"The main strategy will remain that of providing a comprehensive ready-made material library. This Winter I'll be asking for help from the community to help me build such a library for Pose2Lux."

Hi this is the standard for nearly all "unbiased" render engines.
I use Maxwell Render  for photo real stills and the user Community
has created a FREE database of nearly 4000
MATERIAL PRESETS.
Of course Maxwell comes with a very comprehensive
material editor for making your own with relative ease.

Cheers

wolf dear, P2L is free where as Maxwell is not. Ever stop to think about that? Plus P2L is new on the scene. Takes time to build it up. I have tried Maxwell. Not something that's easily learned.

Quote - wolf dear, P2L is free where as Maxwell is not. Ever stop to think about that? Plus P2L is new on the scene. Takes time to build it up. I have tried Maxwell. Not something that's easily learned.

I feel massively guilty for not getting behind Snarly and start developing some materials for Pose2Lux, not that I was all that crash-hot in material development... transcription of existing node sets into matmatic? okay... - but this Antonia thing is taking just about 99% of every heartbeat I've been allocated.

She's full-time - and she's gorgeous. What's not to like. But the guilt remains... :blink:

"wolf dear, P2L is free where as Maxwell is not. Ever stop to think about that?"

I am well aware of this
however the Maxwell material preset libraries are free and were developed by the user base.
Not by one man or even by  Nextlimit themselves.

So Snarly Gribbly is Quite Correct that  Poser users wanting to use LUX  will have to undertake
a similar community effort to create& share materials just like the Maxwell user base has done.

Cheers

in my opinion

1. it's a good idea that a LuxRender materials library gets developed, supported by a viewer / material builder / lib manager tool (preferrable with LuxRendering / GPU support), to be used by P2L and all other converters, etc.

2. it's not a good idea to have this lib developed for P2L only, and/or in a P2L specific format

3. it's a good idea to have a P2L converter which deploys Poser as a LuxRender front end, as in: what can we do to have Firefly as a reasonable previewer and to use Poser material channels to drive some basic characteristics of the LuxRender materials. And we might like a Poser materials lib which translates fine into LuxRender.

4. it's not a good idea to have a P2L converter which deploys LuxRender as a Poser backend, since a lot of Poser material features are in to compensate for the Firefly characteristics and the biased non-physical behaviour of it and cannot be translated into LuxRender anyway

5. it's a good idea to get into muddy waters, troubles glasses, dirty clothes, worn walls, corroded metals and scratched bodies next to materials which reflect a perfect world only. From Poser into LuxRender.

and yes, I do appreciate Antonia very much, thanks for all the effort.

and yes, the current P2L is already a great step in the right direction. Well done, so far.

All the best.

@kawecki

Although you might have a point somewhere, somehow, I just don't see what it is. Sorry. Please clarify (as I'm sure it's me failing).

But your comment reminds me of my own early days in Computer Graphics, say 32 years ago, well described at http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/7/ 

POVRay started with a text-only input format, and one could change whatever by just altering a single line. This lack of realtime, interactive, graphical interface drove me towards Bryce when it hit the stage for PC's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software). And so on. Now PoseRay can translate Poser (as well as DS as well as other formats) into POVRay: https://sites.google.com/site/poseray/samples. All free, like the Pose2Lux / LuxRender stuff.

My point is: altering 3D raytracing scenes by changing text lines: seen it, done it, been there. I just want something better, and easier so I end up doing imaging instead of semi-programming.

Just for teasing (or as some reference), from the PoseRay manual (3.13.14.beta as of today):

• PoseRay will try to load as much material information from Poser PZ3 or PZZ files. Colors and their alternates are added and any value node applied to a color is multiplied. PoseRay can read the following node values from Poser 5+ scene files:- Diffuse Color
• Diffuse Value
• Highlight Color
• Highlight Size
• Highlight Value
• UV scale
• UV offset
• Reflection Value (only if the Reflection node input is used)
• Bump
• Gradient Bump (if a BUM file is used PoseRay will search for a compatible image - jpg, tif, etc)
• Alternate Diffuse (added to Diffuse Color)
• Alternate Specular (color added to Highlight Color and size is picked from brightest color)
• Image Source (applied to bump, diffuse, specular and transparency)
• Eccentricity (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Size (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Roughness (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Highlight Size (applied to highlight nodes only)
• KS (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Reflectivity (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Specular Rolloff (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Inner Color (applied to highlight nodes only)
• Outer Color (applied to highlight nodes only)

In general, my point is: 30 years after the intro of POVRay and about 10 years after the intro of Poser 4Pro (1999, Python) / Poser 5 (2003, Firefly), we should be able to do better - and faster - when starting from scratch, living in an internet driven global forum world, shouldn't we?

Let's go for it.

Quote - Although you might have a point somewhere, somehow, I just don't see what it is. Sorry. Please clarify (as I'm sure it's me failing).
But your comment reminds me of my own early days in Computer Graphics, say 32 years ago, ....

It is only an example and it doesn't mean that you have to edit a text as in PovRay, you can use a GUI.

Analyze the text and see how it works and compare with Poser. For example you have Victoria 4 that has a lot of materials. In Poser if you want her to have a darker or an blue skin you have to go to the material room and change one by one the diffuse color of each material and it are a lot.

A direct translation of each Poser material to Lux material will change nothing, you still will have to change one by one the diffuse color of each Lux material.

But if you create a LuxMaterial as in mine example you will need to change only one parameter to have all the materials of the figure change. You can have a GUI with parameters such as skin color, skin reflectivity and so on that work on all the figure and not material by material.

Quote - ...You can have a GUI with parameters such as skin color, skin reflectivity and so on that work on all the figure and not material by material.

which to me sounds like an idea really worth supporting. Thanks a lot indeed.

To create a Lux material structure can require some work, but once it is done it is very easy to change and customize. To apply the material to a figure is as easy as a material pose with the difference that is also very easy to customize. A material pose is very easy to use, but nothing easy to customize.

The example that I posted is vicky.lxm (I changed lxm to txt extension for posting) I have created only one as I have used very little LuxRender. Now if I want a scene with Vicky I only need to put

include "vicky.lxm"

in the *.lxs file before vicky geometry or include

It's a like a material library, in my case is very poor because the library has only one element. With time it will have more elements and shall replace the text editor with some GUI.

You can have a library of geometries too, table.lxo, chair.lxo, monster.lxo, mike.lxo and so on....

@wolf359: I agree completely. The success of Maxwell suports my belief that a comprehensive material library will be the most effective solution for Pose2Lux. A material library on that scale can only be achieved by a concerted community effort, and taht could be facilitated by providing effective GUI-based tools to construct the materials.

@Artbee: It seems PovRay takes a similar approach to P2L - apart from 'Gradient_Bump' the list of channels used is the same as that used by P2L. P2L definitely does need a GUI for building materials though! However, I have been impressed by what others have achieved using just a text editor

@Kawecki: I agree with what you're saying but I think we already have that in Pose2Lux - we just need enhancements to the GUI to make it easier to use. In P2L you can assign a material to multiple surface areas. You can then make global changes to all those surfaces by editing the material definition. At the moment the P2L UI only makes that easy if you've used the 'Custom material' option. Access to the parameters of all the other materials is currently only possible via a text editor but the P2L roadmap inlcudes a WYSIWYG editor for library materials.

@Everyone: It will be a while before I can turn my attention to the WYSIWYG material editor. I want to rewrite the user guide first and even that has to fit in between several other projects, including my 'EZSkin' tool for PP2012 and a new version of the Snow Machine script. I'd be delighted if someone else wanted to help with the editor but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the offers to come in :-)

One of the practical problems to overcome with the P2L material editor is this: Materials made for renderers like Maxwell and Fryrender are typically 'absolute', by which I mean that when you choose to use a material in your scene the surface takes on all the properties of the defined material. Easy.

P2L, however, is primarily a 'converter', or exporter. Most of the defined materials in the built-in libraries are not complete in themselves - they take bits (e.g. imagemaps) from the Poser shader. So a WYSIWYG material editor has the challenge of showing what a material will look like, but not knowing exactly how it's going to be used. P2L materials have 'placeholders' such as 'USE_KS' (use the specular colour) and 'USE_KdMAP' (use the imagemap plugged into Diffuse_Color). As such you can only get a WYSIWYG view if you give the material editor a Poser material to work on. Someone else using the same P2L material on a completely different Poser material may see quite different results.

All these issues can be overcome of course, but it's not as straightforward as you might think.

Quote - ...P2L, however, is primarily a 'converter', or exporter.

which is exactly why I suggested to use Poser / Firefly as a previewer (for materials using Poser channels) and why I suggested to create a mechanism / library to easy translate LuxRender mats into Poser materials (for mats not using Poser channels in the first place).

A LuxRender GUI material builder makes sense for the pure LuxRender mats, and IMHO should be created by the LuxRender team. First because it serves all LuxRender users, second because they know (at least better than I do) how to include GPU usage for real time visual feedback. Note that this is not fantasy, but is the way GPU is used nowadays in MAX and other 3D packs previewing viewports: realtime color and material editing.

Let's take out time to figure out what we want (and for anything else under construction), and then make it a 2012 experience. It will be a rewarding one.

This may seem silly, but why not use LuxRender as the previewer?  I know it can be done, as another product does just this for their preview. 

For me, it would seem to be beneficial to be able to see exactly what the material would look like in Luxrender.

Quote - This may seem silly, but why not use LuxRender as the previewer?  I know it can be done, as another product does just this for their preview. 

 

For me, it would seem to be beneficial to be able to see exactly what the material would look like in Luxrender.

Not silly at all - it's exactly what has been planned all along! I am, however, open to all ideas at this stage.

I need to see how feasible that approach is these days those as the Python interface to the required functionality uses Python 3, and Poser is still using Python 2.x. There is a Python 2.x compatible interface available but I don't know how well maintained it is.

Quote - Lux did open. It found the scene file once I figured out I had to make one...lol. As for a log, I've no idea where that is found.

Not to derail the discussion, but I'd really like to find out what I might be doing wrong and see if I can get P2L to run for me. 

Assuming that you can get as far as opening Luxrender and loading a scene, start the render and check the log which is available on the the indicated tab.

Please post the ouput of the log here. If the log is very long (because Luxrender has managed to process some of the scene) then just post the last few lines which should contain an obvious error message saying that Luxrender has to abort processing (or something like that)

I'm in the chat room now if you want some interactive help ...

I tried going to chat, but it wouldn't open for me.

Hummm...when I told Lux to render, nothing happened. I didn't get anything like what you show there. I'm off work today, and I have to go offline to use Poser (it's greedy, lol). I'll try again and see what happens. Maybe it just wasn't my day...or wasn't holding my mouth right....or something. :/

Quote - I tried going to chat, but it wouldn't open for me.

Hummm...when I told Lux to render, nothing happened. I didn't get anything like what you show there.

Hm, I'm confused now because what I showed there is in fact where you tell Lux to render!

Just to clarify, there are the basic steps to maing a render via Pose2Lux

1. Make Poser scene

2. Run Pose2Lux and configure materials and lights

3. Export scene to a file (or files)

4. Run Luxrender

5. Load scene saved from Pose2Lux

6. Start the render

Quote - This may seem silly, but why not use LuxRender as the previewer?  I know it can be done, as another product does just this for their preview. 

For me, it would seem to be beneficial to be able to see exactly what the material would look like in Luxrender.

which sounds fine to mee too, but currently I'm facing a

• do Poser materials
• save Poser file
• (re)open P2L
• (re)load P2L settings etc
• do adjusted P2L settings
• save result
• run LuxRender
• save P2L settings
• close P2L
• back to stage 1

cycle, and I woud be so happy if that could come as close as possible to

• do Poser materials
• skip or do adjusted P2L settings
• do LuxRender

like I have now:

• do Poser
• skip or adjust render settings
• run Firefly

Quote -
Hm, I'm confused now because what I showed there is in fact where you tell Lux to render!

Then there is the problem. What I get when I run the script only has the File button, there are no other buttons to chose from

Quote - Just to clarify, there are the basic steps to maing a render via Pose2Lux

1. Make Poser scene

2. Run Pose2Lux and configure materials and lights

3. Export scene to a file (or files)

4. Run Luxrender

5. Load scene saved from Pose2Lux

6. Start the render

Obviously, I'm missing something somewhere. I'm sorry to be so dense, but I'm not as adept at some of this as many others are. I liked the images I've seen others do, and since I'm unable to afford P2012, I thought I could get what I've always wanted with Lux.

ETA: I'm using Poser 8, btw. Sorry, probably should have let you know earlier.

Luxrender is a great tool, so I'd encourage you to persevere - there's lots of people here who are willing to help you get to where you want to be!

So, first of all, back to basics:

Have you downloaded and installed Luxrender?

If not, you need to download it from the Luxrender site at:
http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download
(be sure to download the right version for your OS and hardware)

Then make sure you can run Luxrender, so that you can see the same view as I posted.

Pose2Lux doesn't do any rendering itself, it needs the separate Luxrender program to be installed.

If you've already done all this and your problem lies elsewhere, please don't be cross :-) Sometimes it's best to start at the very beginning!

Let me know if you can get as far as running the Luxrender program on your system, and if it doesn't look like the screencap I posted then try to show me what you do have?

We'll get there!

I downloaded from that site, but maybe I got the wrong one? It is in English, though and does run on my system

ETA: I'm at that link now and see that I need this! I didn't get it before, because, for some reason, I never got to this page. I have Intel, so I'll need to get the Non-OpenCL version. (My next PC will have this! LOL!) Working on getting that now.

Cool.

I can confirm that that is the correct version of Pose2Lux.

When you have Luxrender installed you will have all three components:

1. Poser, to create the scene

2. PoseLux v0.8.5 to export your converted Poser scene to a file on your hard disk

3. Luxrender, to load that file and start the render

Then we'll see what happens :-)

You'll probably have loads of questions about how to use Pose2Lux too, so don't be afraid to ask.

Good luck!

Quote - ... ...I have Intel, so I'll need to get the Non-OpenCL version. (My next PC will have this! LOL!) Working on getting that now.

OpenCL is not a processor manufacturer, but rather a library for computation (which you might have or might not have, intel or not). It can be faster when using some newer hardware, especially graphics cards.

Thank you, millinghost! I never knew what it was before, only that I didn't have it to be able to use some apps. (some bits of DAZ Studio wouldn't work for me because of that. This pc won't even run DS for me!)

@Snarlygribbly:

I've got the renderer now and it's working on the scene I saved before. I'm eager to see how it turns out! I didn't change any settings because I've no idea what I'm doing in that part of the program. I'm just glad you helped me find out I didn't have everything I needed.

ETA: I noticed that the renderer has an option for multiple threads, currently set at 2. Would it be beneficial to raise that number?

That would depend on your CPU. If you have a dual core, two threads are fine. If you should happen to have an i7 quadcore with hyper threading, eight threads would be fastest. If you tell me what you have, I will tell you how much threads are right.

I do have a dual core. In poser, I use 5 threads with no problems. I stopped the render I was doing and set up another with less items in it and set it to 5 threads. I also played around with setting the Lux materials, just to see how it would turn out. It's still rendering after about 2 hours. I know Lux does take longer, though I do wish it were faster. 

So far, I don't think it's having any problems with 5 threads...but then this is the first time using it, so I have no reference as to what, if anything, may or may not happen. :/

It won't do much damage if you use more threads than you have cores, just a little. Every thread adds a little bit of system load, this will slow your render down a tiny bit. You won't be slower if you use just two tasks, if your CPU does not have Hyperthreading. If it has Hyperthreading, 4 will be the best choice, all IMHO. You can see it if you have an CPU monitor ( in Windows, you get it by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][Del] and choosing the Task Manager) - if the CPU load is 100%, all is fine, if it's lower, add one thread.

Thanks for that info, bantha! That is very helpful! 

I have decided to write a wxPython version of Pose2Lux. Work will begin in January.

Support for the current version, Pose2Lux Pro, will continue.

wxPython means Mac 64bit compatibility and an improved user interface for everyone. It will, however, require Poser 8 or later to run.

While I could just duplicate the functionality of Pose2Lux Pro, I am prepared, if there is sufficient support,  to fundamentally redesign it based on the best ideas you may have.

If you'd like to be involved in the new development please join in the discussion at www.pose2lux.com.

I will, of course, also be following this thread too.

...If you'd like to be involved in the new development please join in the discussion at www.pose2lux.com....

I guess you'll make a new discussions area up there, or a noticeable thread? I couldn't find one yet (it's on me, of course).

Quote - I guess you'll make a new discussions area up there, or a noticeable thread? I couldn't find one yet (it's on me, of course).

I started one under 'Feature requests', for want of anywhere better to put it. I don't know how to make a higher level thread there :-)

Edit: The topic name is 'Pose2Lux WX'

Quote - > Quote - I guess you'll make a new discussions area up there, or a noticeable thread? I couldn't find one yet (it's on me, of course).

I started one under 'Feature requests', for want of anywhere better to put it. I don't know how to make a higher level thread there :-)

Edit: The topic name is 'Pose2Lux WX'

I guess we could edit the front page? with a link? This is IMPORTANT!

Quote - I guess we could edit the front page? with a link? This is IMPORTANT!

That'd be cool! Good idea!

Done :biggrin:

Why am I getting white eye lashes on V4?  I am using Pose2Lux Pro 0.8.6 and LuxRender 0.9.   Yesterday, I started rendering my first scene in LuxRender with Victoria 4 in it.  The rendering seemed to be turning out nicely but then I noticed V4's eye lashes are white.  In Poser, the eye lash material has black as the diffuse color and a transparency map is applied to it.  I added the People/Hair material to the Victoria4/6_Eyelash material zone in Pose2Lux before exporting.   So what am I doing wrong?

Ok.  I figured it out.  I have to have a texture that is all black added to the diffuse input before opening Pose2Lux.

Good work!  I would never have gotten that one.

Nor me - it seemed that there was some sort of fix but couldn't remember what I did for that... good ON ya, Acrionx!

Fortunately, there were other material zones that also had the People/Hair material applied to them and that gave me a clue because they rendered out correctly.  The only difference between those material zones and the eye lashes zone is that they had a texture applied to them whereas the lash zone didn't..

Finally finished!!

Lovely!

Thanks.  Just got done with another one.

 Good news about pose-2-lux WxPython! I'd love to give it a try!

I'm having an issue with Poser 9 SR1.  Pose2Lux does not open to the window in the screenshots, but rather the material window.

I only have Material, Lights and Options as buttons.

I have 0.8.3 on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit.

I downloaded and copied all the files over to my Python folder.

Am I missing something?

1. P2L runs from the document window at hand, so you'd best switch back to Pose room and run P2L from there. Don't worry, it happens to me all the time. You can explicitely set the resulting image size manually in P2L, or set poser render dimensions to a fixed size instead of "Viewport".

2. the older P2L version has the Simple Mode, Advanced mode and all the buttons. The new version has just a few buttons, a completely reworked User Interface, but has no manual at hand.

When we're about there with the new wxPython version of P2L, we'll make a new manual as well.

In the meantime: questions welcomed.

Quote - In the meantime: questions welcomed.

And enthusiastic new participants warmly greeted and made to feel like they're part of the best thing Poser offers: community! This is where we shine, folks... we create our artform through imagination and a sense of giving. Poser's a great place to be!

Hello;

Thanks for the response. :)

I was in the Pose Room when I launched it.

I'm hoping to find a way to turn off all the emitters (most of my materials have ambient values) at once. 

I'll take another look at what I have when I get home and back on my own PC. 

in Materials, under Filters, check "is an emitter".

In the section right to that, click USE for the top option "Is an emitter", UNcheck the option itself, and click the Assign button below. Now the filtered list of materials should be empty, as all materials are not an emitter anymore.

Actually, Poser lights are nightmares in LuxRender as these are taken as miniscule light points producing very hard shadows, like your camera flash. It's better to have some objects, like boxes, which are emitters lighting your scene. Photographers enjoy softboxes for the same reason.