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

Which is probably for the best since using "STFU" and "turd" probably wouldn't help Reality's case, LOL.

we dealt with the same thing when it was released over at DAZ, people not knowing the difference between a plugin and the renderer.

I am REALLY excited about reality for poser, although a bit worried since I have gotten use to my workflow with DS4 now. The main reason I dislike using poser 2012 is the really slow adobe based library pallete, it is extremely cumbersome. With reality coming, I wonder how I will deal with that.

Quote - 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 said Paolo.  Champagne?  Thought that was a new york kind of toast?  My kind of california toast is a shot of good tequila.. no salt.. no lime... no chaser.

Sharkbytes, JTheNinja is one of the good guys. He is a tireless developer and he has posted helpful tips here many times.

I am sorry that tempers are flaring up even here. This is in fact one of the things that saddens me to no end. 

I appreciate your support and I understand how nerves have been tightened in view of unfairness in other thead but please, please let's keep the dialog open and cordial. I don't want to see any acrimony around Reality.

Jason, you know that you are always welcome here and we are all grateful for your help and for all that you do for Lux, including the material database and the continuos supply of weekly builds.

Let's relax and enjoy how rich we are, that we have programs like LuxRender that give us so much. 

Cheers 

Quote - > 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

 

[Quote] Which is probably for the best since using "STFU" and "turd" probably wouldn't help Reality's case, LOL.

yeah.. i'm not the most diplomatic guy when I go off my normal even-keel.

Quote - we dealt with the same thing when it was released over at DAZ, people not knowing the difference between a plugin and the renderer.

I still can't figure out how you can be smart enough to do this; and the learning curve is by no means flat; and NOT know the difference.

Quote - I am REALLY excited about reality for poser, although a bit worried since I have gotten use to my workflow with DS4 now. The main reason I dislike using poser 2012 is the really slow adobe based library pallete, it is extremely cumbersome. With reality coming, I wonder how I will deal with that.

I still have a few poser renders(whoops.. poser's not a renderer) around although I've trashcanned most.  They were pretty realistic.  From what I've read, Reality is the materials handler(i hate that term as it means "garbage man" if you're working in a factory) for Firefly.  The biggest thing I missed when I left poser to use D|S is how nice Firefly renders looked.  If it was not for my love affair with Genesis; I might consider going back to Poser full time.

Quote - I am REALLY excited about reality for poser, although a bit worried since I have gotten use to my workflow with DS4 now. The main reason I dislike using poser 2012 is the really slow adobe based library pallete, it is extremely cumbersome. With reality coming, I wonder how I will deal with that.

Give SR3 a shot when it will be available. There are tons of improvement plus the GoZ plugin is really cool.

But the point is that when Reality for Poser will be out you will have the choice to render with LuxRender no matter what application you will be using. That is pretty darn cool if you ask me :)

Quote - Sharkbytes, JTheNinja is one of the good guys. He is a tireless developer and he has posted helpful tips here many times.

Jason, you know that you are always welcome here and we are all grateful for your help and for all that you do for Lux, including the material database and the continuos supply of weekly builds.

That's why I interjected the apology.  Speaking of materials database.  I am correct in the thinking that the materials dropdown in reality is just a listing of LUXRENDER materials right?  If this is correct, I've seen several materials in the material database at Lux.net that I'd like to see popping up in my Reality.  How do I go about doing that?

So reality for poser uses luxrender and not firefly?  And uses the mesh lights we all know instead of poser's 3-point lights?  That was my 2nd biggest headache with poser behind not being able to get clothes to fit right.  I like firefly; but, Lux makes it look like poo

:) :)

Btw, missed a whole string of posts playing a Starcraft 2 match (haven't seen ling-muta into ultra in awhile, that was a nasty surpise). I meant to add an adenum because this line " Like everyone else at Lux except Paolo" came across as WAYY more venomous than I meant to it to be. I get irked sometimes reading posts on deviantart and such with taglines like "rendered in reality!". I headed into that thread expecting the internet's standard stupidity and trolling, and was surprised to find a trace of a point I agreed with. Sorry if I went too far into the passive-agressive-douchenozzle land.

Btw, if any of you will be at SIGGRAPH one of the Lux SPPM guys is co-teaching this class on Thursday: http://s2012.siggraph.org/attendees/sessions/state-art-photon-density-estimation

He'll be covering a bit on the lessons we (mostly him) learned trying to hammer a production tool out of some research papers, so go buy him a beer before after the talk :P

Quote - > Quote - Sharkbytes, JTheNinja is one of the good guys. He is a tireless developer and he has posted helpful tips here many times.

Jason, you know that you are always welcome here and we are all grateful for your help and for all that you do for Lux, including the material database and the continuos supply of weekly builds.

That's why I interjected the apology.  Speaking of materials database.  I am correct in the thinking that the materials dropdown in reality is just a listing of LUXRENDER materials right?  If this is correct, I've seen several materials in the material database at Lux.net that I'd like to see popping up in my Reality.  How do I go about doing that?

Reality's material system is abstracted a bit from Lux's shader system. There's a direct mapping, and it's pretty simple in most cases, (you can check the results yourself in the lxm) but there are few shaders that aren't supported like scatter and car paint, plus some other options that aren't exposed (like setting spec color directly as an IOR value......i think...does Reality support that one?) plus all the procedural and spectral textures. So it wouldn't just be "apply db material and go", unless it just used the db mat as-is.

Also adding new materials to the db is kinda broken atm, and I don't know why. And actually I think the preview script itself is now also broken because of the otherwise-awesome stats overhaul in 1.0.

Sitting back with my bag of chips

Hi J!

starcraft??  so you give blizzard/activision a chunk of your free cash too?  I, for one, am a warcraft dweeb and proud of it.  Been playing it daily since 2005.  So, I get Reality for poser in august, and a Mists of Pandaria(go go kung fu panda) in september.  a happy and sleep-free autumn for me.

See above to my comment about luxrender via aws via windows.

And another question, a bit of misunderstanding about the true indicator of rendering speed.  What do you want to have higher?  samples/sec or contributions/se and am I correct in thinking that i read that efficiency is somehow a multiplication of the two?

And I'm very sorry to read that I can't easily get new lux materials into my reality interface.. I was really loving the woodgrain one I saw.  ~sniff sniff~ ~nudges Paolo~

Quote - So reality for poser uses luxrender and not firefly?  And uses the mesh lights we all know instead of poser's 3-point lights?  That was my 2nd biggest headache with poser behind not being able to get clothes to fit right.  I like firefly; but, Lux makes it look like poo

Reality 3 for Poser bridges Poser with LuxRender as you can expect. The lights supported are the same so you will be able to use Mesh lights, spots, point lights and IBL as you can with Reality 2.

Quote - That's why I interjected the apology.  Speaking of materials database.  I am correct in the thinking that the materials dropdown in reality is just a listing of LUXRENDER materials right?  If this is correct, I've seen several materials in the material database at Lux.net that I'd like to see popping up in my Reality.  How do I go about doing that?

The materials in Reality are mostly LuxRender materials with the exception of Water, which is specific of Reality. Water is simulated with the use of the Glass2 volumetric glass, as people usually do with LuxBlend. The difference is that it makes the process dead simple instead of being mind-boggling complicated :)

Connecting to the LRMDB is a goal, when it will be implemented I can't really say. You will see tomorrow that Reality 3 is a big jump ahead. I'm focusing on making that happen and then work on other features like the LRMDB.

Cheers.

contribuations/sec = samples/sec * efficiency /100.

So 100kS/s @ 200% eff = 200kC/s.

It's just a stat we added awhile back to make it a bit easier to see the net effect of some change you made to the scene that could affect both sample rate and effiency (like changing light sampling strategy or adding a portal).

Efficiency is just % of rays that managed to catch a light, but with path tracing algorithms you can hit more than once per ray, which is why the thing is almost always above 100%. (tbh, I wish we reported it it as a decimal rather than a precent, ex 3.52 instead of 352%, but i can't get find enough traction for the idea). Earlier someone posted " 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". Not quite, it's more like comparing a cars speed and handling....but testing each car on a completely different road.

You cannot compare stats between scenes, there's FAR too many things can affect low long it takes to trace a ray and how many light hits each one is getting. That's true of any render engine, you can have two completely legitimate render jobs with times that vary by an order of magnitude or two. If you want to dig into the stats bar, give this a read: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxRender_1.0_Interface#Status_Bar

gotcha j.. and actually.. it was me who made that quote earlier.  minus word from those who know better, all i can do is make my own suppositions.

now.. here's one for paolo or any others that may know.  I have been working on a texture set for hongyu's bikini.  to date, everything has worked as planned.  my trans maps makes what i want to be invisible invisible... bumps work, diffuse maps work.  yet my latest attempt renders just fine in test renders with 3delight.  when i pull up reality and then render in lux.. the grey areas of the trans maps seem to be working fine; but my full black sections are still showing up as you can see the black of the source mesh.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2355695

Haven't seen any of those Paranormal Activity movies, but they're pretty much the inspiration behind this one. 

More description in the gallery.

Without seeing your settings Sharky, here's my thoughts. I'm sure you have your trans map in the opacity slot in studio, which transfers into the Alpha channel in reality. Is your alpha channel set to 1.0?

The only other thing I can think of is that your black may not be absolute. Again, that's really a guess from this side of the screen. I have learned recently that the trans maps are absolutely too large in png size wise, so the 'ol grayscale jpg fits the bill.

Just so we're on the same page, you've got your colors coordinated so black=fully transparent and white=fully opaque, right?

Added my 3.21 cents over at RDNA.  ;-)  Let's all take a deep breath...exhale...& watch the clock for 12:01 PM EDT/9:00 AM PDT for the beginning of the next chapter.

Ancora una volta, a Paolo porgo congratulazioni

All Paolo now need to do, is enter into an agreement with PIXAR. Then is quest for world 3D domination would be complete :)

Help appreciated on this one guys and gals :)

Clicky clicky

I'd like to have a slight translucency to the sheet behind her, but there are no mats with the prop, and if I set it to matt translucent it becomes tooo translucent (and very noisy).

Any suggestions? I've never used matt translucent, or the transluceny setting for glossy materials either, so I've no clue what to do for the best.

Quote - All Paolo now need to do, is enter into an agreement with PIXAR. Then is quest for world 3D domination would be complete :)

Doc you crack me up :)

Quote -
Ancora una volta, a Paolo porgo congratulazioni

Molte grazie Alex. :)

Quote - All Paolo now need to do, is enter into an agreement with PIXAR. Then is quest for world 3D domination would be complete :)

The only argument that I would have with them is: "why the hell you didn't hire me?" I visited Pixar a couple of times, in occasion of the release of their movies, and it's one of the coolest workplaces in the world.

Good old Doc :)

Quote - Help appreciated on this one guys and gals :)

Clicky clicky

I'd like to have a slight translucency to the sheet behind her, but there are no mats with the prop, and if I set it to matt translucent it becomes tooo translucent (and very noisy).

Any suggestions? I've never used matt translucent, or the transluceny setting for glossy materials either, so I've no clue what to do for the best.

Add a shader and lower the opacity?

Quote - Help appreciated on this one guys and gals :)

Clicky clicky

I'd like to have a slight translucency to the sheet behind her, but there are no mats with the prop, and if I set it to matt translucent it becomes tooo translucent (and very noisy).

Any suggestions? I've never used matt translucent, or the transluceny setting for glossy materials either, so I've no clue what to do for the best.

Good Morning.

In the RW you often need more light behind an object than is shining on it.  I have found it is often the same in 3D. Do you have a stronger light source behind the curtain?

On the matt-transparancy I have found a little goes a long way - 5-15% will probably do you.'

Another (more difficult) option would be to make a transparancy map like you do for lace or fishnets with a tight weave

SBT.. i woke up this morning to a test-render that looked like a big pile of poo.  So I took a stab; loaded one of hongyu's stock mats onto the bikini top; then switched it to my trans map and my diffuse map and it rendered beautifully.  Except in SLG and that seems to hate my trans maps period.  Yes, I do use absolute black for fully transparent and absolute white for fully opaque and then tweak stuff in between

Quote - Add a shader and lower the opacity?

Never used shaders in Reality either, but I could look into it. Thanks for the suggestions.

Morning Sharkbytes,

I ended up going to be early did you end up getting the approval (from who?) on the Vid you made?

Quote - Never used shaders in Reality either, but I could look into it. Thanks for the suggestions.

You actually do :) All materials like Glossy and Metal are shaders.

Cheers.

Quote - I'd like to have a slight translucency to the sheet behind her, but there are no mats with the prop, and if I set it to matt translucent it becomes tooo translucent (and very noisy).

That depends on the colors used for the translucency. If you post them we might be able to tell you how to change them for the right effect. Matte Translucent should be the best candidate for that effect.

Quote -
In the RW you often need more light behind an object than is shining on it.  I have found it is often the same in 3D. Do you have a stronger light source behind the curtain?

 

On the matt-transparancy I have found a little goes a long way - 5-15% will probably do you.'

 

Another (more difficult) option would be to make a transparancy map like you do for lace or fishnets with a tight weave

No idea how to make transparency map, so I'll plump for the soft option and turn the matt-transparency setting to something lower. I do have a stronger lightsource behind the curtain. The backdrop is a mesh light, though it's only marginally stronger than the curved mesh I have shining on the figure - the plane mesh is at 8.0000000 while the curved mesh is at 6.5000000.

Quote - You actually do :) All materials like Glossy and Metal are shaders.

Really? D'oh! :D

Okay, here are the settings for the cloth as glossy and as matt translucent

More clicky clicky

Cheers Paolo!

Quote - Help appreciated on this one guys and gals :)

Clicky clicky

I'd like to have a slight translucency to the sheet behind her, but there are no mats with the prop, and if I set it to matt translucent it becomes tooo translucent (and very noisy).

Any suggestions? I've never used matt translucent, or the transluceny setting for glossy materials either, so I've no clue what to do for the best.

Here is what i would do. make a texture for it, something similar to rough parchment looking. Then use that same texture and change it to shades of grey and play with the contrast to make a transparency texture, dark for transparant, white for solid. you could also try the transparency texture as a displacement if you want more contrast, I would keep it glossy to give it more shadows and light.

Arumbus... it still says pending approval.  I had thought about just emailing it to you but the file is 415mb; so, that would kind of suck.

Misangelic.. what's that curtain prop that you're trying to make transparent?  I could whip you up and workable semi-seethrough trans map for it in a few minutes if I have it. 

Quote - Here is what i would do. make a texture for it, something similar to rough parchment looking. Then use that same texture and change it to shades of grey and play with the contrast to make a transparency texture, dark for transparant, white for solid. you could also try the transparency texture as a displacement if you want more contrast, I would keep it glossy to give it more shadows and light.

Sounds like a plan. I did notice when I set it to matt translucent that the creases weren't noticable anymore.

So how do I go about making a texture for it? :)

Quote - Okay, here are the settings for the cloth as glossy and as matt translucent

More clicky clicky

Cheers Paolo!

You are using Glossy translucent in there, use Matte Translucent instead.

Cheers 

Quote - Misangelic.. what's that curtain prop that you're trying to make transparent?  I could whip you up and workable semi-seethrough trans map for it in a few minutes if I have it. 

Here you go! LINK

Thanks, Bamascan!

I often use thing like free supershine and metal shaders also fabric shaders often translate without any issues.

Quote - So how do I go about making a texture for it? :)

For future reference, just like any other texture. open your image editor, create a new canvas/project/sheet at 1024 x 1024 or larger. Color it any way you want or paste any image into it, save and you have a texture.

The bigger question is , is the sheet UV mapped otherwsie the texture will not display properly. If not and it's in .obj format, you can use the free UVMapper to load it up, creatre a new UV map and then save as a new obj.

Every object has two ways to change it's apperance, thru either an image applied to it, via texture sheet or thru procedural shaders, applying a color

With the free version of uvmapper; you can't save obj's.  You can only save templates.  You can, though, edit the obj in uvmapper free and then save the resulting edited template.

Misangelic... how transparent do you want it?  Like gauze, saran wrap, like a curtain sheer?

Quote - For future reference, just like any other texture. open your image editor, create a new canvas/project/sheet at 1024 x 1024 or larger. Color it any way you want or paste any image into it, save and you have a texture.

The bigger question is , is the sheet UV mapped otherwsie the texture will not display properly. If not and it's in .obj format, you can use the free UVMapper to load it up, creatre a new UV map and then save as a new obj.

Every object has two ways to change it's apperance, thru either an image applied to it, via texture sheet or thru procedural shaders, applying a color

The prop consists of just one .pp2 file. I'm thinking now may be a good time to ask a favour from my vendor friend on here, lol.

The annoucement for Reality 3 for Poser is out:

http://preta3d.com/blog/2012/08/07/press-release-reality-3-for-poser/

Here is a page with the description of the product and video demonstration of how it works:

http://preta3d.com/technology-preview-reality-3-for-poser/

And a brand-new logo:

Cheers.

So we need to purchase Reality again in less then a year...

Quote - So we need to purchase Reality again in less then a year...

Hi Bob.

Reality 3 will be available as an upgrade to all users of Reality 1 and Reality 2.

Availability of Reality 3 for Poser is expcted for November 2012 while the version for Studio is expected two months later, in January 2013

Cheers.

I know but still I think its like $20?? Which I suppose its not too bad... Does one need to redo the whole process with registartion when one upgrades?

Okay.. here ya go

Slightly transparent transmap
Test Render

Nearly translucent transmap
Test Render 

Took me a bit because I first tried them with solid colored trans maps and I didn't like the way they looked in a test render.  Then I redid them using a grey scale map instead of rgb color and just adjusted the transparency by adding black noise to the map.  Liked the way the second try rendered.

Quote - Reality 3 will be available as an upgrade to all users of Reality 1 and Reality 2.

Availability of Reality 3 for Poser is expcted for November 2012 while the version for Studio is expected two months later, in January 2013

 

Cheers.

I was beginning to wonder about this whole 'Poser exclusivity' they keep proclaiming. I would hope that the big bag of money has not corrupted our lovable Paolo from a Reality 3 for Studio. If that may become the case, I think my rendering days are over.