Quote - Bugfix: Pose2Lux no longer crashes if you use the 'From Left', 'From Top' etc. cameras

does this mean we're not restricted to the Main Cam? if yes, woohoo!

Pose2Lux works with Revolving and Dolly cameras, including Main cam, Aux, Dolly, Face and any you create yourself.

Success with other cameras isn't guaranteed. All the last update did was try to ensure Pose2Lux doesn't crash if you do use them :-)

never occurred to me to try other cameras. thank you for adding this.

Wow! I haven't even had a chance to try 0.8.6 & you've got the next version ready. :D

He does that sometimes ;)...lol

Laurie

LOL I wouldn't need to if I was a bit more careful!

I'm doing things in a bit of a rush at the moment as I'm about to go away for week and wanted to leave things in as good a state as possible. Less haste, more speed!

I hope nothing's broken in Pose2Lux at the moment, but if it is it'll probably have to stay broken for a week!

Hope you all have fun with it while I'm away. When I get back I'll see what bugs have emerged and if there's nothing serious I'll be looking to take this out of beta and confer final release status on it.

Then to start looking at the wishlist of features for the next version :-)

Any tips as to how we should set up the skydome and the lights for said skydome? ;) I smell an update to the user guide...lol.

Laurie

Quote - Any tips as to how we should set up the skydome and the lights for said skydome? ;) I smell an update to the user guide...lol.

Laurie

Funny - I was going to mention that :-)

I haven't worked out what's best yet - I expect you guys'll beat me to it.

Seems to me the simplest approach will be best:

Load an image onto the skydome, and make a single Infinite light for the scene.

Place the Infinite light so that is is shining onto the scene from the same place sun in the skydome image appears to be

In Pose2Lux, apply the Skydome material to the skydome, and leave the Infinite light as it is, except for putting it into a group of its own.

Render, and change the gain of the sun to suit your needs. Set it to 'Black body temperature' and make it match the skydome lighting.

That's what I'd do for starters, but there may be some mileage in seeing if you can get better results by setting the Infinite light as a Sun. I haven't ried that yet.

That's assuming the use of a Jpeg on the skydome, of course.

If you apply an HDRi to the skydome, in theory that's all the lighting you should need. I'm not yet convinced that it will be, but we'll find out soon I guess!

Obviously it hasn't baked properly, because I stopped it as soon as I was satisfied that all was working, but you get the idea.

With a grey sky the colours are rather muted, as they probably should be.

Do you have ambient on the skydome in your Poser shader? Mine have been coming out ugly and muted looking.

Laurie

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid, I have to post another bug report (or it's something on my end)

It's from the v0.8.7 beta:

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "H:ProgrammeSmith MicroPoser Pro 2010RuntimePythonliblib-tkTkinter.py", line 1345, in call
    return self.func(*args)
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 4822, in ExportToLux
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 3959, in ExportGeometry
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 1657, in
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 1096, in write
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 1379, in extract_by_material
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 1383, in extract
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2lux.py", line 1342, in init
TypeError: 'list' object is not callable

Never mind my last post.

After restarting PP2010 and trying the same scene again, it works flawlessly =)

I have no idea what this caused, but it works now.

Sorry for the false alarm /me blushes

I'm glad to hear that Erick - I was struggling to see what could have caused the problem!

I'd rather hear bug reports that come to nothing though, than for people to not say anything, so thank you!

Oh, I was wondering about that too, Laurie (the Ambient question). Ambient_value on Poser skydome would translate to an emitter in Lux, right? Curious how best to set that.

I will be putting all this in the user guide, but until then, here is the quick and dirty version on using the skydome:

Apply your image of choice to BB's skydome or hemisphere. In your Poser scene, limit your lights to just one infinite. It's adviseable to match the direction of light of the sun to your dome image map as much as possible.

Open Pose2Lux and analyze the scene. Apply your Luxrender materials. Remember to make the skydome's Luxrender material "Skydome" listed under the "Special" materials menu (0.8.7).

On your lights panel, name your inifinite light (as in, add to a group). This name should be something other than default as the sky image is defaulting to "default" light name, if that makes sense...lol. I just name mine sun. WARNING: Do NOT add this infinite to the sun section at the bottom of the Lights panel where it asks you to chose a sun and sky light. Leave the light as is - just an infinite.

On the Camera panel chose "Skydome"

Export as normal.

In Luxrender, you may set the gain on the infinite/sun light up to 20. This may darken your sky a bit too much but if you play with the settings a bit in Linear Tonemapping mode, you can equalize that quite a bit.

To see more of the sky in your render, choose 35mm or below for your camera in Poser. 24mm works well.

Now, if you're using an hdri image, you may not need the infinite light at all, but rather just the skydome. Your image will still have light and will still cast shadows, although it will appear to be more like a cloudy day.

Thanks to Snarlygribbly for clearing all that up for me ;o). My skies looked like crap before he walked me thru it.

It's been my experience so far that .jpgs look better than .hdr images, at least to my eye.

You can get some really nice IBL images here, in both .hdr and .jpg format.

Hope that helps ;).

Laurie

Quote - Oh, I was wondering about that too, Laurie (the Ambient question). Ambient_value on Poser skydome would translate to an emitter in Lux, right? Curious how best to set that.

No, no ambient on the Poser skydome. The "Skydome" mat in Pose2Lux takes care of all that for you :o).

Laurie

Brilliant - thanks heaps, Laurie! This is really starting to be enormous fun! The stuff we can do, now... wow. Sky's the limit. heheheh :biggrin:

Oh, also, I guess I should mention that www.cgtextures.com has some nice 360 skies in jpg format. You're limited to what you can download per day for a free account, but even if they aren't so huge, they're quite nice ;o).

Laurie

They are, as follows:

Amethyst

Amethyst Dark

Aquamarine

Blue Topaz, London Blue

Blue Topaz, Montana Blue

Blue Topaz, Swiss Blue

Blue Zircon

Chromium Diopside (pretty green - one of my favorites ;-))

Chrome Tourmaline

Citrine Golden

Citrine Lemon

Diamond

Emerald

Fire Opal

Garnet Almandine (deep red)

Garnet Rhodolite (deep purple red)

Iolite

Peridot

Ruby

Sapphire

Tanzanite

Have fun ;-)

Laurie

Thank you Laurie, those are wonderful!

Pearls, 7 mats, left to right:

White, Standard Pearl, Cream, Pink

Gray, Black, Black Tahitian.

Laurie

Laurie

Thanks Laurie.

Materials always appreciated :biggrin:

y/w :o)

Laurie

I've made the update to the user guide to include the Skydome instructions. Until Pose2Lux has a website of its own, the user guide update is parked on my own website here.

Laurie

The materials are gorgeous Laurie, especially the pearls.  Now if I can just figure out why I can't get any of the materials libraries to load (Yes, I read the manual, but pointing to it isn't working, maybe it is the dreaded UAC playing havoc).  I have an image I would love to redo with those.  Bah I will figure it out. 

Quote - The materials are gorgeous Laurie, especially the pearls.  Now if I can just figure out why I can't get any of the materials libraries to load (Yes, I read the manual, but pointing to it isn't working, maybe it is the dreaded UAC playing havoc).  I have an image I would love to redo with those.  Bah I will figure it out. 

You have to point the path to the right folder and THEN save your Pose2Lux settings via the File menu. You did that? Just adding the folders won't do much unless you save those settings ;). And if you save those settings in the same folder as the script, those settings will be loaded by default every time you open Pose2Lux. It's on page 16 of the updated manual and I believe on page 15 of the manual that was included in the 0.8.7 script zip package.

Laurie

Fixed it, for some unknown reason it won't load anything unless I moved them out of where the script was.  In a folder in my documents now and no problems whatsoever.  If anyone is going to have a silly gremlin it will be me, lol.

I made a materials folder inside the Pose2Lux folder & it seems happy enough to load from there, I have switched off UAC though.

Quote - I made a materials folder inside the Pose2Lux folder & it seems happy enough to load from there, I have switched off UAC though.

I have UAC off, my poison of preference for games won't run properly if it is on.  Nope, just my computer being an odd duck, I accept that is possessed and work around it. 

It's not running Vista is it? I'm beginning to suspect Vista is just a repackaged WinME due to all the problems it has.

I keep my XML Mats folder in my External Runtimes folder. Just seemed like the logical place ;).

Laurie

Vista Home Premium, so yeah.

Oh goodness, not ME.  I am still having nightmares about the week or so I had it on my old machine, right up until I ripped it off and reinstalled 98.

Vista is better, not much but better.  I also suspect that it might well be some bit of nonsense that comes from it being a Gateway.  One does not look the gift horse in the mouth though when the gift horse has a quad core and 6 gigs of RAM.

come to the 7 Side... we have cookies....

Quote - come to the 7 Side... we have cookies....

Mmmmm....cookies.....

Laurie

If/When you can afford it, feed it Windows 7 & some of MG's cookies & it'll be a much happier machine, or you could eat the cookies yourself. ;)

LOL I had a choice a few months back, Poser 8 or Windows 7... guess with won?

Upgrading my OS is likely going to happen when I get the next machine in a few months...  Then I will have cookies too!

I usually delete my cookies.

Not going to derail this further, found the problem, somehow UAC had turned itself back on.  I really dislike Vista somedays.  Now, has anyone seen any leather materials for Lux?

Some updates will turn UAC back on, I've found. I thoroughly hate Vista, and think Microsoft should extend a fixed copy of Windows to all Vista onwers, as well as a profound apology for releasing such a sub-standard product.

<<...was that a pig that just flew past my window? Hey, maybe this can happen... :biggrin: >>

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2178022

Laurie

Hey Laurie,

Heres my first offering via Poser Pro 2010 (64Bit). Pose2Lux is working like a dream. No problems to report thus far :D

Click on the image if you want to see it at full size ;)

Lee

Elvenesque

That piccie is amazing, Laurie. Wonder if the trees and ivy implied a longer render, or if that's just part of what Lux does handily. The image is so good, I'll wink at the spelling of reclamation (reclamation: the process of reclaiming something from loss or from a less useful condition) :biggrin:

Finally got a chance to try it and not have my kids shut down Lux on me... I am thinking I am in love.  Will have to try something a lttle more complicated next.

Quote - That piccie is amazing, Laurie. Wonder if the trees and ivy implied a longer render, or if that's just part of what Lux does handily. The image is so good, I'll wink at the spelling of reclamation (reclamation: the process of reclaiming something from loss or from a less useful condition) :biggrin:

Um...I was still asleep when I wrote that. Yeah, that's the ticket....asleep ;). That's my story and I'm stickin' with it.

LOL

I made a few experiments on firefly extermination and the simplest (and most effective) way is just to rely upon Lux build-in functionality.

About UAC: I did hate it passionately till the day in which, browsing a site (totally unrelated to computer graphics) I got its request for running an application; it was a virus trying to enter into my computer...

UAC is not different from running UNIX as non-root and su-ing when required.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2178060

Let it bake for about 6 hours, going to leave her go overnight and pray the kids don't shut my comp down on me again in the morning in the time it takes me to get coffee.

Attached Link: http://allenart.yolasite.com/luxrender.php

5 textures for bagginsbill's envirosphere. Get them at the link.

Laurie

Thank you Laurie, you keep giving us these wonderful presents.