All the best for your wife, Paolo. Luckily, she is doing better.

Since I also work with Poser, I am very happy that I will now also be able to work with Reality in Poser 9.

Thank you for the good wishes everybody. I'll pass them on.

I have Poser 2012, but prefer DAZ Studio. DS does some things better than Poser, and vice versa.

Hi all, I haven't posted for some time as I have been otherwise occupied, but when I read about Paolo's wife falling ill, I had to post to send my wishes for a speedy recovery!

Also, congrats and best wishes on the launch of Reality 3!!! Glad to see you breaking into the poser market with it!

 Some awesome renders being posted as always, sorry I don't have time to comment on each one!

While I'm here, I found a great little video about 3-point lighting on youtube, it's short and sweet but covers the basics pretty well I think. Definitely a beginner level video though.  Hope someone finds it useful.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/fullsailuniversity/featured?v=w3xYPOiPtE4

Michael

Paolo,

I was very sorry to hear about your wife, but happy tha she is home and recovering.  Please give her my best wishes for a speedy recovery!  You both are in my thoughts and prayers. 

Kim

I will Kim, thank you very much.

Hello  all.

I need to ask you a favor, if you can spare a couple of minutes.

There is a poster at RDNA who is claiming that you have been duped by me in believing that Reality is a renderer. I told him that this is not the case. First of all you are smarter than that, second, I never claimed that Reality renders. If you have a chance to go to this thread:

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?72169-Reality-3-Miki-4-Tyler-Sneak-Peek-at-SIGGRAPH-2012/page2

and let "tylerzambory" know that you are not that easily fooled and that you know very well that LuxRender is doing the rendering I believe that it would help in letting people know the truth of the matter.

Thanks in advance.

Quote - Hello  all.

I need to ask you a favor, if you can spare a couple of minutes.

There is a poster at RDNA who is claiming that you have been duped by me in believing that Reality is a renderer. I told him that this is not the case. First of all you are smarter than that, second, I never claimed that Reality renders. If you have a chance to go to this thread:

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?72169-Reality-3-Miki-4-Tyler-Sneak-Peek-at-SIGGRAPH-2012/page2

and let "tylerzambory" know that you are not that easily fooled and that you know very well that LuxRender is doing the rendering I believe that it would help in letting people know the truth of the matter.

 

Thanks in advance.

I'm so sorry to hear about your wife's illness, but so glad for you both that she is recovering well. 

I went to the thread at RDNA and posted my 2 cents worth... It is really disheartening how people come up with stories that are untrue and can potentially damage good people like yourself... It boggles my mind.. I don't think I've ever seen anyone who actually thought reality was a render engine, or felt misled in any way about it.

Thank you Zethara. It is mind bogling and makes you wonder where all that anger comes from since I never had anything to do with that person. 

I appreciate your words in the thread, it helps a lot.

Cheers.

Attached Link: Comment here

First run. Currently using maya Elite texture, but I plan on making my own.

Hi Paolo,

Great News on the Poser version of Reality... I had a feeling this was in the pipeline..congrats.. I will be purchasing a copy, or side grading or, what ever is available to current reality users.

Don't worry about some of the Poser nay sayers, I always find it amazing how some people will react irrationally when something new comes along..

Use it or don't use it' ..'shrug'.... its really not THAT important in the grand scheme of things.. but for me, Reality for poser will be the hook to start using that software again.

Hope you wife has a swift recovery. Prayers and thoughts to you both.

Regards,

SK.

I added my two cents worth, although I think the criticism is directed at SM for using the wrong terminology. Either way, Doc Evil waded in with his evil thoughts :)

Glad to hear your wife is recovering Paolo, I hope she'll be in good health again soon.

VERY unfortunate that you couldn't make it to L.A., but I'm sure you'll feel better when you see the number of sold licences climb rapidly!

And climb rapidly it should too; MAN am I impressed with the results I'm getting!

Never did I expect to create the images I am making now, this is soooo good!

Thank you thank you thank you for that Paolo!

Cheers! (3x)

Erik

I have to admit I may have lied about the not being confused part. I stayed up too late watching the MSL-Curiosity rover land on Mars. Amazing that they pulled that one off. Had to bust out the nail file when it was over.

My hopes and prayers for your wife's speedy recovery. Wish you the best of luck at SIGGRAPH.

Thank you very much swordman10, I guess I left a trail of breadcrumbs :)

Thank you very much erik, really appreciate your testimonial and support.

Hi Hoku.

Thank you for posting.

We watched the Mars landing too, that was so extremely cool! Love the Sky Crane idea. Man, those people are just incredible and they make us all feel very proud.

Cheers 

Paolo.. trying to reply to the thread but I keep getting an error screen when I try to reply.. and even when I try to start a whole new thread.  Just know that those of who are smart enough to buy and use Reality; are smart enough to know what it is and what it does.  It sucks because I had so many witty and intelligent replies to comments made in that thread.  They'd be wasted here because there's no one in this thread that needs a god-smack back to reality and clear thinking.

On the positive side.. my render **Beth in the Maldives **was chosen as a Daz Studio Staff Pick of the Week.  My first one.

Oh.. and Reality is such a wonderful render engine.. I keep asking myself why I'm messing around with that whole LuxRender thing and just don't use Reality by itself. ~voice of sarcasm~

Quote - Aloha Paolo, I posted on the RDNA thread as well. Happy to have the opportunity to provide some support to you in return for your fantastic support of Reality users!

I have to admit I may have lied about the not being confused part. I stayed up too late watching the MSL-Curiosity rover land on Mars. Amazing that they pulled that one off. Had to bust out the nail file when it was over.

My hopes and prayers for your wife's speedy recovery. Wish you the best of luck at SIGGRAPH.

Was watching that too.. being a former employee of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the US Space and Rocket Center; all things NASA realated grab my attention almost instantly.  The whole future of NASA was probably riding on this landing.  The future push is a manned mission to Mars and if that landing had not gone off well the whole program(NASA itself) probably would have been shit-canned.  Which is a shame because people have no idea the massive amount of technology and products that came from just our race with Russia to land on the moon.

I went and added my two cents to the thread about reality.  I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so I just wrote the truth about my reality.

Quote - On the positive side.. my render **Beth in the Maldives **was chosen as a Daz Studio Staff Pick of the Week.  My first one.

Congratulations!

And thank you for the support, much appreciated.

Congrats Sharkey! I am having fun creating a Fringe makeshift lab...

Quote - I went and added my two cents to the thread about reality.  I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so I just wrote the truth about my reality.

The truth is always the best ingridient of the recipe of life.

Thank you.

This is more for SBT that anything.. he demanded screenies from me showing my experiments with efficiency.  Ask therefore and ye shall receive.  Had a render running last night that had massive efficiency yet very slow s/s speed.  It was a simple scene and it was running very slow samples/sec wise.  After seeing it done this morning I think it was because the materials for the swingset I got sucked so badly that they didn't even show up in the lux render.  That and the disp maps for my ground and background were so hosed that they kept making lux crash til I removed them(i was watching the log to see what file it was hanging on before it crashed).  So.. to conserve space I'll just post the links to the screenies and give a brief description.

The semi-finished render I did last night  Note the over 4k% efficiency yet less than 20k samples/sec.  That and the fact that if the materials for the swingset and ground weren't hosed it would have been damned-near a finished render.  No graininess and blurs or anything in the main character and it's less than 200 passes.  Here

Here I just exported the render to let you see it full sized.. although the character doesn't look near life-like like some renders; that's more of material issue to me than how long it's baked.  Here

I find myself using shaders for materials that wont work for some reason alot of fingernail colors will not load right even when I adjust the specular ect even though it is red ect it will be colorless in Reality. I just add a supershine or metal shader and that seem to work pretty good..

Quote - I find myself using shaders for materials that wont work for some reason alot of fingernail colors will not load right even when I adjust the specular ect even though it is red ect it will be colorless in Reality. I just add a supershine or metal shader and that seem to work pretty good..

Very likely the specular color is too bright. Can you post a screenshot of the material? Both the Glossy and Alpha tabs please.

Thanks.

I had the same issue Bob, and found the solution by dialling the specular colour down to something like 10 - 10 - 10.

Sharkbytes-BamaScans was it you that was interested in playing with Amazon's EC2 for rendering?

I think you said you were a network guy?  I just signed up.  Thinking about trying it out tonight or tomorrow.  You game to help. Was thinking about trying Windows server and RDP instead of that Ubunto unix stuff.  What do you think?  I have no done any network stuff for like 5-8 years so I am sure I will need some back up

Quote -  I think you said you were a network guy?  I just signed up.  Thinking about trying it out tonight or tomorrow.  You game to help. Was thinking about trying Windows server and RDP instead of that Ubunto unix stuff.  What do you think?  I have no done any network stuff for like 5-8 years so I am sure I will need some back up

I suggest to go the Linux route, it provides more flexibility, it costs less and it's in general more reliable. Just MHO.

Quote - I suggest to go the Linux route, it provides more flexibility, it costs less and it's in general more reliable. Just MHO.

Then I definitely will need someone to hold my hand in the dark ~wink~ point well noted

Quote - This is more for SBT that anything.. he demanded screenies from me showing my experiments with efficiency.  Ask therefore and ye shall receive.  Had a render running last night that had massive efficiency yet very slow s/s speed.  It was a simple scene and it was running very slow samples/sec wise.  After seeing it done this morning I think it was because the materials for the swingset I got sucked so badly that they didn't even show up in the lux render.  That and the disp maps for my ground and background were so hosed that they kept making lux crash til I removed them(i was watching the log to see what file it was hanging on before it crashed).  So.. to conserve space I'll just post the links to the screenies and give a brief description.

 

The semi-finished render I did last night  Note the over 4k% efficiency yet less than 20k samples/sec.  That and the fact that if the materials for the swingset and ground weren't hosed it would have been damned-near a finished render.  No graininess and blurs or anything in the main character and it's less than 200 passes.  Here

Here I just exported the render to let you see it full sized.. although the character doesn't look near life-like like some renders; that's more of material issue to me than how long it's baked.  Here

Demanded is a strong word

Anyway, I do notice something. Given the 8 hours of render time and ~200 passes, there is a bit grainyness to her skin in the shadows, whereas a lower effeciency but faster sample per second rate with more passes made would leave a crisp image.

Is this in GPU+CPU hybrid mode? I was curious if that's working better than RC1 and 2. I've been super busy on a V4/5 new character and texture that I haven't rendered anything more than 3Delight tests for lining things up.

Quote - > Quote - I suggest to go the Linux route, it provides more flexibility, it costs less and it's in general more reliable. Just MHO.

Then I definitely will need someone to hold my hand in the dark ~wink~ point well noted

There is a bit of madness with EC2 and their authorization system, which doesn'tuse the usual login/password system. They issue a digital certificate (.PEM) that you have to store on disk and then use to login. You will need an SSH client for Windows, I'm sure that there are free ones available (BTW, Microsoft, about time to include SSH in the OS, everybody else has it).

Once you have ssh you call it and type something like this:

ssh -i [PATH TO YOUR PEM FILE]  root@[IP ADDRESS]

That will log you into your new machine. Just make sure that everything is running in the right place and make a dir /opt/luxrender where you will be copying the luxconsole for Linux executable. Of course you will need to have downloaded the Linux version of Luxrender before you start the process. You keep that in your Windows machine.

Log out from the Ubuntu box and go back to your SSH shell.

Issue the command:

scp -i  -i [PATH TO YOUR PEM FILE] [PATH TO THE LINUX VERSION OF LUX]/luxconsole root@[IP ADDRESS]:/opt/luxrender

Please note the ":" after the ip address. This will copy the luxconsole program to your new server.

Now log back into the server, cd to the /opt/luxrender directory and run the luxconsole server

Start the render from Reality and, when LuxRender comes up, add the address of your new server. You should be able to see the server/render node reply in your SSH window. Happiness ensues.

Hope this helps.

sbt.. yeah.. it's in hybrid mode.  If you'll look back over that spreadsheet.. the changes to the materials I did was what made the large changes in the samples per seconds.  They did little or nothing with the kc/s or efficiency.. when i stuck the cube over everything that's when the efficiency took the huge jump.  Use the glass material being the major culprit of reducing render speed.

One thing, I am currently pricing out getting a new computer to do this and my cad stuff for school.  I knew lux's site had a benchmark chart for cpu's.  Lux's own measurement for how fast a computer is with luxrender is the contributions per second and not the samples per second or the efficiency.  What we might be doing looking at lux's efficiency and s/s speed is like measuring a car's fuel efficiency by how cold the air conditioning is.

I actually downloaded the luxtime benchmarking scene and ran it on this computer.  I was dismayed to find out that my computer scored 3 from the bottom on the test.  Looking back over that spreadsheet with an eye to kc/s.  Putting a box around the scene increased c/s almost 3 1/2 times in cpu mode and over 4 times more in gpu mode.

Arumbus.. I've actually been playing around with AWS a bit the past couple days.  The results were dismal.  It's actually easier to connect to it using remote desktop and one of the windows2008 servers.  No screenies; but, on the free tier my network render was chugging along at 7k s/s while my home computer was pulling 17k/sec.  contributions per second and efficiency were identical.  Then I went up to the extra-large 90cent/hr server and that same render was going at 78k/sec.  Again kc/s and efficiency were identical.  I don't have the free cash available to try the 2.60/hr quad-gpu servers; but, will when student loans hit and I have a couple fee dollars.  That won't be til 10/5 tho.

Quote - sbt.. yeah.. it's in hybrid mode.  If you'll look back over that spreadsheet.. the changes to the materials I did was what made the large changes in the samples per seconds.  They did little or nothing with the kc/s or efficiency.. when i stuck the cube over everything that's when the efficiency took the huge jump.  Use the glass material being the major culprit of reducing render speed.

One thing, I am currently pricing out getting a new computer to do this and my cad stuff for school.  I knew lux's site had a benchmark chart for cpu's.  Lux's own measurement for how fast a computer is with luxrender is the contributions per second and not the samples per second or the efficiency.  What we might be doing looking at lux's efficiency and s/s speed is like measuring a car's fuel efficiency by how cold the air conditioning is.

I actually downloaded the luxtime benchmarking scene and ran it on this computer.  I was dismayed to find out that my computer scored 3 from the bottom on the test.  Looking back over that spreadsheet with an eye to kc/s.  Putting a box around the scene increased c/s almost 3 1/2 times in cpu mode and over 4 times more in gpu mode.

Interesting indeed! One thing I've come to realize is that my understanding of Lux's inner workings is on par with my understanding of quantam physics. I know enough to get through a conversation and roughly what it does :-) Now if I exchange that understanding with a 5lb sledge hammer, Lux is a fine tool, elegant, and easy to wield to make things go boom.

as for connecting to the windows servers.  there's a few things you need to remember when going thru the wizard.  there's a page where you set your port permissions.  you want to open up tcp port 18018, then you want to open the default rdp port(just one setting on the dropdown menu and the port number is put in for you).  you'll come to a part where you have to download that pem file that paolo was talking about.  remember where it is.  it's the encryption pair for your rdp password.  if you're following the luxrender.net tute.. just ignore the crap about command line stuff and just follow the pages that it shows of the aws site with the addition of adding the rdp port.  If i remember right, I saw a tech support forum post that said you have to open the udp port 18018 too.  once you're at your instance overview screen; you'll have to wait like 5 or 10 minutes for the server to be all set up and ready to go before you'll be able to request your windows password.  but if you right click on the instance line you'll see a line that'll make a shortcut to your rdp session.  do that.. it's makes things easier.  Once you are able to get a response from the request windows password option it'll give you a popup with a button that you click for the "file"  click that and browse to/select that pem file you downloaded.  that'll put in the encryption and you'll see your p/w show up in the box for it.  copy that p/w.  then click on the rdp shortcut and put in Administrator (capitalized) for login and that p/w you copied.  You'll then be into the rdp session.

From there it's just like being on your computer.  Open internet explorer.  surf to lux's site.  download the appropriate 64 bit copy of luxrender.  no opencl version for all but the quad-gpu servers.  extract it like you would on your computer.  i just made it a directory on the desktop.  then go to the lux directory and send the luxconsole.exe to desktop as a shortcut.  right click on that shortcut, select properties and put a -s at the end of the target line.  okay your way out of it.  double click on the icon and your network session is ready to start.

in the top right corner of your rdp desktop you'll see the ip addy you'll need for the network session on your computer.  enter that and port 18018 like normal.  it'll take 10 minutes or so to transfer all the scene files to the remote computer so be patient.  soon your render will start just like a normal network render.  any other more in-depth explanation needed and i can sitemail you my phone number.  i'm better at phone support than web support.

another side comment.  if you got to the point where lux is up and going on the remote computer and you're still not transferring files to it; go into the rdp server's control panel and turn off windows firewall.  i'm not sure if it does anything but my remote renders wouldn't transfer files until i made several changes and i'm not sure which change was the winner.

mind you.. since you said you had some older network experience.. i worded myself to aim at someone who had a passing knowledge of the kind of shorthand that my babbling explanation was meant to be.

Quote - > Quote -  I think you said you were a network guy?  I just signed up.  Thinking about trying it out tonight or tomorrow.  You game to help. Was thinking about trying Windows server and RDP instead of that Ubunto unix stuff.  What do you think?  I have no done any network stuff for like 5-8 years so I am sure I will need some back up

I suggest to go the Linux route, it provides more flexibility, it costs less and it's in general more reliable. Just MHO.

i told my wife's brother-in-law(owns a puter shop) that linux was for people who had no hope of having sex in their adult lives.  he said "i use linux all the time at work"  i told him.. "point made"

Quote -  You will need an SSH client for Windows, I'm sure that there are free ones available (BTW, Microsoft, about time to include SSH in the OS, everybody else has it). Once you have ssh you call it and type something like this:

I needed no such client.  What I should do it get fraps and make a quick video tute on how to connect to it via windows.  it's actually train-a-monkey-to-do easy.

I for one would LOVE a video!

am making it as we speak.  just taking forever for the ec2 server to set up my credentials.  sometimes it can take 15-30 minutes.. usually like 10

Video done.  They're reviewing it for approval and should be up shortly after they say yes to it.

Quote - It is mind bogling and makes you wonder where all that anger comes from since I never had anything to do with that person.

Because he has a point? WTF is this?

http://i.imgur.com/vD3zC.jpg

Whether or not it was intentional, it just comes across as underhanded, like some marketer somewhere is trying to pass off a free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer renderer as really being  just Reality itself, a commerical product.

As repeatedly pointed out in that thread, the term "render engine" refers to the application that generates an image from a scene description. There is an established term for what things like LuxBlend and Reality (and shall I mention Pose2Lux?) do, it's called an "exporter" or "plugin". In fact, if you go to Reality's product page here on Rendo, that's pretty much what you find. Reality is pretty clearly described as a DAZ plugin to generate Lux scene files. So why the sudden shift into presenting it as its own "render engine"?

Attached Link: Fringe lab

Quote - > Quote - It is mind bogling and makes you wonder where all that anger comes from since I never had anything to do with that person.

 

Because he has a point? WTF is this?

http://i.imgur.com/vD3zC.jpg

Whether or not it was intentional, it just comes across as underhanded, like some marketer somewhere is trying to pass off a free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer renderer as really being  just Reality itself, a commerical product.

As repeatedly pointed out in that thread, the term "render engine" refers to the application that generates an image from a scene description. There is an established term for what things like LuxBlend and Reality (and shall I mention Pose2Lux?) do, it's called an "exporter" or "plugin". In fact, if you go to Reality's product page here on Rendo, that's pretty much what you find. Reality is pretty clearly described as a DAZ plugin to generate Lux scene files. So why the sudden shift into presenting it as its own "render engine"?

Oh stfu already.  I guess Paolo works for Business Wire now and is responsible for what they print on their website?  Or for smith micro and he writes THEIR copy too.  Or on the board at siggraph and he writes their press releases?  Never in my knowledge(and I frequent many of the same places he does) has Paolo claimed that reality is a render engine.

Technically, an engine is an engine is an engine.  We, here.. in this thread KNOW that lux is the render engine.. we use it day in and day out.  Real engines are not stuck in one car exclusively.  You can put them in any compatible car.  Same with Lux.  We KNOW you can use it with D|S and soon poser, and blender and whatever else you can use it in.  For us, Reality is the key that turns that engine on. WE KNOW THAT.  If some or even many misinformed individuals call reality a "render engine" who give a flying rat's ass?  If you don't know that it's not the actual render engine you need to find a tutorial, read pret-a-3d's website or get a new effing hobby.

Are you a competitor and envious of reality's popularity?  Hell.. check this week's daz studio staff picks.  Nearly all of them used Reality.  Oh wait.. maybe Paolo's on the staff of Renderosity too and just picked Reality renders?

This is a REALITY render thread.  Where we share art, tips, tricks, advice and even a few laughs.  So share your art or gtfo.

And if you're not the d-bag poster from rdna or one of his cronies, my apologies; but, that turd's whole attitude pisses me off and I wasn't able to post in rdna's forums

Quote - And if you're not the d-bag poster from rdna or one of his cronies, my apologies; but, that turd's whole attitude pisses me off and I wasn't able to post in rdna's forums

 I'm one of the Lux devs, actually. I help maintain LuxBlend and the Wiki,and  I ran the Mat DB until the preview system got messed up a few months back. Like everyone else at Lux except Paolo, I do this in my free time for fun and do not get paid for it.

Nice to meet you.

Jason, the attack on the thread was beyond disagreement and past all rules of civil discourse. Even if the poster had a point there are ways of expressing yourself without resorting to personal attacks and name calling. If we keep our head calm the dialog is much more constructive.

You will see tomorrow that the final press release has been corrected. Sometimes companies hire PR firms and things slip through the cracks in the pressure of hitting deadlines. We can still sit down and point at misinterpretations without having to resort to personal attacks.

I think this discussion has reached a point of being beyond ridiculous. Being hung up on a term while I spent the past two years promoting LuxRender to thousands of new users is frankly disheartening and making me almost regret that I did it. Almost. Would you please give me the benefit of the doubt in light of my track record?

We have said everything that was needed to be said. I have a brand new product that will be launched tomorrow. It has some of the best code that I ever written and I am extremely proud of it because I spent endless days writing it. It will push forward LuxRender even more and I am tired of having the birthday of a new product being sullied by an absurd semantic discussion.

And all this happened while my wife had a life-threatening experience and I had to rework in two days the whole presentation because I could not go the SIGGRAPH after spending months in preparing for the event. Excuse us for having slipped a bit while we were running around the clock to make things happen.

So, I'm going to stop even reading anything about this wording debacle and focus on the launch of Reality 3 for Poser. I will enjoy the birthday of my new program and open a bottle of champagne tomorrow morning. 

Hopefully you will like the event.

I invite everybody to watch for the press release tomorrow, with more news and information at 9:00am Kalifornia time.

Viva Reality and Viva Lux!

Well.. sorry for the venom.  I saw you coming in defending the d-bag from rdna and I slipped into that "friend of my enemy is my enemy" state.

If you help maintain the wiki, I've read the wiki on connecting to AWS with lux within the Linux environment.  I've successfully connected to and used AWS in the windows environment using remote desktop.  So far, in the four search engines I use; I've not found one tute on it.  So, I made a video tute on how to do it and posted it here on Rendo.

We here, in this thread love Reality and whether it's called a plug-in, interface, materials editor, render engine, or super-duper-extra-shiny-moon-cargo-sailboat; KNOW what it is and what it does.  Most of us here too are rather appreciative of the work that Paolo puts in on Reality and assisting it's users and the massive hours he puts doing so.

I saw a post on rdna(can't remember who posted it) saying that it would be sad for someone to go into SIGGRAPH, who didn't know what poser, dazstudio, blender, carrara, etc were; would be confused by the wording.  I, for one, think that if they were at that show and didn't know any of the apps that use reality or luxrender, they were SERIOUSLY in the wrong trade show.