oh I dunno. that vase looks rather nice and close to the real thing.

(seen a few in museams)

Well, I probably should have chosen Not So Glossy.

nope trust me. the vase is about right as is. what did you use?

ok, so which one does one use ...

LuxRender_CVS_20110324_32bit_SSE2_NoOpenCL.exe
LuxRender_CVS_20110324_32bit_SSE1_NoOpenCL.exe

And does one unzip it to another folder or in the current folder one has the previous installation?

need more information before answering. what machine are you running? and what graphics card?

Thunderstone - some things that may help you:

Delete the whole old Luxrender folder and drop the new one in where you had the old one. I don't know anything about the SSE versions because I never use them. I use the regular 32 bit NoOpenCL on my machine that doesn't have a compatible video card and 64 bit OpenCL version on the quad core machine that does. I don't think it matters to the exporter which version you use as long as it's a recent version.

The exporter will not launch Luxrender. You have to export your .lxs file and then open the .lxs file in Luxrender after you've manually launched it.

Take some time and go over the manual. Not everything is in there that will ultimately end up in the manual - Snarly is fast and furious with the upgrades ;). But it does go over some core things that may be of help to you.

Laurie

i'd try SSE2 first, then SSE1 if that won't run.

@snarly...

WinXP SP3

Nvidia GeForce 7050 PV graphic card

@LaurieA I have been reading the manual that came with the Pose2Lux. It doesn't tell me much about camera placement and it's very skimpy on the details. Granted that it is a WIP, I do what I can do and muddle about with the rest.

Right now I'm trying to render the LuxBall scene for practice like I mentioned before... It's very interesting. Now later I will try to do a scene with Freak as "The Beast".

I'm Magnus! LOL

ok low end video card, avoid the OpenCL version, you don't have the support for it (8600 and above)

as to the machine I wanted to know the Machine not the OS ;) what CPU you've got.

@ThunderStone LuxRender basically takes the place of the FireFly renderer in your workflow.

Camera placement, lighting, posing your characters and props are done same as always in Poser.

When you're satisfied with your scene composition, that is where you run Pose2Lux:

• Use the materials tab to replace the Poser mats with comparable LuxRender mats.
• Use the light tab to assign the lights in your scene to groups, if it's an outdoor scene convert 1 of your infinite lights to a sun/sky light.
• Use the emitters tab to make sure that there are no unintended parts of your figures emitting light.
• Finally use the export tab to export your scene to a .lxs file for LuxRender to use.

@Magnus... Oooops, That is what I guess for trying to read the posting when I'm too nervous... Okay, here's what I have in my computer at the moment:

CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+   
    Windsor 90nm Technology

RAM
    4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 375MHz (5-5-5-15)

@Flenser... Yeah I know... I was just so eager to try it out out of the box... That is why my next project is going to be more carefully crafted. I'm beginning to understand it now as I go through the work flow...

I am thinnking of using the Potrait Srudio set up  for my next trick. :lol:

ok. thats a 64bit CPU but a 32bit OS.

it supports SSE2 so, LuxRender_CVS_20110324_32bit_SSE2_NoOpenCL.exe should be the one you want.

Quote - ok. thats a 64bit CPU but a 32bit OS.

it supports SSE2 so, LuxRender_CVS_20110324_32bit_SSE2_NoOpenCL.exe should be the one you want.

Okay, thanks!

And even though it's a daunting task, you may wanna read back thru this entire thread. You can do it in small bites...lol. There's also goodies in among the posts too, so it's not all bad ;).

Laurie

Oh but I have.... I liked what I've read so far.... I was just wondering if P2L can be used on models that are organic like skin or fur.

Neglected to ask earlier about hair. Is there a hair mat library yet?

erm. Thunderstone.. not to be nasty or anything.. you did see the Vicky render at the top of this very page....?

Hair tends to look best with not so glossy or rough glossy depending on how many highlights the texture has burned into it.  And actual hair material might be an idea though.

Huh, how to go about that one.  Hair is slightly translucent in reality, so maybe glossy translucent as a starting point.  Might need a few of them actually as hair types vary dramatically.

Oh!  Anyone know where I might be able to lay my hands on a candle with an actual modelled flame or just a flame prop that isn't transmapped?  Need one since as I far as I can tell we still can't use transmaps on anything we want to turn into an emitter.  Mind I may have missed something is fighting to make Poser's library actually appear for most of the weekend.

@magnus, yes I did and that is what gave me hope. The question is should I use basic skin, snargy skin, or odnel skin? I am rendering Tyrese plain and simple material in the mat room... see here for up close and personal face and skin.

odf skin has high mattetranslucency. Snarly skin has SSS...none are perfected yet. For instance, we still don't have a good material for eyeballs yet, which I would think would need to be a homogenous scattering material (think milk). Only some of us fiddle with Luxrender materials and none of us are experts yet...lol. If you're a Blender user, you might want to try LuxBlend - those materials work in Luxrender as well. But in order to be used with the exporter, they'd need to be set up in a .xml document first.

I'm not sure you can necessarily make that portrait look better in Luxrender at the moment.

Laurie

Quote - ... as I far as I can tell we still can't use transmaps on anything we want to turn into an emitter.  Mind I may have missed something is fighting to make Poser's library actually appear for most of the weekend.

That is true as it stands, but support for transmaps on emitters is imminent. It will be included in the next update. Using a proper 3d model of candle and flame might still prove to be the best option, but very soon you'll have the facility to use transmapped flames if you want to.

Trust me :-)

Next update will be tonight or tomorrow.

I am really grateful for the fog and emitters with transmaps will be useful too.

I'm guessing the skin uses glossy with multibounce? Maybe it'd look better with the multibounce level lower.

I've seen talk of velvet in use of skin shader. Just so you know, there is no reason for that based on first principles. Nothing about velvet matches how skin behaves. Velvet is thousands of closely packed parallel fibers of uniform height, perpendicular to the surface.

Humans are sort of fuzzy, but velvet isn't right.

The key is to break up the specularity. Human skin is finely wrinkled, and does not exhibit a smooth specular reflection. But it is highly specular, and the specularity must be increased, but just cranking the specularity produces a plastic look that should be avoided.

You want to have an awesome bump map for this, but I don't know of any. Failing that, you can work with procedural patterns, and I know LuxRender has good ones, but I'm not the least bit familiar with them. So I can't offer a quick answer as to how to do this the way I know how to do it in Poser, which is actually the thing I'm currently refining in my VSS PR4 shader.

Quote - A WIP, the skin is Snarly's.. not real happy with her skin, it looks too fuzzy, it also seems to cause noise/fireflies..

I'm guessing the skin uses glossy with multibounce? Maybe it'd look better with the multibounce level lower.

It does use glossy (20%), the other 80% being mattetranslucent

And multibounce is a boolean value, so it's either off or on - i.e. you can't lower it except by switching it off! I guess you could reduce the overall proportion of glossy, that's all.

I'd really like popele to play with this skin and see if they can modify it and make it better. I make no claims at all about know how to make good skin! I've posted the XML for it here somewhere ...

Quote - I've seen talk of velvet in use of skin shader. Just so you know, there is no reason for that based on first principles. Nothing about velvet matches how skin behaves. Velvet is thousands of closely packed parallel fibers of uniform height, perpendicular to the surface.

Humans are sort of fuzzy, but velvet isn't right.

The key is to break up the specularity. Human skin is finely wrinkled, and does not exhibit a smooth specular reflection. But it is highly specular, and the specularity must be increased, but just cranking the specularity produces a plastic look that should be avoided.

You want to have an awesome bump map for this, but I don't know of any. Failing that, you can work with procedural patterns, and I know LuxRender has good ones, but I'm not the least bit familiar with them. So I can't offer a quick answer as to how to do this the way I know how to do it in Poser, which is actually the thing I'm currently refining in my VSS PR4 shader.

We need a BB for Luxrender!

Thanks for the tips - the challenge will be how to implement them!

I might do some postwork on this - just for fun ;)

Laurie

@snarly I thought there was a way to influence how 'deep' the multibounce effect is, I might be confused with the velvet material though, where the fuzziness is adjustable.

Would it be possible to put the skin materials in an external library, like the other materials? Would make it easier to experiment with parameters.

Thanks

Quote - @snarly I thought there was a way to influence how 'deep' the multibounce effect is, I might be confused with the velvet material though, where the fuzziness is adjustable.

Would it be possible to put the skin materials in an external library, like the other materials? Would make it easier to experiment with parameters.

Thanks

Multibounce is definitely an on/off parameter. You're probably getting mixed up with the Absorption parameter, which on some materials has an associated Depth parameter.

I'm not averse to creating XML files of the built-in libraries, and realise they would be helpful,  but I'm struggling to keep on top of an ever growing 'to do' list! One of the things on my 'to do' list is an option to save a library in XML format. When that option is coded you'll be able to create your own XML libraries from the built-in ones.

Moreover, there are only three built in skin materials, and two of them have already been published here (Snarly Skin and ODF Skin) so that should be enough to make a start? ODF's is in the old Luxpose thread so hopefully a search will find it.

There is a copy of Snarly's skin material here somewhere cause I asked about it...  Gimme a few minutes, I have it saved, will zip it up

Quote - ODF's is in the old Luxpose thread so hopefully a search will find it.

I'll have to go find it!

So much interest in my skin lately. I guess all the moisturising must be paying off. :lol:

You mean it isn't a hide we can hang on the wall already?  This could get messy. :p

You're gonna have to fight me for it.

What if I just asked really nicely?

(I will attempt to refrain from derailing the thread... I will attempt to refrain from derailing the thread...)

Quote - You're gonna have to fight me for it.

...it puts the lotion in the basket....

Quote - ...it puts the lotion in the basket....

AAHHAHAAHAH I love that movie.

:m_laugh:

BTW, is it true that Lux is really very slow compared to firefly? Patience is a virtue but when it comes to rendering, I can't wait 2 days just to see 1 goofed up render.

Quote - ...it puts the lotion in the basket....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ToNZHG5KHw

(Thread derail completed.)

Quote - :m_laugh:

 

BTW, is it true that Lux is really very slow compared to firefly? Patience is a virtue but when it comes to rendering, I can't wait 2 days just to see 1 goofed up render.

It is a lot slower. But you should be able to see if your render is goofed up or not long before two days ;)

Laurie

That depends on the quality you want.  Lux never ends, literally.  Technically, if you want a very bad render, it can be done in seconds.  However, most if not all renders will take more time than firefly; however, it will be much better quality than firefly in most cases.  The time it takes is up to you.  You can stop it at any time when it looks good enough for you.  One thing to keep in mind is that although the final render will take more time than firefly, you will probably get an idea about whether it is a keeper render well before firefly would finish.

Hope this makes sense!

Quote - That depends on the quality you want.  Lux never ends, literally.  Technically, if you want a very bad render, it can be done in seconds.  However, most if not all renders will take more time than firefly; however, it will be much better quality than firefly in most cases.  The time it takes is up to you.  You can stop it at any time when it looks good enough for you.  One thing to keep in mind is that although the final render will take more time than firefly, you will probably get an idea about whether it is a keeper render well before firefly would finish.

 

Hope this makes sense!

What Jcleaver said!

Some things you might notice with Luxrender:

Brightly lit scenes render faster than dark ones.

Lights render faster than emitters.

Emitters generally look better than lights. Sometimes you need to mix: an emitter slightly brighter with a dimmer light. The hydra render I posted earlier is three light sources - one point light, set very dim (picks up glossy highlights a bit better) and two emitters. One above and one below. Emitters create a softer shadow.

Laurie

Quote - Here it is.

Thank you for that; I read through the whole thread and couldn't find it. :p

See I did not do the final derailing. Hehe.

Back on track maybe-

On the subject of skin, I was rooting around over at the lux forum and came across

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5323&start=30

wondering if any of what is there is of any use to us.

The math flies way over my head but since they were talking about skin materials I thought it might be relevant for what was being discussed.

I can sort of get it, but the 'numbers' border on headache inducing for me.

well, the only thing I get from that is that you have to make two materials and mix em...lol. Other than that though....

It's all Greek to me. Oh, I think it is actually....lol.

;)

Laurie

So we wait for some more math friendly minds to look at it. :p

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro v0.3.8

This update adds support for transparency maps applied to emitting objects.

Caveat: This update required several changes to the codebase - more than I was expecting - so do let me know if anything has been broken! I'd keep 0.3.6 handy if I were you :-)

I've done several test renders though, and it all seems to be working ok.

Poser 6 users: Are there any? I've included a Poser 6 version in the zip but I'm increasingly having to find workarounds for it. Speak up and let me know that it's worth it, because if there are no P6 users of Pose2Lux I could save myself a whole lot of time!