to render.

Then there seems to be this error message:

"Error 3: The direct light sampling strategy must sample a single light not 2."

Are there any other settings I need to change when trying to use the hybrid renderer?

Attached 2 screenshots. One showing the test screen with the renderer settings. I only changed one to "hybrid". The other shows the error message.

Update Edit:

When I select a distant light or infinite light the "hybrid" renderer seems to work.

It seems the "Suns Sky 2" light suggested in the tutorial does not seem to work with the hybrid renderer. Any ideas why?

Madbat

Here's a link to the Luxrender wiki documentation, I highly recommend bookmarking/pdf-ing it for a good understanding of settings.

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Main_Page

For instance, Lux bump, normal and displacement units are in meters, so DS values will likely require adjusting. At this scale, a value of 0.001 = 1mm of displacement.

omradiocom

My apologies if this was answered in one of the 18 pages of posts, (after 3 I moved to reply)

I have a scene with a Genesis male figure that simply doesn't appear in the render. The rest of the scene, props etc...all there, but...the figure doesn't exist...

Hmmm?

omradiocom

I just moved the camera back and even more distorted image came out...this is bizarre.

Whole model segments disappeared.

SphericLabs

csampson said:

My apologies if this was answered in one of the 18 pages of posts, (after 3 I moved to reply)

I have a scene with a Genesis male figure that simply doesn't appear in the render. The rest of the scene, props etc...all there, but...the figure doesn't exist...

Hmmm?

Luxus must be skipping him for some reason. You could create a geometry shell out of the guy and see if that shows up.

omradiocom

"You could create a geometry shell out of the guy and see if that shows up."

thanks for your prompt reply. I'm sure we're going to enjoy your product when mastered. I returned Reality after a few days. This seems to be more stable way.

I don't know what a "geometry shell" is..but I'll research.

I also noticed it cut half the table, chair. And when I backed up the camera, it completely distorted the entire geometry of the scene. I closed all out and will see if it does it again. It would be lovely to refab my old pieces with your plugin. I create so many scenes that i don't develop past render in hopes of better rendering tools.

Seems strange it is cutting off geometry though.
Is there anything tricky about the camera selection? I'm not using 1 camera. In this case, I'm using camera 9 of 25.

Again, thanks for your prompt reply.