Quote - You are reading stuff I didn't say at all.

I wrote about this being not ready because Kai repeated

Quote - ok. to reiterate:

"material support at this time is very basic. and only very basic textures are supported."

change the materials to basic ones and try again

Which indicated to me that there are people who don't understand what the state of this is and I tried to clarify that. And - I don't have a lot of time to type. I'm popping in stealing moments from my interaction with my family.

You people are awfully touchy.

If it's any consolation, I've been getting frustrated out of my mind today as well...lol. But there are going to be those who are not going to read the wiki, read the LuxRender manual, know that much about Poser....they're free to download the script, even if they're too dense to do the groundwork. Some don't realize yet that we're not here to teach them how to use Poser or even LuxRender, but to tell them what they may be doing wrong with the plugin. It's just the way things are. I scream in my pillow a lot....lol. Don't always work for me either ;o).

As for some of us not understanding what the "state" of the project is, I'll admit it - I guess we don't. What DOES come before an alpha? We simply aren't aware. Won't you share the term?

And don't "steal" moments from your family. You made it clear a few weeks ago already that weekends especially are for them. Go be with your wife. We understand. Really. Only an asshole would expect you to take personal time that you don't have when you've already given to a project that you never had to do in the first place.

Laurie

Quote - If you have questions, it means you're not prepared to play with urinating with your new kidneys while the surgeon still has your open body on the table with only one vein and one artery hooked up.

HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHA

 Kalbach wrote: not being hysterical at all.

I'm just deeply saddened by the way you reacted yourself. ppl want to be involved. they want to test. we will get ppl that yes, do want to just fire it up and use it.

but the way you just put all the effort down. bill, that saddened me.  

It saddens me, too. Just want to point out that I do have two master's degrees, but they are in the field of literature. There are at least 7 types of intelligence, by the way.
Do you know of Richard Engel, who wrote "Fist in a Hornet's Nest"? He and his parents were repeatedly told that college prep courses were beyond him. He was dyslexic. With the help of today's technology, he was able to become a more than capable reporter and writer.
No, I don't understand computer code and am shaky about installing and tying new apps. But I have been told I'm "very, very talented" in creating the poses I do. (I work mainly with poses, but not code.)
We don't all have the same abilities. I don't agree, particularly with these statements: "This software as it stands right now is being used be people who have no business using it. If you have questions, it means you're not prepared to play with urinating with your new kidneys while the surgeon still has your open body on the table with only one vein and one artery hooked up."
Perhaps I shouldn't be trying it at this point, but I did get a simple scene to render, with the appropriate colors. (Didn't post any of it.)
When I taught literature, in colleges, and in high schools, I found that if I helped students who were struggling with the subject, I learned, for myself, a good deal about how literature "works," and thereby refined my teaching strategies. This led me to help students at all levels. If you help someone who is struggling with LuxPose and LuxRender, you may learn what users will consider confusing and refine the application to provide a much more satisfactory experience for many users. 

I don't think anyone was singling you out in particular inquire ;o). There have been quite a few that never bothered to read about LuxRender or where LuxPose is at right now before they downloaded the testing build. Some even thought it was ready to go as-is. It's not and probably won't be for some time ;o).

And yes, there are different levels of intelligence. I'm no dummy either. But there are some things I struggle with, like math. I have much more of a head for science and language than I do for numbers ;o). It's perhaps my own stupidity that I decided to do something for a hobby that requires at least some math and with shaders a lot MORE math! LOL

Laurie

Quote - I don't think anyone was singling you out in particular inquire ;o). There have been quite a few that never bothered to read about LuxRender or where LuxPose is at right now before they downloaded the testing build. Some even thought it was ready to go as-is. It's not and probably won't be for some time ;o).

Laurie

Well, no, I think those statements were written specifically in reaction to my struggles. Just wanted to point out that a person can be intelligent and function well in some areas, but not in others. Some people stick to what they do best. I don't. I keep trying new things. I have enough self-confidence to be able to do that: to take a prat fall, and then another, and then another. Some people would lose self-respect if they did that, so they operate within more closely defined territories. 

I still don't know why I'm being lectured about intelligence. I never mentioned anything about that. I'm simply pointing out that this is a prototype, with practically nothing complex working yet. What works or doesn't work has been identified, albeit over the span of 50 pages of postings. Reporting problems regarding features that aren't even implemented yet is evidence not of intelligence or lack thereof, but a lack of awareness of what state the software is in.

You guys need to understand something about me. (Many of you do already.) I am like an idiot savant. I generally speak without nuance or recognition of the readers feelings, of how the words I use will be taken, because I'm incapable of seeing things the way most people do.

I make an assumption that you're going to read what I write in the same way and with the same lack of emotion that I do. I state facts bluntly, and this gets me in trouble.

Don't think of me as being nasty. Instead, think of me as being socially challenged, because I am. Everybody is very ready to support someone who has a disability, but fail to recognize that being a nerd is a form of disability. I am a nerd. I care more about the elegance of my code than the elegance of my communiation. I'm unable to do otherwise.

The software is in an incredibly early stage, and I have almost completely rewritten it in the last week, and am kind of burning out. Seeing people struggle with something that I've already disposed of, with a new implementation about to arrive, is frustrating to me. But I have to do real work for my paying customers today and don't have time to fix it just yet. I hope to get out of the office early today and crank a really user-friendly version of LuxPose out tonight.

Sorry I'm an ass. I can't help it.

BB, I for one welcome your bluntness.

If people can't read or understand what's presented to them clearly and unambiguously, that's their problem. I just wish they wouldn't clog things up with their whining.

Quote - Sorry I'm an ass. I can't help it.

If people blew off everyone who was an ass, they'd have no one to talk to. Including themselves...lol.

Laurie

Here's another burnout contributing factor that will soon matter. I'm about to start work on Poser 9. And I have another paying customer about to begin negotiations.

That's going to be three paying projects running simultaneously. I will have zero social neurons left, as all cores will be applied elsewhere. You can expect cryptic responses from me on a regular basis.

scratches head

I personally never expect anything BUT from you BB, actually.

Laurie

"I'm about to start work on Poser 9"

ooh ooh!! all is forgiven!

Just downloaded the latest exporter from ADP, and now my camera settings are not going into Lux as I have them set in poser. They were working before the latest build. I tried in the latest Lux download (from their forums) And also in the latest stable version from their download page, and still doesn't work. Did something change in the latest exporter?  Thanks

would someone who knows Blender consider converting this to an .lxs file (assuming it's ok to share it that way)  thanks

Quote -  OK, well I guess I've learned some things today. Too bad the character's skin colors didn't come through, though. His boots and belt, and some of the background colors did get rendered.

Don't give up :)
We will find out what the reason is. Good for you, because you may learn something more. Good for us, because we can find out the points where Poser starters have trouble.

Perhaps a few words about the things behind the scene.

Poser has basically thre different methods to texture a material. The classic way where simply an image is assinged to the figure, a "procedural" way where the texture is computed (noise for example, or other things called "shader"), and third a combination of the two.

Poser has a very extended system to define materials. Even compared to the 3D-flagships. A Poser material can have just one "node" with a texture or a combination of nodes (including one or more textures) to get a special effect. These combinations can be very complicated. This nodeset are often used to compensate Posers shortcommings (illumination). Exactly this is the problem if materials must be exported to Lux. Lux deals nearly perfect with lights (and effects generated from light) so all this nodes used to "fake" lighteffects are mostly obsolete - if not annoying.

At the current stage the exporter deals just with the simpler materials. One reason is: we have to understand Lux's lightsystem exactly to decide how to get a resonable result while converting materials. Not at least this is the reason all users are invited to try out and to tell about the experiences they made. Even if this exporter is far from very useful yet.

The target is to convert as mutch of a material set as needed to get a good result in Lux.

 pokeydots, is your image wider than high?

No its 714X714. This was a background and floor prop I downloaded from hobo, and it was a pz3 file that I loaded into poser and added some figures, could the pz3 file have a camera value set that doesn't change even when I change it in poser?

Let me try a scene I saved as a test from yesterday to render in lux and see if it has the same problem. Just give me a sec to try it out.

Ok I don't know why but it is only happening with the pz3 file. My old test files are okay. So does that mean that a pz3 file has camera settings that can't be changed in poser?

Maybe if you resaved it after changing settings it will take.  Just a thought. 

Jcleaver,  thanks I will give it a try and let you know if it works ;o)

It is so weird, I resaved the file, rendered it in Lux, and still wrong camera settings. The pz3 files I saved as test scenes work fine, but the one from hobo doesn't. I am using the gui interface to set the camera, and that has always worked, now I am confuddled!

Check "Render>Render Dimensions". Probably not set to "match preview window" but a custom size by the scene.

Hmmmm.  Try setting it in Poser instead.  I haven't found the GUI reliable in that area anyway.  Either that or I was doing something wrong.

 I did the match preview window, and I also set the camera to what I wanted in poser, and then used the poser setting in the GUI, I also resaved the scene under a new name, and it still doesn't work. I am going to save the props out and reload everything and see if that works. It doesn't seem to be an issue with the exporter or the gui or Lux, it is something weird with the pz3 file I guess. I am having no problems with my own scenes I have saved and exported to Lux.

You can force a change in resolution by editing the .lxs file, the width and height are at the start in the Film section.

Ok Thanks, I am not very good at hacking scripts, I am redoing the scene, with the props I saved from hobos pz3 and see if that works. Thanks for all the help ;o)

Poser Python does not provide a function to allowing LuxPose to ask what the effective render dimension should be. You cannot rely on "match preview window" as Poser never tells Python what that is. Dizzi (I think) contributed some code that may work to solve this for Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010, where there is a wx UI that can be interrogated. I haven't tried it. I don't know if that extra logic was integrated into LuxPose yet.

Render to exact dimension should work.

Thanks I will try the render to exact dimensions and see what happens :)

well the render to exact dimensions doesn't work on hobo's pz3 file, but all of my own saved files are working fine, so I guess it is just a problem with that one file. Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it.

 Hello, I've just been trying the LuxPose today. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, (sorry I have not read through everything, so this might be my own fault) but I have set up my computer as a server so I can do most of my work on my laptop. The problem I seem to run into is that not all the textures seem to go to my computer. Laptop alone seems to render ok, but when it checks in with the computer to get what the computer has been working all of a sudden spots that did have texture have no more texture. Again, sorry if this has already been talked about...

@pokeydots: Are you using the main camera? I haven't tested this lately, but I seem to recall that the existing conversion code only worked correctly for that.

Quote -  Hello, I've just been trying the LuxPose today. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, (sorry I have not read through everything, so this might be my own fault) but I have set up my computer as a server so I can do most of my work on my laptop. The problem I seem to run into is that not all the textures seem to go to my computer. Laptop alone seems to render ok, but when it checks in with the computer to get what the computer has been working all of a sudden spots that did have texture have no more texture. Again, sorry if this has already been talked about...

Here's a guess: LuxPose stores absolute path names to your texture files in the .lxm file. On a different computer, you might be using a different path (via a Samba mount or whatever), so that Lux would not find those files.

Quote -  Hello, I've just been trying the LuxPose today. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, (sorry I have not read through everything, so this might be my own fault) but I have set up my computer as a server so I can do most of my work on my laptop. The problem I seem to run into is that not all the textures seem to go to my computer. Laptop alone seems to render ok, but when it checks in with the computer to get what the computer has been working all of a sudden spots that did have texture have no more texture. Again, sorry if this has already been talked about...

I'm not clear on what you're doing. You are running LuxRender on the server with textures that are on your laptop? If so, you must ensure that the texture paths are valid with respect to programs running on the server. The exporter doesn't copy the textures. It simply puts the full path to those textures into the scene file, exactly as they appear in Poser.

Look in the lxm file - look at the paths to the textures. Are these paths valid from the server? If not, then it isn't going to work.

We can add an option to copy textures to the target scene folder, but that's not an option at the moment. We could also add an option to translate paths to ones that would work from the server. For example, if you had your laptop drive mounted on the server as a shared drive, then translating the paths for the target machine from c:somefolderfoo.jpg to myLaptopc$somefolderfoo.jpg would be a possibility.

(Transforming the folder might also help people running Poser in Linux)

Or are you talking about using LuxRender in server farm mode, where it enslaves other computers to do your bidding? I don't know how that works.

[Edit: X-post odf]

 I am taking about using LuxRender in server farm mode... from what I can tell, I think my problem is with LuxRender itself and not with the exporter. Because LuxRender is sending the textures to the other computers. Though I am coming across another problem as far as textures go, I have one model that I have put a Tattoo on from one of the Inked! sets and that is not transferring over, but I am think that is something relating to how the tattoo is put on since Poser is taking two images and overlapping them to add the tattoo to the skin texture.

Hi Clay,

When using the network rendering in Luxrender, it is Luxrender which takes care of transmitting all the required textures to the render slaves. If the textures work when doing a local Luxrender but not when using additional render slaves then the problem is in Luxrender, not the exporter.

Blended textures aren't yet fully understood by the material converter. I'd have to see the shader tree to know if it would work or not.

Quote - @pokeydots: Are you using the main camera? I haven't tested this lately, but I seem to recall that the existing conversion code only worked correctly for that.

Yes I am using the main camera. It just seems to be a problem with the pz3 file I downloaded, all of my own files work correctly.

Quote - would someone who knows Blender consider converting this to an .lxs file (assuming it's ok to share it that way)  thanks

jancory, sent to you the files, tell me if all was ok, compressed it was just 3 MB, if somebody else need it just ask me.

ima--looks like they work just dandy.  thank you!  -jan-

Quote - Dizzi (I think) contributed some code that may work to solve this for Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010, where there is a wx UI that can be interrogated. I haven't tried it. I don't know if that extra logic was integrated into LuxPose yet.

Dizzis code works for P8/2010 and is integrated.

Quote - > Quote - would someone who knows Blender consider converting this to an .lxs file (assuming it's ok to share it that way)  thanks

jancory, sent to you the files, tell me if all was ok, compressed it was just 3 MB, if somebody else need it just ask me.

Ask you :)

Ok ADP, send me your mail by PM and I'll post the file when back home late in the evening.

This is probably going to seem like a really stupid question, does the Air GUI actually do anything yet? The reason I asked is I changed some of the settings, fired up LuxRender & had the default settings show up in place of what I'd changed.

ps I'm not complaining as I KNOW it's still early stages in the coding & I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

pps this is the first time in over a week I've had time to fire up Poser.

aah I think I may know that one Lucifer.. check the post I just made in the Luxpose Project thread...

Quote - This is probably going to seem like a really stupid question, does the Air GUI actually do anything yet? The reason I asked is I changed some of the settings, fired up LuxRender & had the default settings show up in place of what I'd changed.

ps I'm not complaining as I KNOW it's still early stages in the coding & I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

pps this is the first time in over a week I've had time to fire up Poser.

The other part of it is that you have to run the GUI before you export.

Good! at least I know it's me & not the GUI that's at fault. :D

Back again, running the GUI before I export means, the exporter will pick up the settings I've chosen & write them into the scene files & I'll get what I want instead of the defaults.

Does that sound right?

edit. It is right. :D

Another possibly silly question occurs, I noticed on the LuxRender website that the've got some textures for download & use in LuxRender, How do we use them? Can we use them? if not are we going to be able to use them in the future?

Quote - Another possibly silly question occurs, I noticed on the LuxRender website that the've got some textures for download & use in LuxRender, How do we use them? Can we use them? if not are we going to be able to use them in the future?

I can't say for certain, but I think BB is working all that out ;o).

Laurie

It won't be right away, but I plan to support the lbm files in the Lux material library. Those are LuxBlend files. I'm pretty sure I can make them work.