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Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately I have no older scenes. I do not keep them. Avoiding the sun was a good idea, but with little improvement. I have tried another simple scene with one mesh light and the speed is a little higher, but still far below of what I would expect.
By the way, what does the efficiency value mean in the Lux statistics? I always have efficiency values somewhere between 500% and 1000%. What does that mean? If this is a good value, why does the s/p value climb so slowly?
If I ever looked up efficiency, I don't remember what it related to. I just like seeing a high number there. :) Maybe Paolo will give us an explanation?
OK, so... I would think a next place to look is at the "Output Tab". At the bottom, there is a check box for "Num Max Threads". When checked, it will use all of your cores. With an i7, it should show either 8 for quad core duo. Perhaps it is set to less than your whole processor?
On your old system, were you doing GPU rendering? If the hardware is compatible, it does provide faster rendering, although so far my tiny amount of testing seems to show a lower quality output when using GPU, but a good bit faster. At the moment I have no GPU items checked. I've attached a screen shot of my settings. GPU is something you can play with, but I would do that later after it starts rendering at good speeds.
On my laptop, a scene with one mesh light... the one I posted in here last, it looks like I can get to about 1000 in 2 hours with CPU only and about 1500 in 2 hours with GPU and CPU. It is an i7 with an Nvidea 780M. Just a benchmark for you.
OH, and LuxRender does have 64bit and 32bit versions. You did install the 64bit version? Just trying to think of everything here. :)
Thanks again
In the output tab everything is fine. I also have installed everything in 64bit.
But now I have found the problem!
I have simply rendered too big. I rendered in full HD (1920x1080 pixels) - this is what I always use in 3Delight. Now I have lowered the size to 50% (960x540 pixels) and suddelny the same scene renders in Lux much faster. I got 30 s/p after 3 minutes, which is an average of 10 s/p per minute. And that´s pretty ok.
I did not remember that the image size has such a big impact on render times in Lux. The difference is much more dramatic compared to 3Delight.
XoechZ, generally that is an issue with blocking the light path. Alternatively it could be that you have one or more materials that use a very high amount to of subdivision.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the answer, Paolo!
But, I am afraid, I do not understand. Sorry. What do you mean with "an issue with blocking the light path"? And how can I avoid that?
Thank you!
Let me give you a couple of examples:
- You have a closed environment and the light is outside
- You have a close environment and the camera intersects part of the walls, furniture, columns or so
- You use a sky dome with the sun. The sun is obviously outside the skydome, the dome is blocking the sun.
Hope this helps.
...hmmm maybe that was why the colours looked off and the shadows didn't show on the test I did. I have the skydome I used set to not cast shadows in 3DL, is there a similar setting in Reality?
I'm sorry but I'm not understanding you. Can you elaborate a little bit more?
...In the test scene I used which mentioned about a few pages back, The colour balance of the light was too "blue" and there were no shadows cast by the "sun" after over 9 hours of rendering.
The scene in question employed a skydome from Skies of Economy which has the "cast shadows" turned off so the "sun" (basically a distant light in 3DL) would be able to shine though it to illuminate the scene.
When I set the scene up for Reality/Lux I replaced the Distant light with the Reality "Sun" (placing it in the same position in the "sky") and used the Reality "Swimming Pool " IBL sphere to provide the ambient lighting needed. The only light that apparently had any effect on the scene as that from the IBL sphere
Your previous response about Skydomes interfering with the sun made me wonder if that wasn't what occurred in my test.
My question was basically, is there any way (or setting available in the Reality interface) to prevent a skydome from blocking the "sun" or do I have to remove the skydome from the scene?
Hi Kyoto Kid.
My first piece of advice is to stop thinking in terms of 3D software and think as if you were dealing with a physical scene. If we take that mindset where would be the sun? Outside the dome, of course. The sun is outside the boundaries of our planet and so it is modeled in Lux. The renderer simulates physics.
The same happens for IBL, which creates a light that is, again, outside the boundaries of the scene.
So, your dome is in effect blocking the light. Then LuxRender tries to adjust the exposure and it will catch the little bit of light bleeding through the dome, because the dome is one polygon thin.
That is a mess. It's like attaching the Titanic to a sportscar and hitting on the gas :)
Get rid of the dome, it has no use. Get rid of the sun as well if you used the Summi Pool IBL. BTW , that is not a sphere. The sphere is only there to help you position the background visually, instead of guessing the rotation angle. When you render then scene is ignored.
Hope this helps.
...however, if I take the skydome out, I'll have no sky in part of the scene (to the sides of the photo plane backdrop). Or does the IBL sphere create one of it's own?.
Also what about the Reality version of Skies of Economy? How does that differ from the 3DL one?
The IBL provides the background as well. Yes.
...well, that really solved the lighting issue. Guess I do need to remove the Sun as well as the render looks way too "hot"
One thing I keep getting these error statements repeating in the log:
"Cannot open file 'C:/Users/be/reality_spi20.flm.temp' for writing resume film"
"Cannot open PNG file 'C:/Users/be/reality_spi20.png' for output"
I looked in the C/Users folder and there are no files/folders with the above names appear. Do these need to be manually set up before starting Reality?
Di did find a Reality Scene Resources folder in C/Users//... however it has a folder with object data for a completely different scene than the one I am currently rendering and no data in the Textures folder..
Still not sure what is going on here.
After I started the render process the following four new items appeared on my desktop:
2 files:
"b3.lxrn"
"be.lxo"
A folder "be-Resources"
A second Luxrender icon titled "be.lxs"
Are those supposed to be there?
Are there any technical discussion threads here on the Daz forums for Daz - Reality/Lux users?
ETA:
When the scene loads I also see these two error statements
"Error hashing file 'C:/Users/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/temp/d83.png'"
"Unable to open image file 'C:/Users//AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/temp/d83.png'"
Can you tell me what are the names of the scene file and the image file listed in the Output tab. It looks like you are writing the scene and image file to the wrong directory or to a directory with no access rights. Look into it because the program works when the paths are set properly.
Cheers.
...I'll have to start it again as I aborted the process when I kept getting the errors.
I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. :)
Hello Kyoto Kid!
I am also still learning to use Reality/Lux, so I am no expert. But I have made some good progress and I think I can give you some tips.
First, I think you are still "mentally stuck" to the 3Delight way of lightning. The best advice I can give you about that is to forget everything you have learned about 3Delight! Sounds hard, but in fact it is the easiest way. Luxrender is completely different from 3Delight concerning lights, shadows and objects. Luxrender treats these things like real life! So you can use and abuse all the laws of light and shadow physics, but you cannot break or ignore them.
In Luxrender every light produces shadows and every object which is hit by a light casts shadows. This is nature and there is no way to avoid it. DAZ Studio parameters like shadow casting, shadow type, strength, softness or color are informations for the 3Delight render engine. Forget about all of them when you use Reality/Lux. They will have no effect. As said before, Luxrender treats lights and shadows like real life and follows the laws of physics.
It may sound a bit strange, but these facts make using Reality/Lux much easier than using 3Delight when it comes to lightning a scene. And in Lux you will need much less lights than in 3Delight. Why?
Ok, since you (and all others as well) have started using 3Delight, you have learned to fake lighning. Things like shadowless spots to simulate a bounce light, using UE2 to create indirect lighning and so on. With Reality/Lux you can forget about all that simulating and faking. There is no need for it. Light bouncing and indirect light are natural effects which are simply there. On the other side, you cannot turn off or ignore these effects in Lux. You have to learn to live with them and use them for your needs.
For example, if you do a portrait in Lux, and you have the light coming from the right, the left side of the figure will of course be darker. Now, instead of using a second lightsource from the left side (as a filler), simply place a plane on the left side. The plane will bounce back some light to the figure and make the left side brighter. Simple, isnt it? By the way, photographers know this technique very well and they do this with so called bounce cards. In this case, the plane is the bounce card which makes the dark parts a bit brighter.
At last, one thing about IBL in Lux. I have learned the following from the Reality User Guide. So, if you have not read it already, please do it. It contains a lot of useful information that will really enhance your knowledge about Reality/Lux.
So, if you use IBL in Luxrender, do not use the sun!!! Why? The IBL is your lightsource! Brighter parts emit more light, darker parts emit less light. If you have a sun "painted" on your IBL texture, simply rotate the sphere to position the sun where you want it. If not, or if the "IBL sun" is too weak, you can help yourself with placing a meshlight somewhere up in the sky to enhance the sunlight. Done. Nothing more, nothing less. But do not use the sun when you use IBL.
I hope this helps a bit. If you have more questions, please feel free to ask.
Think photography
Absolutely correct! When using Reality/Lux you should really think this way. This was mentioned a couple of times before and also Paolo has advised it a lot of times.
But unfortunately not all of us have knowledge and experience in professional photography. So I think it is a good idea to explain things in a more common way, so that is easier to understand. Light and shadows surround as every day, every time and in every situation. Without light we could not see anything. So we are so much used to light, that we dont care about it in real life and we became a bit blind about the effects of light and shadows and how they interact.
...unfortunately I'm a painter and former set/lighting designer.
With a camera in hand, I just point it at something I like or that looks cool hope the lighting is good, that the lens cap is off, & shoot.
believe it or not. the best photography I did was with one of these when I was a kid...
But that is very cool!
As a light designer you know how to use light to get the desired effects in real life. And thats all you have to know and all you have to do with Reality/Lux. In this case, I am sure you know what a light diffusor is good for and in which cases you want to use it (just as an example). Reality has a diffusor prop included. So try to use a spot light and a diffusor to get smooth lights and shadows in a scene. You will see how easy it is. And next time use a soft box (also included in Reality), because technically a soft box is nothing more than a black box with a spot light inside and a diffusor plane on the front.
So you see, no more tricks or faking or fiddling with artificial settings. Just use and act like in real life! Easy :-)
...if anything I find theatrical lighting is about as "unrealistic" as one could get. Stage lighting often involves setting different moods and effects, accentuating the colours of costumes, sets and such, rather than "photo perfect" scenes. This is why working with both the Daz and AoA's advanced lights has come so easy to me. I never feel overwhelmed or daunted by a scene that involves a large number of lights as long as in the end, they combine to create the mood or effects I desire. There are a number of scenes I created that never could be done with with just a couple lights, not because of the lighting system, but because of the "cinematic" (for lack of a better term) effects or mood the scene required.
I am still interested to see how an unbiased engine like Lux works with my outdoor scenes as yes, it is pretty much impossible to faithfully recreate totally "natural" environment lighting using the standard 3D light sets and biased engines. I feel I have come pretty freaking close (like the 3DL rendering of the same scene I am currently using for my tests that I posted earlier in this thread) using only thee Advanced lights and a lot of shader/surface adjustments. Granted the AOA lights are not capable of bounce lighting like IBL, however their render load is far lighter than UE. That same scene would have taken well over a day to render using a UE IBL and require I keep the Daz Studio application open with the scene loaded until it completed, basically making my workstation useless for any other tasks. That is the one really nice feature of Reality/Lux that attracts me, for I can run the process in background, set how many cores it uses (oh, for a system with duo 12 core Xeons), or pause and resume as need be, without losing a beat or having to start all over again.
However before I can begin experimenting and exploring further I need a solution to the error issues I posted about earlier.
Hm, I think we are talking about two different things now. Sorry if I could not express myself better. I do not mean "natural" as just being able to create "natural" lightning in Lux (like natural sun light).
Of course you can create any kind of artistic, dramatic, spooky, glamourous or whatever light effects with Reality/Lux. Only the lights themselves behave natural (as they do in real life). Think of most hollywood movies, or dramatic photo shootings in magazines. The all do not look natural. But they all have one thing in common. They use real lights, because the only light in real life is real light that obeys the laws of physics. That is what I wantes to say :-)
And Reality/Lux gives you the same possbility as real life - to work with lights that behave like real world lights. Every light you add for a Lux scene is a real light. And that makes them much easier to use, because you do not have to fiddle around with settings that are unnatural and not available in real life - just to make the light look realistic. In Lux, every light looks realistic and behaves realistic by default (color, shadows, bouncing,...).
And when you say that you have experience in stage lightning and light design, you should get good results immediately. Just see your scene as a stage, light it as you would do it in real life and hit the render button.
I remember those cameras had one myself
...one of the nice features of AoA's Advanced Spot Light is that it offers different falloff modes including linear and squared, as well as dofferent "GOBO" gels for creating special lighting effects. Came in very handy in the scene below that also made use of atmospheric effects (are those possible in Lux?).
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/630780/
I do like the ability to create mesh lights in Lux, I've worked with the concept using the Uber Area light but it is really hit and miss at times. Sometimes I need only an 80% intensity, while in another pic I would need to crank it up to 1,200% just to get the object to cast any light. Then there's still having to adjust the sampling and Ray Depth (particularly if the light source is under a shade or in a glass enclosure) which also slows down the rendering process.
If I wanted, I guess could even make a skydome a light source (I wonder if that's how Lights of Economy for Reality work)
You sure are!
Because in a physical world light bounces back and forth between objects, while in 3Delight it doesn't, resulting in the need to add more lights to simulates what LuxRender does automatically :)
BTW, you make very good points about lighting and using the Reality User's Guide. I know that people don't like to read but most of the information is in the guide. It's much easier than trying to guess or waiting for others to answer your questions. I poured as much as I could in the guide and it keeps getting expanded.
Cheers.
The two things are not exclusive. In fact a a lot of painters use photos for references and a lot of photographers use paintings for inspiration :)
The point in "think photography" is to simply observe the world around you. You don't really have to do anything special. Seeing like light bounces off objects and reflectors is enough. Since you have a background in lighting you know how lights work and how they project shadows. In fact you have used that knowledge for your work. You can use that experience in Reality directly.
Lighting with Reality is actually much simpler than with 3Delight or any biased renderer. Simplify. That is the key concept.
Try this: using only a mesh light come up with five different ways of lighting the same scene. Don't move the camera, don't change anything else but the position and size of a single mesh light. This little exercise will teach you a lot about lighting.
Cheers.
That is perfect. Nobody is talking about realism here meaning "no mood" or "plain." The point that we are trying to make is that lights in 3Delight don't behave like real lights. If you shine a spot in your stage toward a light-colored surface you know that the light will bounce off that surface. The same is with LuxRender. The same is NOT with 3Delight. Nobody is talking about lack of mood.
Yes, that's how you do it. It's a click of the mouse in Reality.