LuxRender doesn't render Advanced Distant/Ambiant/Spot lights

WhiteFox

I can't seem to figure out how to get LuxRender to accept Advanced Daz Studio lights. Any help would be great. Thanks

SpottedKitty

Do you use Reality or Luxus? I'm not sure the advanced lights will work in LuxRender anyway — remember their extra features are designed to fake the way real lights (which LuxRender uses) bounce around in a scene. You might be better off setting up LuxRender environment/mesh/whatever lights from the beginning, that way there'll be nothing needing conversion.

WhiteFox

I normally use 3Delight as LuxRender (via Reality or Luxus, I bought both) takes over 10hrs for a slightly ok render with my computer (only has 1 duel core). I think I'll just stick with 3Delight till the computer gods send me a better PC.

Herald of Fire

With Luxrender, the render speed will depend greatly on how you've set up the scene more than it will on the PC. If you're getting slow render times, you may want to consider looking at your scene objectively and changing the surface properties or lighting so that Luxrender will have an easier time working things out.

High reflectivity and poor lighting are huge contributors to massive render times.

The Age of Armor lights are intended purely for use in 3Delight and won't have the desired effect in Luxrender. You can create Luxrender specific lights which will do a far better job at lighting your scene, and are recommended over any of the default lighting options.

WhiteFox

Here's an example why I usually don't use LuxRender. Left is 3Delight (33sec) and right is Lux (27min) The setup is1 rose prop, 1 barrel prop, 2 Daz spotlights, and 1 default cam. Everything is set to default (except pixel size is set to 1000x1000)

XoechZ

charliemcd2010 said:

Here's an example why I usually don't use LuxRender. Left is 3Delight (33sec) and right is Lux (27min) The setup is1 rose prop, 1 barrel prop, 2 Daz spotlights, and 1 default cam. Everything is set to default (except pixel size is set to 1000x1000)

In the left image (3Delight) there are no shadows. Renders are always faster without shadows, but look unreal. The right image (Lux) looks right and much better. Just my 2 cents :-)

Mattymanx

Turn shadows on and use an ambient light to add ambient occlussion.

WhiteFox

Yes, shadows make a big difference, but my point was the length of time the renders took and the fact that there's a big color difference between the 2. Also, the Lux render has a lot of noise throughout the entire image. I'm sure if I let it render longer it would have cleared the noise up. The scene was set up in DS and all I did was click render. After LuxRender started I then changed only the render engine to 3Delight and clicked render again. I'm not saying Lux is bad, just that, for the equipment I have, I believe 3Delight is better. You can see my renders in the Daz gallery under artist WhiteFox (that's me) Thank you all for the advice though.

SpottedKitty

charliemcd2010 said:

The scene was set up in DS and all I did was click render. After LuxRender started I then changed only the render engine to 3Delight and clicked render again.

This is the one thing that would have sent your render times not just through the roof, but possibly into orbit. You had two renders running at the same time? Definitely not a good thing to try — just one render is generally the most stressful thing your computer will ever do, and since LuxRender does an actual physically-accurate simulation of light behaviour in a scene, instead of faking it like 3Delight does, that will always take longer and stress your computer system more. Do one or the other, don't do both.

Edit: just noticed your comment about the colour difference. This is almost always caused by using surfaces settings optimised for 3Delight in LuxRender without changing anything — the two are very different, and as an example I think I can see the effect of overblown specularity in the flower petals. The solution is simple; before you start LuxRender, make sure the surface material settings are optimised for LuxRender. 3Delight settings will not work.

WhiteFox

I usually don't render 2 scenes at once, it was only a test. Again the 3Delight render only took 33 seconds so I don't believe there was too much stress on my computer. Thank you for the tip on setting up the materials for Lux

SpottedKitty

The LuxRender Wiki has details on just which parameters need to be adjusted. Note that a lot of these instructions seem to have been written for LuxBlend, but most things should still be more-or-less easily transferred to whichever plugin you use. The most important sections for your immediate purpose would probably be Lighting and Materials.

WhiteFox

Thank you for the link :-)

StratDragon

if you use standard Daz Studio lighting and you are using Reality to bridge to the LuxRender engine your lighting will not work correctly.
Use the built in Reality lighting props or the Reality lighting system here:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/68284/related/21/DAZ-Studio/Reality-Light-System-for-DS-+-Reality-+-Luxrender

The only light you can use properly from Studio to Reality to LuxRender is a single distant light will behave like actual sunlight after you manually change the name of that light to "Sun" but all other distant lights, spot lights and point lights should be avoided if you plan to render from Reality to LuxRender

The approach to lighting in 3Delight (as it applies to Studio) and LuxRender are behaviorally as different as both of these rendering engines are to each other as rendering engines.