Quote - I'm still a bit confused about IBL and HDR images. I went to the site and read the article and I'm still confused.  Which image type do we use in Daz? And we do set it up in Daz, not Reality, right? 

Wrong :) IBL needs to be setup in Reality. Studio's support for IBL is not as sophisticated. Basically you need to configure the Reality Light editor to use your IBL image. Select the image and select the mapping used by it. There are three possibilities and usually the latlong (panoram) format is best. That's all that you need. If you want to setup the BG in  certain way then you need to add the Reality IBL preview sphere to the scene and add a JPG version of the IBL map to the diffuse channel in the Surface tab. After that you can rotate the sphere along the Y axis to position it right. Call Reality and render.

Hope this helps.

And one more for the Reality files.  The model is the same one I dialed up to test my texture set for Hongyu's Bikini.  Going to keep her around to maybe use in a later render; but, this is sort of a retirement render for her.

Click the pic for the full size version.  Appropriate credit given to Paolo and his wonderful gift to the 3D community.

And yes.. I know.. her "tail" on the left side is going 1/2 way through her leg.. never noticed it while rendering or in post.  Just noticed it a bit ago when I was looking at in here in the forum.  I'd pull it into PS and fix it but I'm just too lazy.

I'm a confused mess today.  I just got Gen X and started to install it.  The spot that it wants to install it is, I think, incorrect for me.  It wants to put it in Studio 4. All my content, except for Reality, is in just plain Studio. Which directory should I use? 

Thank you Paolo for the IBL answer.  My wee little mind is still grappling with it.

Quote - Lux 1.0RC3 is out!

Looks like another nice improvement.  Had a scene running in RC2 at 37 kS/s and 70 kC/s.  Restarted it after installing RC3 and it's moving along at 108 kS/s and 206 kC/s. 

Quote - I'm a confused mess today.  I just got Gen X and started to install it.  The spot that it wants to install it is, I think, incorrect for me.  It wants to put it in Studio 4. All my content, except for Reality, is in just plain Studio. Which directory should I use? 

 

Thank you Paolo for the IBL answer.  My wee little mind is still grappling with it.

You should have gotten 2 install files.  One 32 bit and one 64 bit.  You don't want to install them into your content folder(the one that's usually in your my documents directory).  You will want to point them to the program directory for Studio.  That will be something like C:Program FilesDAZ 3DDAZStudio4 for the 64 bit version and/or C:Program Files (x86)DAZ 3DDAZStudio4 for the 32 bit version.  Or wherever you installed them if you didn't install them in the daz default locations.

Once you get it installed..  if you need any more help there are a couple tutes out there along with the beginner one I made a couple months ago.

Quote - > Quote - Lux 1.0RC3 is out!

 

Looks like another nice improvement.  Had a scene running in RC2 at 37 kS/s and 70 kC/s.  Restarted it after installing RC3 and it's moving along at 108 kS/s and 206 kC/s. 

Will have to check it out sooner than I had planned then.  I have it installed just don't have anything to render atm.  Seems our pre-rc3 numbers are pretty similar.

[edit] no such luck with mine.  my last render was chugging along in the high 30's.  same scene with rc3 was rendering in the mid 40's [/edit]

I believe that the GenX goes into the Studio 4 location. When I checked with DAZ, I was told that the new installers (but these were for the Macintosh) knew right where to place things. Of course, you know DAZ3D! It's probably not a bad idea to check with them.

Quote - Looks like another nice improvement.  Had a scene running in RC2 at 37 kS/s and 70 kC/s.  Restarted it after installing RC3 and it's moving along at 108 kS/s and 206 kC/s. 

I KNEW I WAS GOING TOO SLOW!!

I run at 1.05 kS/s and 5.1 kC/s - no wonder it takes me forever to do a render!

I know my machine is old but I am not sure it should run this slow. I have a 2.0 Ghz dual core with 4gig ram running windows 7 premium 64 bit.

Anyone have any insight?

I got GenX installed, but according to the documentation I need to enter a serial number for it.  Where do I find that?  I've looked everywhere I could think of.

I think in your daz account (my account) there is a section for available serial numbers. the number for Gen X should be there

Quote - > Quote - Looks like another nice improvement.  Had a scene running in RC2 at 37 kS/s and 70 kC/s.  Restarted it after installing RC3 and it's moving along at 108 kS/s and 206 kC/s. 

 

I KNEW I WAS GOING TOO SLOW!!

 

I run at 1.05 kS/s and 5.1 kC/s - no wonder it takes me forever to do a render!

 

I know my machine is old but I am not sure it should run this slow. I have a 2.0 Ghz dual core with 4gig ram running windows 7 premium 64 bit.

Anyone have any insight?

My old laptop is very similar to yours in specs, though I've never used it for Lux.

A good way to test for speed (at least in my experience) to load just one object with a texture of some sort and an IBL. This will at least let you set a base line for what you can expect to get out of your rig.

OR--

There's a program called LuxMark, which operates very similar to any standard benchmark program. This will spit out a rumble of numbers to test the 'power' of your set-up. Frankly, I prefer the IBL approach.

Quote - The second over/under water render test seems to be successful (very early version!):

 

 

For this one I edited the water surface .obj in SketchUp/MeshLab to make an opening for the camera container. Now the glass camera box isn't partially filled with water anymore, and the render looks OK, both above and under the water surface of the tub : )

Cheers!

Yea! Glad to see you got it working. BTW, you can also use the Polygon Surface Tool with DS4 to edit meshes directly in studio. It's not the best at saving your edits, but it works great for one-off's.

Quote - BTW, you can also use the Polygon Surface Tool with DS4 to edit meshes directly in studio. It's not the best at saving your edits, but it works great for one-off's.

I've never heard of such an animal... where can a struggling artist find such a beast to unleash his creative energies upon?

Wife was having butt-cheek issues on her latest render; so, I decided to see if X&M's perfect booty would work via Gen X.  Have to say it was a 90% successful experiment.  The results aren't quite as nice as when using the morphs with V4; but, they translate over to Genesis pretty well.  Perfect Thighs doesn't work at all though as it only goes into effect on V4 when the thighs are bent in a way that the morph activates.  With a combination of perfect booty for genesis and DieTrying's butt morphs it came out looking pretty darned natural.

Quote - > Quote - BTW, you can also use the Polygon Surface Tool with DS4 to edit meshes directly in studio. It's not the best at saving your edits, but it works great for one-off's.

 

I've never heard of such an animal... where can a struggling artist find such a beast to unleash his creative energies upon?

Sorry, its 'Polygon Group Editor', to be exact. Either under tools, or if you're in the surface tab, click on the tool settings and at the very top of the panel, click on active tool and mouse down.

In that same area, all the grouped meshes show with on/off eye icons. Click on one and watch it disappear!.

When you get comfortable with that, (with the PGE tool selected) right click on the area of your mesh you wish to edit and some options pop up. Polygon selection, polygon visibility, etc etc. Fairly self explanatory with some use. I was trying to get you a snap shot but fraps is being a POS tonight...

That's fine SBT.. I was actually thinking that that was what you meant.  I've fiddled around with PGE before; but, to me, asking studio to do mesh editing is like asking a horse to give milk.  Yeah.. you can do it; but, I'm not sure you'll like the results.

I agree, its not a great tool, but on occasion it is useful, like when a mesh is super screwy in one spot and you can't hide it or fix it with an opaque tweak.

For the wife's butt cheek issue, might I suggest a more comfortable chair, har har.

Giggles

Ladies and gents, its official. Hoku, congrats, I'll be in contact

Full size view (he's pretty!) http://fav.me/d59ix9h

Attached Link: http://fav.me/d59j21p

Full size click will go to higher quality on dA.  It always loses so much converting to jpg for the forums. 

Attached Link: Table walk

any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

BradHP, that is a great scene. I love the lighting too.  Now I need to know who's who and why the ambush and what happened before this and.. and..   Nicely done!

bobvan, I was wondering the same thing.  I just did a render and let it go for 24 hours and some of the orange pixels just never went away.  I notice it the most when I use blonde hair.  I have plenty of light on the subject, none of the glossiness is too high, all of the color settings are below 255, I just don't know why they appear or why they refuse to totally disappear. 

Attached Link: On shelf

Same here as you see my main character is a redhed also keep in mind due to my land of the giants concept some of my characters are scaled down between 9 to 7.5 % its just strange that it does it in some settings and not others I have tried switching textures reducing glosiness ect to no avail! I hate to say PS is your friend again but with skillful cloning and blur tool I am able to make my render presentable. See in this setting I dont get the problem dammed LUX sometimes LOL!

Quote - any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

What you could try is to remove the textures in DAZ Studio, scale the character to 100% (assuming it is not), re-apply the textures, and scale it back to its original size.

I think this trick solved the seam problem I had a few times with M5, but I must say that I didn't seriously check if the initial scale was indeed the cause of it yet. It went away, and that was it basically.

FIngers crossed this helps.

Cheers!

Quote - any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

Before you do a fancy scene, try a 'basic'/roots type image with just one character and a mesh light. By this, I mean to load up your default, standard character in Studio and a mesh light preset from the Reality folder. Call up Reality, play with the mats if you wish, then hit render. This sets a good base line for troubleshooting purposes.

As Erik-nl mentioned, I suspect that some warping has occured. The standard M4/v4 should translate perfectly (outside of whatever changes you make to the skin mats) through reality and into lux.

When you get that perfected, try installing a preset in the ACSEL database to an item you have installed and see what happens in that instance.

In general, seams become an issue when the resolution is too small for the mesh it is mapped to. A standard skin texture is normally around 4096 pixels by 4096 (the face and body textures, to be precise). If they slip to half that, say 2048, you'll see those gastly white lines, or even larger blotches, in your render.

If you're using Gen 5 characters and (m5/V5) a gen 4 skin texture set, peek over to the Surfacing tab and make sure you have the correct UV setting, which is near the bottom.

Quote - any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

First.. make sure you're using the right uv set in the materials tab in studio... I was having the same problem too for a while.. not sure what I did or didn't do to make it go away.  Are seams showing up on all textures you're using or just one or two?

Attached Link: Hand held

The other thing is those pesky dots sometimes increase with time. The render above ran for approx 15 hours until they were small enough to be covered up with PS the whole lower face was covered in them. It was all fixed with the clone & blur tools

Attached Link: http://adrikk.deviantart.com/#/d59kps3

Another same type of post work

Quote - bobvan, I was wondering the same thing.  I just did a render and let it go for 24 hours and some of the orange pixels just never went away.  I notice it the most when I use blonde hair.  I have plenty of light on the subject, none of the glossiness is too high, all of the color settings are below 255, I just don't know why they appear or why they refuse to totally disappear. 

What were/are your specular settings? They often affect firefly production just as much as your glossy settings.

By way of the lux forum some time ago, it was suggested to stay below 84, which as a nice side effect, also renders faster.

Personally, I like mine around 55 or lower, surface dependant.

They are usually near 0 almost pitch black

Attached Link: Comment here

My thirs Reality render. - Rick

Very interesting scene. I like the render alot and the black and white.  I'm wondering why is someone so nicely dressed in a mess of a place like that.  Hope she's not house hunting.

Quote - Ladies and gents, its official. Hoku, congrats, I'll be in contact

Full size view (he's pretty!) http://fav.me/d59ix9h

He's wonderful. His skin is excellent.  Well done!

I failed.  I'm trying to figure out Gen X.  Even with the tutorial that Sharkey wrote I'm still getting no where.  I don't know what it means when the instructions say to

" Save them all in an easy location.  I save mine in the folder we’re going to be working in from here on out.  This would be your My LibrarydataDAZ 3DGenesisBaseMorphsD3D Gen XVictoria 4 folder.  This is the folder where GenX saves all your converted morphs."

My flow is My Library/data/DAZ3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs/DAZ3D....then there is not a Gen XVictoria 4 folder. Can I please have the dummies explaination?

Also, when I try to use the validate tab within Daz Studio, it says my validation is incorrect.  I've tried both the order number and the serial number. 

Help?  Pretty Please.

 This is the path I have:

C:UsersRickDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy LibrarydataDAZ 3DGenesisBaseMorphsD3D Gen X

I have v4 and m4 for genesis installed as well so I have:

C:UsersRickDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy LibrarydataDAZ 3DGenesisBaseMorphsDAZ 3DVictoria 4

Do you have v4 and m4 for genesis installed? Daz says you need it.

I followed sharkey's tut (I liked better than manual) and have been successful with several conversions.  The path of an example:

C:UsersRickDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy LibrarydataDAZ 3DGenesisBaseMorphsD3D Gen XVictoria 42ndpartyV4_Custom_Luciana.dsf

Quote -
Also, when I try to use the validate tab within Daz Studio, it says my validation is incorrect.

this is probably the actual problem.

my suggestion is to uninstall gen x then re-install and use the serial from the available serials portion of your daz account.  if this does not work, take two asperin and call Daz in the morning.

Quote - > Quote - Ladies and gents, its official. Hoku, congrats, I'll be in contact

Full size view (he's pretty!) http://fav.me/d59ix9h

He's wonderful. His skin is excellent.  Well done!

 

Thank you for the compliment and your name suggestion, Xandi! He was a lot of work and some cool tricks. There will be a female version in the near future, so keep your thinking hat handy!

Xandi.. it sounds like you're looking for the directory to save your thumbnails pics.  If you haven't transferred a morph with genx yet; then the directory you're looking for won't be there.  It isn't created until you transfer your first morph.  Just worry about learning the mechanics of the actual morph transfer before you try to get fancy and add thumbnails and customize the shaping tab locations of the morphs.  Once you learn how to actually transfer the morphs well.... then go on to the other stuff.  It took me a few days of constantly using it before I figured things out well enough to use it like I can now.

Quote -

That looks great Rick. Love the contrast and the use of BW is a nice touch.

Quote - Why dies everyone render Charley LOL! On another topic this does get really annoying...

I begin to wonder if your issue Bob is related directly to scale. Have your tried that exact same setup at normal v4 size? If you still have firefly issues, its a material problem. If not, it may be how Lux interprets that mesh at 10% of its normal size.

Attached Link: table

Why would that be? It would more or less render it useless for my use or having to keep ost working it. It does not happen with other cases as seen here. Its also happening to Xandi who does not scale.

Quote - any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

Thanks for all the replies, what you sugest didn't apply to my case, i use all M4 and V4 characters and no scaling.

anyway i don't exactly what happened but the texture seams just went away, what i did was turn off the gpu acceleration and texture seams didn't appear, at same time i noticed that i was using the wrong version of lux render (was using the no opencl version, so i upgraded to the latest opencl version 1.0 rc3, and no more texture seams, what happens is sometimes when i select gpu acceleration the renders show transparency on some objects, weird stuff or the render just hang. My guess it is something related with my video card drivers something...  (i've ATI Radeon HD 6450). 

Does this makes any sense?

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Why dies everyone render Charley LOL! On another topic this does get really annoying...

I begin to wonder if your issue Bob is related directly to scale. Have your tried that exact same setup at normal v4 size? If you still have firefly issues, its a material problem. If not, it may be how Lux interprets that mesh at 10% of its normal size.

 

Why would that be? It would more or less render it useless for my use or having to keep ost working it. It does not happen with other cases as seen here. Its also happening to Xandi who does not scale.

Just exploring all possibilities. I still think its a setting(s) issue, but again, I'm not at your computer and the troubleshooting is merely my conjectures. I do know that the vast majority is solvable with the proper application of light.

Quote - > Quote - any tips to help solve texture seams? i'm having a hard time to get rid of texture seams in my characters, i'm using "Full size" in Texture size option, and i'm not using SLG.  I tried different settings in texture size option but they didn't fixed the problem.

 

Thanks for all the replies, what you sugest didn't apply to my case, i use all M4 and V4 characters and no scaling.

anyway i don't exactly what happened but the texture seams just went away, what i did was turn off the gpu acceleration and texture seams didn't appear, at same time i noticed that i was using the wrong version of lux render (was using the no opencl version, so i upgraded to the latest opencl version 1.0 rc3, and no more texture seams, what happens is sometimes when i select gpu acceleration the renders show transparency on some objects, weird stuff or the render just hang. My guess it is something related with my video card drivers something...  (i've ATI Radeon HD 6450). 

Does this makes any sense?

It does, actually. There are a number of options that need to be checked for GPU-processing to work in Lux. As the developers have noted, it's still very experimental. Your seam(s) issue was most likely the result of the GPU 'collect texture' operation and not all that uncommon to happen without more adjustment. Overall, it's a bit longer answer than that, but for time, space and interesting text, that's the short version. Good you got it figured out though.

We as a forum and a group can only offer possible solutions that may affect your situation, but as we can't see your computer, it is a cummulative 'best guess' without more information.

Bob, do not switch to matte for hair or skin, it lead to horrible results.

That is not the issue. Try changing other parts of the scene. Just for love of science, try enclosing the figure that you have without environment inside a cube. Scale the cube large enough to have the camera inside it. Set the cube diffuse to 220,220, 220 and the material for it to be matte. Re-render and see what happens.

Cheers.