noooo

thats been fixed and is not needed in P2l. (that was needed for luxpose)

I can help more later... having a new furnace fitted right now...

No rush on anything, Magnus... see to your furnace... going to bed in a minute (in Oz)... and thanks for the offer!

LOL Robyn - if anything I can see how interested you are in the script and that's nice. Seems there's been a sort of lukewarm reception this time, but I guess these things do tend to start slow ;).

As for the tiling thing, Snarly's already thought of it. He actually went out and read everything about Luxrender and LuxPose and LuxBlend even before and during his making of the script. So, chances are, Snarly's already covered things like that or we've found it and he's fixed it already.

Truth be told there really haven't been that may bugs in the script so far, which rather amazes me ;). The one that was the most fun was the bug where my figure's clothes would fly off after the script ran. Snarly kept insisting that was not a bug, but a feature, but he fixed it nonetheless...lol.

And for Luxrender material parameters, I refer to the wiki. I use a combo of these two wiki pages/section:

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Scene_file_format_0.8#Common_Material_Parameters

This page gives most of the materials actual parameters and values.

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

That one is the one with the small image previews. However, if you click on the name of the material above the image, it will take you to a page that at least explains what each parameter is a little bit. So, between the two pages, you might start to get a better understanding :).

I know all this is a lot to swallow, but there's a learning curve with everything and this one is a smaller curve than most, honest ;).

Laurie

Quote - I know all this is a lot to swallow, but there's a learning curve with everything and this one is a smaller curve than most, honest ;). Laurie

Hi Laurie... actually, I'm in this tooth and nail, gonna claw my way through. Poser as a renderer is pretty much done AFAIC. So, I'll really study all this how-to-make materials as best I can and when i get stuck, as I invariably will, I'll be glad to know I can kind-of give you my issues to ponder... gratefully, of course. Thanks for the links: I will carefully study them first, though!

Oh, and the script is really clean - been doing very little else for the past few days, without any dramas.

Robyn

Quote -

...Some time ago, someone asked if one could display images that looked like they weren't done in Poser. I've rendered this in Poser first - hardly took any time at all, even with IDL and everything, but yeah... it looked like it. This still has the characteristics - V4 is a dead give-away - but I dunno... something about the lighting: Bagginsbill's skydome never looked so good. And you can't even see it! It's just there, painted with that last piccie of yours, Laurie... the sunset one? Really has that evening feeling. Current LuxRender settings are: Lamp Gain 30
Default Gain .85
Sensitivity 100
Exposure 1/60 (was 1/500)
FStop 8
Gamma 2.2

Don't know enough to fiddle with the other stuff, so I won't. Yet.

That image looks really, really nice Robyn...I like it ;).

I know what you mean about the lighting too. There's just that extra "sumthin'-sumthin'" about Luxrender renders compared to Poser. I think softness is one. Shadows most definitely. Firefly, IMVHO, gives a very vivid, stark render. There's nothing much of depth to it, although it could just be my use of it (or lack thereof) that causes that. Some folks definitely have a way with it that I don't.

I think overall, Luxrender just LOOKS better and if that means I need to render a little longer, than so be it...hehe. I probably won't use Firefly anymore.

Oh, and bb's skydome? It's not there, not really. Not in Luxrender anyway. More of Snarly's crafty trickery ;). Somehow, he uses the mapping of the dome as a starting point and then during export it gets transformed somehow into a Luxrender IBL light. No geometry gets transferred - at least, not the way I understand it as he explained it to me ;). Only the image on the dome gets sent to the .lxs file. For someone that claims he doesn't program all that well, he's done a very good job so far. I just can't be happier :).

Laurie

You might have clicked on the image and seen just how grainy things are, even after 12 hours of render. Mind you, resize the image and it's fine... photographs are grainy too, so it's not a drama. I guess my question is this: what can you guess might account for the relatively low sample-per-pixel count (82 S/p in 12 hrs) after such a long time rendering? Not the fastest horse in the west:

i3
4 gig RAM
Win 7 64-bit
CPU rendering only - have not tried the GPU version

Oh, and I do notice if I just leave the thing to render and say I want to to anything with the machine after an hour or so, the thing takes forever to respond. Menus drop down eventually, dialogues open in their own sweet time. Why is this? Do you guys get this?

The grain of the image has a photographic look, it does not look like the usual GC noise. It might work very well as it is (make the whole thing black and white and then sepia/bluish silver color it and you have a 40's or 50's photograph) or it might be manageable with programs like NeatImage.

About rendering: a mad proposal for geekiest among us. Lux is available also on Linux and does not require a graphical UI. I have seen reports of people making personal supercomputers out of clusters of cut-to-the-bone motherboards with Linux installed with price tags less than 2500$...

Another alternative, when Lux will have a good support for CUDA, is the option of making a dedicated PC with 3/4 nVidia graphic cards with high-end processors; it is not a demented proposal, I have described nothing more than a high-end gaming box.

Quote - The grain of the image has a photographic look, it does not look like the usual GC noise. It might work very well as it is (make the whole thing black and white and then sepia/bluish silver color it and you have a 40's or 50's photograph) or it might be manageable with programs like NeatImage. About rendering: a mad proposal for geekiest among us. Lux is available also on Linux and does not require a graphical UI. I have seen reports of people making personal supercomputers out of clusters of cut-to-the-bone motherboards with Linux installed with price tags less than 2500$...

Another alternative, when Lux will have a good support for CUDA, is the option of making a dedicated PC with 3/4 nVidia graphic cards with high-end processors; it is not a demented proposal, I have described nothing more than a high-end gaming box.

Good points, Alex. My old box was dual-boot XP-Pro/Ubuntu 10.04 so using that slick OS is a consideration, absolutely.I'm a happy user of Ubuntu, and staunch supporter.

Also, I forgot to mention the one thing that is reasonably good about my system: NVidia 460-series card that supports OpenCL. No idea how to get all that working, though. Is there somewhere one can flip a switch or download a driver to make it work in Lux? Or is that technology still a bit rough around the edges and needs a bit of refinement before it will behave predictably?

Attached Link: http://developer.amd.com/GPU/AMDAPPSDK/DOWNLOADS/Pages/default.aspx

Quote - i downloaded the sdk from AMD to get opencl lux working on my box. & yes mine slows to a crawl/coma too.

Sorry - should have mentioned I have an Intel i3, Jan... not sure if the sdk will work for that. Thanks for the link, tho.

Robyn - if your proc is a quad core (I think so), then your specs and mine are about the same. I really don't have many problems with my renders because 1: I guess I just have loads of patience..lol. If I wanna do something on my computer, I just pause the render (cause I CAN...lol). If I want to do something rather intensive, I just save the .flm, save and exit and then when I want to continue the render I just resume the .flm :). 2: I use the random sampler. I find that I get more fireflies with Mitchell, so I stopped using it. When I use choose random in the exporter, I bump up the samples. That'll increase your render times tho ;). I also use gaussian for the filter.

As for the OpenCL, well, that depends on the kind of graphics card you have. I have an Nvidia 9500GT 1 gig card and it does support it. All I had to do was use the most recent drivers. Having said that, Luxrender itself doesn't do so well with GPU rendering just yet, so you might not want to use that anyway.

If you have a second machine that's networked you can also use that to help you render your image. It might go a little faster for you. I use my dual core to help with my renders all the time :).

Laurie

Ooooo I actually have 3 other machines atm that I could use, Laurie. I'll have a look on the LuxRender site and see how that's done.

Oh, I'm plenty patient... last night I stopped it (nervous Nellie that I am, didn't want a render chugging all night and potentially overheating the machine... like it won't happen during the day :lol:) and restarted it today, so it's been going cumulatively for 14 1/2 hours, now. I'll just let it keep chugging.

I'll need to check and see what sampler I'm using and which filter: I just sort-of went with the default. So you don't think the amount of objs and textures and transmaps (ivy leaves) and that might be slowing it down a bit? Also, the render size is 2000 x 1800... doesn't have anything to do with it? Oh, the S/p are now up to 104... BB said something about 400 gives a nice clear piccie? I might get away with less, tho, given the subject matter.

Oh, and I'm using your gems shaders in her earrings. Laurie, this is like I found a new Poser/matroom to play in! Only better!! YAY!!!

The size of your image is definitely gonna slow it down...lol. The other stuff might be contributing as well. It's kinda of the same general rule as Poser in that area - the more stuff, the bigger the image, the longer the render ;).

If you have any trouble setting up luxrender on your other machines so that they can help with the render just let me know.

All you really need to do is install Luxrender on the machines you want to network. Go into the Luxrender folder and make a shortcut of luxconsole.exe and place the shortcut on your desktop or somewhere you can get at it easily. Right click on the shortcut and choose properties. In the Target line, put this:

C:LuxrenderLuxRender_32_SSE2_NoOpenCLluxconsole.exe -s

and save that. Then, when you double click the luxconsole shortcut, the panel will open and that machine is ready for a command from your main machine.

You'll only need the IP of that networked machine now and when you open your render in Luxrender, go to the network tab and put that IP in the field and hit the plus sign. Depending on how many textures are in your scene, it may take awhile to send them all over to the other machine, but in a few minutes it should be starting to send you some samples ;).

Laurie

Attached Link: Lux Renderfarm

How fast do you want to go - or rather how much do you want to pay & would it be legal (i.e. r.e. texture files which I assume have to be uploaded to their servers)?

Oh! So, here's that render, 20 hours 45 minutes in:

Now, I'm re-doing the render, but with an IBL and taking out the skydome. After only 20 minutes, the clarity and detail is remarkably different! Seriously, the graininess is already less than the 20 hr render... I really think that it might have been the skydome. Well, lemme show ya... 20 minutes, mind you:

Interesting.

I don't think it's so much the skydome as it is the amount of light. Brightly lit is faster, remember? ;). If you use the skydome and you want nice, bright sunlight, you can crank the gain on the sun up to as much as 20 :).

Laurie

Ignoring the fear of showing my abysmal ignorance, why are there no shadows (that I can see) on the 20 hr. version?

The attached image was done with the skydome in place, but I changed the gain on the sunlight from 1.0 to 20.0. As you can see, there's plenty of bright light and shadow.

And yes, I spelled reclamation wrong...lol.

Laurie

Oh, and the above image didn't even take close to 20 hours. It only took about 6 1/2 (two computers, 6 cores and 6 gigs of ram total).

Laurie

Quote - Most likely because she didn't add enough gain to the sunlight inside Luxrender. I'm not blaming her - most of us are learning this as we go ;).

The attached image was done with the skydome in place, but I changed the gain on the sunlight from 1.0 to 20.0. As you can see, there's plenty of bright light and shadow.

And yes, I spelled reclamation wrong...lol.

Laurie

Oh good, I'm not the only one who re-does images. You are absolutely right, Laurie... this whole Lux thing is a massive learning curve... pretty steep atm. I did a second render on that image with reasonably strong light, and the shadows showed up pretty much tout-suite. Now, in this 3rd go, I've set lights to IBL and shadows are pretty much non-existent. But, at dusk, when the sun's gone down and everything has that eery evening glow from the walls and everything, shadows tend to drop off. So, the effect is accurate, the lighting: too bright. If you look closely, there is a shadow directly under her shoes, and up the staircase.

The render now: very desaturated colours, hardly any shadows... just the way I want it. Gotta love this renderer:

Oh, and I know the shoes are wrong - I'm having a play with that leather material. going to make a black version, in a bit.

Quote - Oh, and the above image didn't even take close to 20 hours. It only took about 6 1/2 (two computers, 6 cores and 6 gigs of ram total).

Laurie

<<>> gotta get that networking fixed, somehow. It's probably something really stupid, too... which is par for me, anyway.

So you had the skydome AND an infinite in that image then Robyn? Normally, the skydome is not enough. Even if the sky map was a bright blue sunny day, you'd need an infinite with it. Just mostly ambient light coming from the sky isn't enough by itself because the resulting shadows just aren't dark enough.

Maybe someday soon I'll be bothered to do some tutorials ;). I'll at least wait until Snarly takes it out of beta and declares it fit for human consumption...lol.

Laurie

Actually, all i had was that pointlight (up the stairs) and an IBL, which I remember from that LuxPose discussion BB used to reasonably good effect. The intended effect is that just-before-dusk scene in the Mediterranean region, where light comes more from reflection off the buildings around you because the sun isn't anywhere where you can actually see it, so shadows are going to be quite hazy, if at all. I mean, up the stairs and  under her shoes is about the only shadow you can see and even there, it's more like an ambient occlusion than a shadow.

To quote PeeWee Herman: "I meant to do that!" :biggrin:

This is one of the things I actually find so compelling about this renderer. In this sense, it truly is photo-realistic... it's like I went out in the evening with my SLR and shot people in their natural surroundings. Lighting is sub-optimal, but I crank up the sensitivity (400) and drop the FStop to 8 and hold the camera really still because I'm shooting at 1/60 of a second (kind-of slow for hand-held) and voila: girl on her way home after a long absence, trying to negotiate 17th century stairs in 20th century heels (borrowed).

Can't see it, hey? ::blink: ... oh well. :biggrin:

I cant seem to get the exported files to work in LuxRender I get a sytax error on line 18?  I had a naked vicki no hair skin only, bare minimum on the textures.  Exported and it wont work.  I can render the sample that they provide in lux though....

are you using Luxrender 0.7 or Luxrender 0.8? The script works with Luxrender 0.8x because it uses material parameters that weren't supported in Luxrender 0.7x like velvet, glossy translucent, SSS, etc.

You can get the most current release of Luxrender here. What you want is LuxRender (v0.8RC1).

pssst...this info is in the Pose2Lux manual ;).

If this is not your problem, then it's a problem with the script, but I think it may be Luxrender due to the fact that it's exporting without error but Luxrender is having a hard time reading it. You really need to keep current with Luxrender versions because the programmer of Pose2Lux is ;).

Laurie

Quote - I cant seem to get the exported files to work in LuxRender I get a sytax error on line 18?  I had a naked vicki no hair skin only, bare minimum on the textures.  Exported and it wont work.  I can render the sample that they provide in lux though....

This is a known issue, identified by someone else in a PM to me.

It is indeed because Line 18 references a parameter known only to v0.8 of Luxrender.  I will, however, be adding limited 0.7 compatibilty soon, which will overcome this specific issue,  because certain operating systems cannot run v0.8 yet.

Quote - Now, I'm re-doing the render, but with an IBL and taking out the skydome.

Hi Robyn - I know you enjoy the techie details so you might like to know that there's no practical difference betweeen a Skydome and an IBL as far as Pose2Lux is concerned.

Skydomes themselves don't work in Luxrender, so what I do is this:

If the Skydome material is applied to an object (hopefully an actual skydome :-) then I throw away all the geometry of the object (it doesn't get rendered at all) but I do grab the image that was attached to it and make an IBL out of it. Then I rotate the IBL so that it matches what you could see on the skydome.

So in the end you only end up with an IBL regardless of whether you start with a skydome or an IBl attached to a light!

It's all smoke and mirrors :-)

Hooray for smoke and mirrors! ;)

I'm lovin' the skydome myself....lol.

Laurie

Just for the sake of the fun of it (it IS fun playing with LuxRender, isn't it?), here's some info some of you might like.

First we have some addons for LuxRender which will allow you to export your image to .jpg or .tif directly from the Luxrender GUI. Second, and a few posts down, we have something called CRF's or Camera Response Files. I'll show an example of the usage of those in a bit.

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=4869

Laurie

Anyway, here we have an example of my image before I've applied a CRF...still better than Poser in some ways, but a little flat ;).

The only difference between the first image and the second is the application of the CRF. I didn't change lighting or any other setting.

The figure is V4 with GND4's texture map and I used Snarly Skin in the exporter.

Laurie

Quote - Skydomes themselves don't work in Luxrender, so what I do is this:

Hi! I'm too busy to play along, but I'm avidly reading everything. Just wanted to post you a little correction - I had sky domes working just fine in Luxrender. In fact I found it possible to do interesting mixes between multiple domes and the built-in Sun-Sky. It allowed me to overlay clouds.

Everybody should use phrases like "I'm not sure how to do that" in (Lux, Poser, Daz Studio, fill-in-the blank etc.). It really annoys me to see folks being told "this is impossible", "that won't work", "can't be done", etc. when the correct statement is "I, the person speaking, am doing so with incomplete knowledge."

Otherwise, keep up the good work.

From my own experience, and quite frankly it's because "I, the person speaking, am doing so with incomplete knowledge...": the render with the skydome appeared to use more of the CPU or whatever than the IDL. No idea why. What I'm basing that on is this: when I was rendering the first time using the skydome, the GUI response was incredibly delayed: menus would drop down (or even appear) after 15 - 30 seconds, dialogues after a minute, and Lux would take forever to minimise to taskbar. This was 1 .. 2 .. 5 .. 8 hours into the render: no difference.

With just the IBL (replacing the skydome) as main lightsource, the GUI response time stayed reasonably normal whilst rendering, regardless of how far along the render was in terms of time.

Oh, there is so much to learn! And materials? I'm totally flying blind, looking at Blender materials and what's been done so far at the Lux site for ideas.

BB, I'm not saying "can't" or "shouldn't", but given that so many shaders for Poser are either gibberish workflow (well, almost all are) or workaround stuff to compensate for Poser's (Firefly's) shortcomings, is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."... I know, opening a can of worms. Just thinking outloud.

Quote - And here's the same render after I've applied one of the CRF's. Makes a huge difference. Adds depth and makes the entire image seem more lifelike. If you look on the left side of the screen capture you can see which CRF I've used for this image. There are a few to choose from. Try em out and see what you think :). The only difference between the first image and the second is the application of the CRF. I didn't change lighting or any other setting.

The figure is V4 with GND4's texture map and I used Snarly Skin in the exporter.

Laurie

I'm ever so keen to try all this, Laurie! And thank you for finding all this out and calling our attention to it. Lux is a blast to play with: what a HUGE difference from: "okay, start rendering and keep your fingers crossed". The fact that we can change things during the render: no way can I go back to "invoke and pray" rendering.

It IS nice to be able to change render settings during the render, isn't it? LOL

Laurie

Quote - ...is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."

IMVHO, I'd rather do the latter and give the best Lux representation of that material if only because most Poser shaders are a hack or trickery in order to fake something. It makes sense to go with the superior shader system ;).

Just my two cents...lol.

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - ...is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."

IMVHO, I'd rather do the latter and give the best Lux representation of that material if only because most Poser shaders are a hack or trickery in order to fake something. It makes sense to go with the superior shader system ;).

Just my two cents...lol.

Laurie

I forgot to say: not to undermine what BB has already done on shader conversion. I mean, if the shader was developed with some sort of idea about the material it was supposed to represent (iow, an at least somewhat scientific approach), then converting shaders makes sense. But they were created with a "hmm, let's plug this into that and see what happens: WHOA, we've got Formica!" then I kind-of wonder whether the effort is worth it.

I for one would love to see BB tackle converting his water shader. I so miss his water!

For those who may want to understand light color temperature a little better:

http://www.ledwaves.com/About-Color-Temperature-sp-24.html

Short, but informative ;).

Laurie

Quote - For those who may want to understand light color temperature a little better:

http://www.ledwaves.com/About-Color-Temperature-sp-24.html

Short, but informative ;).

Laurie

I am having flashbacks to my senior art classes in high school...  It is something that is good to know though, especially if you are doing interiors.

An easy and amusing experiment about color temperature for the owners of photo cameras: get out in a brightly lit sunny day, set color temperature to tungsten and reduce by 1 or 2 stops the exposure and shoot. The result? Hollywood night, dark and blueish (I say Hollywood night because in real near darkness you don't see things blue, you see them grey, check this evening with your eyes).

I will have to try that once I get my camera back.

Actually trying to create a realistic night scene is something of an ongoing challenge, I have been trying to find some actual night panos for the skydome.  They seem to be a rare and elusive thing.  Especially ones that aren't taken in the middle of a city where you wind up with the glow of street lights effecting the whole thing.  If anyone knows of any, would be appreciated as I am trying to avoid the whole 'Hollywood night' look as mentioned above.

Here maybe?

http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/7928/free-hdri-cd-collection-from-evermotion

Laurie

Brilliant.  I had lost the link there.  Thanks Laurie

I aims to please...lol. y/w :)

Hopefully when Pose2Lux gets it's own website we can have a resources page with links like this. Would be nice anyway ;). Sky maps, IES data files for emitters (coming), etc.

Laurie

If that is the case... I also need another computer so I can set up network rendering (j/k) and a muse who doesn't pack her bags for Maui every few weeks for kicks.  I swear she is sitting sipping umbrella drinks while I bang my head off my desk in frustration.  LOL!

Oh now all that would be nice, always nice to have resources readily available in one place.  Material files, maps... yeah all that good stuff.  I know that is one of those things that can make getting into something easier.

Small thought, what about a 'tutorial scene' for Poser (Using primitives so anyone could use it) with a walkthrough step by step on how to export it to Lux and render it so people can get a feel for it without leaping in with Vickie and a full nightmare of materials and options to wrestle with.  Getting the skydome dealt with etc.  Random wandering thought, ignore me as needed, I am still trying to set up a big scene in Poser to move over and I think it is driving me slowly insane. 

Quote - I aims to please...lol. y/w :) Hopefully when Pose2Lux gets it's own website we can have a resources page with links like this. Would be nice anyway ;). Sky maps, IES data files for emitters (coming), etc.

Laurie

If no one has put their hand up to host that site (and develop it as well), I wouldn't mind offering my help. I'm planning to migrate my personal website to BlueHost in the near future, as it supports Drupal, and with GoDaddy it's at additional cost, so not keen to stay on. If someone's already got things in the works, then that's okay...

Yay! Thanks Robyn!

You got the job :-)

Now, just let me know what you want from me and I'll help in whatever way I can ...

Quote - Now, just let me know what you want from me and I'll help in whatever way I can ...

Ditto ;)

Laurie

glub!