Is the translucence setting in the lux mat file or the poser mat setting?

 How do you set up your scene with regards to lighting?

I've got to look and see what I've got in my runtime that would be good as a flame prop with the right texture or mat.

All of it is done with a .xml material library that Snarly posted and I modified.  He has posted it on the pose2lux forum along with the explanations of the use parameters and how they effect the material.  Dead useful when trying to modify it.

For the lights.  Candle is it, flame is set as an emitter, will have to open it up later and check what my lux settings were.  Right now I have another scene baking and really want to let it finish otherwise I will never get back to it.  LOL

Laurie

Thank you thank you thank you Laurie!  You just made a render I was pondering possible!

Can you show your Poser material setup for the chain?

Laurie

hmm looks like we need a very rough not so glossy.

Or an iron material.  I will grab those settings as soon as I am finished setting up another scene.  :)

Had intended to do a bit more tweaking and to use a crf, but my wife closed luxrender before it was finished.. :p

Already looks quite good though, using ODF's skin, couldn't get Snarly's skin to work on the dark skin.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2186766

Attached Link: Flenser's link

Actually, Snarly gave me the idea (he's a photographer) and I just wanted to see if it works in Luxrender like it would in RL. And it does more or less ;).

Laurie

AAAARRGHHH!! What happened to pose2lux.com??!

The red! How it doth scream ;). rubs eyes

Laurie

Ack!  No clue what is going on there, and bluntly put, we are probably going to have to wait for Robyn to fix it since I have no clue what could be going on.  I know I didn't change anything.  But I think my eyes are burning now.

Will take a quick looksie anyways.  Can't make my eyes bleed more.

Has the bleeding stopped? Please press [F5] a few times to clear your whatever-needs-to-clear-so-you-get-the-actual-page.

my eyes! they work again! takes off the welders mask

:biggrin: sorry to say, I think it might have been my formatting of text on the material downloads page... that's about the only change I made and yes, it was red text. Sorry about that... I guess certain formatting modules in Drupal don't play nice ... :blink:

You've staunched the bleeding! Thank you Robyn. My eyes thank you. I guess it's safe to put them back in their sockets now? ;)

LOL

Now, back to trying to figure out how to make my own gallery like Snarly did...sigh.

Laurie

dear-oh-dear - I'm a nurse and I've caused all this trauma??? :crying: :ohmy: :crying:

Quote - dear-oh-dear - I'm a nurse and I've caused all this trauma??? :crying: :ohmy: :crying:

No pain, no gain...lol.

Laurie

Adding a XML material scripts page to the site... feel free to comment (or those of you who can: edit as necessary). Thar's gold in them-there forum pages!

I've signed up as a member already but... see if you see a new post by me in the forum.

No, don't see a post from you Thunderstone.  Which forum was it in?

No, I can't see it either.

Laurie

That's it!!! You can't see any posting from me because I'm not allowed to post anything new... LOL :lol: I was going to post in the mat development forum but got a warning about not being able to post any new threads in there.

Hmmm, will have to have a look at the forum permissions for users.  With my luck I forgot to reset it so regular users to be able to post after I finished editing the forums last.

That's a lovely candle, the amount of translucence looks just right to me.

Well it is available in its current incarnation in the forum over on the site.  Feel free to save it if you like.

Right now I am moving on to tallow dips and beeswax candles, and working on a set of eye materials between tweak and render attempts on the candles. :)

Quote - Tips when using Pose2Lux (that I've noticed): When using outdoor lighting, use an infinite for a sun and diffuse IBL for the sky. You can then balance the direct light from the sun with the ambient light from the sky easier in Luxrender.

Emitters make softer shadows than actual lights. I'm not sure why this is, just that it is ;o).

Laurie

Not sure if you've taken a different stance on this yet, but if you haven't: what are your settings for these lights? I have this image which rendered thus in Poser:

which I exported via Pose2Lux (lights and all)... so lights were 1 inf at 120% and 1 ibl at 12%. In P2L, I set the Inf as sun and IBL as sky. Get all this into Lux, and start rendering:

So, I'm doing something massively wrong. Settings in Lux:

Sensitivity: 64
Exposure:1/250
FStop:5.6
Gamma:2.2

Light groups:
Sky Gain: .05
Sun Gain:0.2

Robyn is the IBL an HDRI image?  If so, lower it and boost the gain on your sun light

No, just an IBL... no image (a la BB) associated with it. In Lux, Sky gain is set at 0.05.

I'll try boosting the gain for the Sun (currently at 0.2), but the detail (light areas on the wings, for example) gets burnt out... lighting is very much my weak point.

Hrmm, I would have to try it.  I know the colours from HDRI on IBL or skydome tend to come out far more saturated and intense then they do in Poser.  I had to take the gain way down on the one pic I have going with one.

For every image now, I used a skydome (just like I do in Poser...lol). I never mess with IBL if I can help it - I've always hated them.

What I would suggest is:

Use Linear mode always if you can. Go ahead and push that 'Estimate Settings' button, but not until most of the image has filled in with colored dots and there's little if any black background showing anymore. It might not be exactly what you want, but it will get you most of the way there ;). Don't be afraid to turn the gain up on your sunlight. With outdoor images with a skydome, mine are usually over 5.0 for the sunlight. Sometimes as much as 20.0.

Laurie

i have pretty good luck with the BB sun/IBL-no-image setup, so it does work.  try knocking down your GC in Lux, if you've got it at 2.2.  also it could be the angle you've got your sun at, that may need tweaking in Poser. 

I never leave the gamma at 2.2 ;). I always turn it down...hehe. The one in the Gamma + Film response - not the one in the Linear mode settings.

Laurie

Quote - For every image now, I use a skydome (just like I do in Poser...lol). I never mess with IBL if I can help it - I've always hated them. What I would suggest is:

Use Linear mode always if you can. Go ahead and push that 'Estimate Settings' button, but not until most of the image has filled in with colored dots and there's little if any black background showing anymore. It might not be exactly what you want, but it will get you most of the way there ;). Don't be afraid to turn the gain up on your sunlight. With outdoor images with a skydome, mine are usually over 5.0 for the sunlight. Sometimes as much as 20.0.

Laurie

My experience with skydome without network rendering has been: LuxRender tends to slow the system down to a complete crawl, taking over all of existing RAM, which isn't much (4 gig). I never did get network rendering to work, even though I have the DOS window with  Luxconsole sitting in wait-state on my laptop - and they do talk, these two computers, since if I try to open PP2010 on one, the other won't load it, so proof-positive.

Anyway, I'm going to try as you suggest, Laurie and Rhionon. I only ever use Linear mode already, so I'll just keep on doing that. Thanks muchly, both of you!

Interesting. Obviously doing something stupid. In 'Lights' set I make light groups, adding Sun and Sky. I then set the Inf light to Sun (no longer 'default now), and IBL to Sky (also not default). Then, in the SUN AND SKY SETTINGS, I set Inf to Sun and IBL to Sky. My rastionale: "... by default all lights are put in a single light group ('default') and you can only change the parameters of a whole group, not individual lights. Pose2Lux enables you to create groups and assign your lights to them, affording you more control during the rendering process."

So, then in Camera, I click on the Sun & Sky button.

I have noticed, tho, that when I go to manipulate the sun setting (gain) in Lux, it does exactly nothing. I mean, I can turn it up to 1000, and nothing happens. This is odd.

i ran into this in my last render & ended up having to move my main light (the infinite one) up. i guess it was reading as below the horizon or underground (i was trying to get a very low-angle sun light)

Ah. Good point, Jan. However, I see no translate dials for the infinite light: only x-y-z rotate. I can physically rotate the light in the widget but whether it will be in the same position as the IBL, per "Note: The two lights should occupy the same space in your Poser scene. This is most easily achieved by selecting an infinite light and then choosing 'Duplicate object' from the Poser menu." Guess I'll need to do that every time I move my inf...

ETA: tried to parent one light to the other in the hierarchy editor... not happening.

I don't think you want to assign the IBL light to 'Sky'. The IBL is sufficient to define the environmental lighting without invoking the 'Sky' processing too.

The attached example shows the sky clearly defined by just using an IBL.

Your image had much more contrast too, but I haven't attempted to emulate that on the assumption that the sky was your primary concern?

Quote - Hi Robyn, I just had a quick look at this. I don't think you want to assign the IBL light to 'Sky'. The IBL is sufficient to define the environmental lighting without invoking the 'Sky' processing too.

The attached example shows the sky clearly defined by just using an IBL.

Your image had much more contrast too, but I haven't attempted to emulate that on the assumption that the sky was your primary concern?

Well, there were two concerns: one was that I couldn't really effect any changes in terms of gain for the Sun in Lux. Also, in that image the Sun wasn't generating any shadows... seemed the IBL had sort-of taken over as light source. I've now got the sun at least making shadows and per Jan's instruction moved it (in the widget, I assume) to what would be above the horizon... so re-exporting the scene and let's see what happens.

Oh, so do you suggest leaving IBL as default?

sorry, i meant rotate the infinite light. & i didn't know about having them in the same location; i'll have to do that. thanks!

Just to clarify:

The recommendation to have the Infinite light and the Diffuse IBL light in the same place was for the situation where you are not using an image with the IBL, but just assigning the lights to the 'Sun' and 'Sky' lights respectively. This is to ensure consistency in the lighting calculations, as if you'd assigned a single light to both.

If you're using an image with your IBL then the Infinite light (if you need on at all, of course) should be positioned to cast light from the same direction as it appears to be in the image, which is most likely a completely different position to that of the IBL light.

If adjusting gain does not reveal the sun light and it casts no shadow,logic says one of the following: Light is off. Light color is black. Light is blocked. (can be blocked by ground if angled from below. can be blocked by envsphere prop in every direction.)

Fourth possibility:

Pose2Lux has a bug :-)

Quote - If adjusting gain does not reveal the sun light and it casts no shadow,logic says one of the following: Light is off. Light color is black. Light is blocked. (can be blocked by ground if angled from below. can be blocked by envsphere prop in every direction.)

Addressing those points:

Inf light is on, ray-traced shadows, and colour is IColor(229,204,178), intensity 200, map size 1024.

there is no skydome - used the plain IBL (just for laughs) with settings as above

in the light-controls widget, the light is positioned in the upper left hand corner (to sort-of match the sunlight in the cloudscape I was going to use)

So, perhaps this might be an issue with Lux? need to try a different lightset.

When I said the light is off or black, I meant that the possibility exists that the settings exported to the lux scene are not matches for what you have in the Poser scene. I was suggesting that you look at the light definition in the lux file. Lord knows, I did a few booboos in Luxpose and had to stare at the resulting XML to know what the heck it actually was trying to use, which at times had nothing whatsoever to do with what I had in Poser.

Reading off what you have in poser proves nothing.

Quote - When I said the light is off or black, I meant that the possibility exists that the settings exported to the lux scene are not matches for what you have in the Poser scene. I was suggesting that you look at the light definition in the lux file. Lord knows, I did a few booboos in Luxpose and had to stare at the resulting XML to know what the heck it actually was trying to use, which at times had nothing whatsoever to do with what I had in Poser. Reading off what you have in poser proves nothing.

Yep, sure. Here's the very end of that .lxs:

Light name is IBL

AttributeBegin
LightGroup "default"
TransformBegin
Rotate 240 1 1 1
Rotate -33 0 0 1
LightSource "infinitesample"
"float gain" [119999.997318]
"integer nsamples" [2]
"color L" [0.793094642823 0.612065619931 0.456251988223]
AttributeEnd

Light name is Inf

AttributeBegin
LightGroup "Sun"
LightSource "sun"
"vector sundir" [-0.546555221081 0.832067430019 -0.0945575088263]
"float gain" [2.0]
"float relsize" [1.0]
"float turbidity" [2.0]
"integer nsamples" [2]
AttributeEnd

WorldEnd

Was that what you were after?

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro v0.4.0

Changes:

Bugfix: Sun vector calculations reworked
Extended support for Poser's Skin node added
USE_SKIN parameter added to XML library options
Improved compatibility with Lux 0.7

Robyn: IBL Gain is about 60,000 times brighter than the sun?!?

Snarly?