Quote - SBT.. yes.. xandi has now attained her own adjective.. she has Megafluxed her render.  I don't think I've ever seen 22k passes.  most i've every personally done is 5500 on a slg render.

I don't think those are fireflies that are not clearing up.. i think it's been rendered so long that lux is now picking out and highlighting individual molecules.

This link will provide some details, as well as a link to an entry that shows some comparisons http://fav.me/d4cvy3x

This was an image I did some time ago, just to see... 126,320s/p using Lux 0v8...

I thought I had posted it here at some point, but I may be mistaken...

Quote - sbt.. i'm a complete noob at using reality's water material.. i'll get the hang of it sooner or later.  along with the 2 or 3 dozen other features of reality that i know nothing about

Quote - There is nothing special about the Reality water plane except that I took the necessary steps to make it work. If you look at the geometry of many environments, the single surfaces are very low-poly. For example, if the scene has a rectangular swimming pool, the water plane there might be even a single polygon. In many cases it's a matter of single-digit resolution. You cannot displace something that has such low resolution, no matter how much you subdivide it.

The Reality water plane has fine geometry which gets even finer by the default two levels of subdivisions applied by Reality. That allows the surface to be displaced nicely by the ripples effect. You can add any piece of geometry to Studio for water effects. Just make sure that:

• It has fine geometry that can be displaced (look at the Reality water plane for help)

• The normals are oriented correctly. Where the normals point to is consider "exterior," the other side is the interior of the water volume.

Follow those two single steps and you can model any shape. Remember that you can create any primitive in Studio with subdivisions. Look at the window that pops up when you create a cube, a plane etc. A well subdivided cube with D-formers applied can work pretty well. Otherwise Blender/ZBrush/modo are your friends :)

Hope this helps.

 @Sharkbytes...

If you go to this link... http://fav.me/d57fqrm there are links to three quick tutorials that I did for using the Reality water plane and some Dformers in daz3 (they are also in the Reality plug-in at Deviant Art 'tutorials' folder...) if you follow all three, you will be able to create the final image, even if you have not used Dformers before... The whole setup for the three tutorials (if I remember correctly) took one weekend to get to starting the final render...

(I'm sure I posted this only a short while ago, but for the fact it is relevant to your new rig and exploring the water material... `¬)

The set up below might look a little complecated (?), but if you follow the previous two tuts, it should become clear... If you give it a go, and have any queries, just ask! - either here or on the post at the link above...)

...must try and do some mad science work now! `¬) - double click for full size -

Hi.

I just wanted to say that it's nice to see all the "Mad Science" renders. I think that the project has given a good excuse to work on techniques that maybe we don't use often when loading pre-made content. It's all useful Stuff as it opens up more possibilities. Good job everybody.

I am having problems with some cameras saving since then and nothing's really been fixed

Quote - > Quote - Just finished uploading the candle set, hope you find the set useful.

Many thanks to Kim, Jim & Michael for testing this set for us.

Click on the banner below :)

Thanks John!

You have 2 not found images on your site (book and candle) :)

You've got me worried there Doc, I've had a look on my PC and my wife's laptop and everything looks fine, have you tried refreshing the page and pressing the home button ? It may be something to do with the Web-Builder. Is anyone else having problems with it ?

Works for me John....

Quote - > Quote - Just finished uploading the candle set, hope you find the set useful.

Many thanks to Kim, Jim & Michael for testing this set for us.

Click on the banner below :)

Thanks John!

You have 2 not found images on your site (book and candle) :)

You've got me worried there Doc, I've had a look on my PC and my wife's laptop and everything looks fine, have you tried refreshing the page and pressing the home button ? It may be something to do with the Web-Builder. Is anyone else having problems with it ?

The first time I went there I had the same problems as Doc. I went back today to verify the problem and everything was fine.

Sarge

The next thing I did was to create a simple bush and export just that.  When you export anything less than the full scene you are able to directly save/export it in Vue as an obj. I did this, imported the obj into studio, set the materials, then in reality added an ibl(env only) fiddled with the one material(vue saved diff,trans, and bump).  Made the render small so that it would render faster and here's the test render that was made.

Quote - > Quote - sbt.. i'm a complete noob at using reality's water material.. i'll get the hang of it sooner or later.  along with the 2 or 3 dozen other features of reality that i know nothing about

Quote - There is nothing special about the Reality water plane except that I took the necessary steps to make it work. If you look at the geometry of many environments, the single surfaces are very low-poly. For example, if the scene has a rectangular swimming pool, the water plane there might be even a single polygon. In many cases it's a matter of single-digit resolution. You cannot displace something that has such low resolution, no matter how much you subdivide it.

The Reality water plane has fine geometry which gets even finer by the default two levels of subdivisions applied by Reality. That allows the surface to be displaced nicely by the ripples effect. You can add any piece of geometry to Studio for water effects. Just make sure that:

• It has fine geometry that can be displaced (look at the Reality water plane for help)

• The normals are oriented correctly. Where the normals point to is consider "exterior," the other side is the interior of the water volume.

Follow those two single steps and you can model any shape. Remember that you can create any primitive in Studio with subdivisions. Look at the window that pops up when you create a cube, a plane etc. A well subdivided cube with D-formers applied can work pretty well. Otherwise Blender/ZBrush/modo are your friends :)

Hope this helps.

 @Sharkbytes...

If you go to this link... http://fav.me/d57fqrm there are links to three quick tutorials that I did for using the Reality water plane and some Dformers in daz3 (they are also in the Reality plug-in at Deviant Art 'tutorials' folder...) if you follow all three, you will be able to create the final image, even if you have not used Dformers before... The whole setup for the three tutorials (if I remember correctly) took one weekend to get to starting the final render...

(I'm sure I posted this only a short while ago, but for the fact it is relevant to your new rig and exploring the water material... `¬)

The set up below might look a little complecated (?), but if you follow the previous two tuts, it should become clear... If you give it a go, and have any queries, just ask! - either here or on the post at the link above...)

...must try and do some mad science work now! `¬) - double click for full size -

You could always export it as a preset (I think) and share it :lol:

That is nice KH :) Not the easiest set to render :lol:

Quote - That is nice KH :) Not the easiest set to render :lol:

Thanks Doc..  It's the hardest scene I have ever worked with. I guess I could go generic and throw in one mesh light but that's no fun.

Quote - This was an image I did some time ago, just to see... 126,320s/p using Lux 0v8...

I thought I had posted it here at some point, but I may be mistaken...

 

I stand corrected! Martin, I hope the anecdote isn't lost, but if you've seen spaceballs (the movie!), You've gone straight to Ludiflux! 

"What the hell was that?"

"They've gone to plaid!"

Sharky, did the tree look like that in Vue (the part at the bottom, err, trunk thing with the wiggle).

If so, mission success! 

sbt.... yeah.. it was a scraggly bush.. one a separate vue topic.. it seems from my searching that you can use your vue scenes to create ibl's.  i'm watching a series of beginners tutes from geekatplay to learn how to use vue.. but i'll go to the hdri tute when i'm done to see if it includes lighting info and everything that you need to use an ibl as a light source in reality/lux.  it would be super cool to be able to make a really cool and unique scene and then use it as an ibl in lux.  i don't know yet if it can do that but i'll keep the thread posted.

Sharkey Im curious why you selling your new rig already?

bob.. since it's brand new and current hardware-wise.. i can sell it through my brother in law for a pretty tidy profit.  The deal we've made so far is that  we split whatever profit he makes on it over the cost of the parts.  The last one he sold out of his shop that was this big he sold for 1500.. since he's putting a 120gb ssd and the os on it.. it pops the cost of the rig up to about 850.  split that profit in half and we both get $325. and I get the original cost of the equipment back.  I can sell probably 3 or 4 a month through him which will greatly enhance my full-time student income(read "broke as hell") and will enable me to keep using the most current hardware I can afford to buy.  Add selling through him to maybe moving the occasional box through ebay or craigslist and it might actually be the start of a small business.  There are still a ton of ppl out there who want the latest and greatest and don't have the knowledge, time, or desire to build their own.

Im not that well versed I have a guy at work who will build my box next summer all paid for with render commish's rendering explicit content can have its advantages...

Sharky--and anyone else interested in the Vue topic--I've had good success rendering skies for IBL use when I was working on my cloud project. Surprisingly they render faster in the 21__x12__ format (forgot the actual size but you'll see it in the format options. It has the wide angle look that you're accustomed to seeing in the Reality light tab, or the globe shape), but making them for HDR data is fairly straight forward. In a nutshell, you gather four to seven images of various exposures (dark to light) and compile them in your photo software of choice. I know PS and PSP have scripts built-in that even do the hard for work you, then save in exr or hdr format.

Conversely, HDRlabs has a free diddie to make smart IBL's with HDR data as well, and it works a treat! 

sbt... not sure what version it started with.. but vue has an option to render a 360 panorama w/a 180 degree dome over it.. i'm still going over a scene tute but i'm going to try it soon

sbt.. here's the link on hdrlabs about using vue for ibl's...  http://www.hdrlabs.com/tutorials/index.html#How_can_I_easily_make_my_own_3D

Quote - sbt.. here's the link on hdrlabs about using vue for ibl's...  http://www.hdrlabs.com/tutorials/index.html#How_can_I_easily_make_my_own_3D

Thanks for the link! I've done the skydomes before, but apparently I must have goofed the save file as I wasn't aware one could save it directly as an HDR. Cool! 

Suck--the IBL's with the PLE still have the watermark, and I can't load any of my old scenes. Might keep it to try exporting some of my vue content, otherwise its kinda gone bust. ;-(

Edit: I CAN use the 10.5 atmospheres in my 8 esprit though. Yea!!

On a different and on topic note, has anyone ever been able to replicate a long exposure tail light flare effect in-render, without textured planes, fog or postwork? 

Guh... explative explative explative explative explative explative

Guess who just lost three hours of work because they were too stubborn to save alterations on 597 materials while working through a light rain storm.

Dear Santa, please please please, I need a UPS for my render rig.

Initiate head slap... 

Been there done that it sucked

I feel your pain

Quote - Workaround as per the ds forum

 

LuxRender 1.1 has a bug that prevents it from writing film files.  Even when File->Save & Exit is used, it only writes the tonemapped image, not the film file.  (File->Save FLM does work, however.)  This means you cannot restart a render, or recover in the case that Lux/your computer/etc crashes.

The workaround for this is to switch to the Queue tab in LuxRender and enable the ‘write FLM’ override checkbox.

 

Still please let us know as soon as a more stable version is out I love the new speed!

I wish had seen this a few days ago.  I have a render that I've been running overnight, shutting down when I go to work, then starting back up, and I couldn't figure out why it never seemed to be clearing up.  Maybe that's because it was stuck at the first 90 S/p that I ran it to before I updated Lux and not saving.  

Quote - > Quote - Workaround as per the ds forum

 

LuxRender 1.1 has a bug that prevents it from writing film files.  Even when File->Save & Exit is used, it only writes the tonemapped image, not the film file.  (File->Save FLM does work, however.)  This means you cannot restart a render, or recover in the case that Lux/your computer/etc crashes.

The workaround for this is to switch to the Queue tab in LuxRender and enable the ‘write FLM’ override checkbox.

 

Still please let us know as soon as a more stable version is out I love the new speed!

I wish had seen this a few days ago.  I have a render that I've been running overnight, shutting down when I go to work, then starting back up, and I couldn't figure out why it never seemed to be clearing up.  Maybe that's because it was stuck at the first 90 S/p that I ran it to before I updated Lux and not saving.  

I have yet to have a problem with saving a progressing render going back from home to work... I sent my Laptop to HP since I am out of town starting tomorrow until the end of the month. Theres some minor dents on the chassi I was able to use as an excuse to send it in. I want them to check out the fan & heat sinc cause I am constantly running that fan on high with all the rendering which has been day & night. Ever since i got into Lux rendering I realized i need a box with powerful fans, which is why I am going to have one built next summer. Meanwhile I have my fully extended warranty good until Sept 2013... I  set my notebook to hibernate when I bring it to work but do shut down rendering..

I think Brad's talking about the resume file rather than the stop or pause buttons in Lux.  I just got my mega scene back in shape, but I hadn't got far enough to start a Lux render to test the resume issues before the power went out.

Add: SAVE SAVE SAVE, and two more just to be sure!

SBT.. i'm not sure about this whole Vue thing.  It may be beyond the scope of my talent. I'm not sure.  I usually do well following tutes to learn how to do things.  Comes from taking bunches of online college courses.  I've been following some geekatplay tutes and my stuff looks like crap.

okay.. so i've learned my lesson... do not try to learn a new and rather complex application on the same day I have 2 chapters worth of radical expressions and functions due in 2nd year algebra.. my brain is effing NUMB.  trying to do something constructive inside while it's pouring down raining outside and all my brain can fully process is sitting here watching infomercials

DS 4.5.1.6 & Lux 1.1 render

Quote - SBT.. i'm not sure about this whole Vue thing.  It may be beyond the scope of my talent. I'm not sure.  I usually do well following tutes to learn how to do things.  Comes from taking bunches of online college courses.  I've been following some geekatplay tutes and my stuff looks like crap.

It took me awhile to get used to, but at the time, this was before I had come across Studio even, so it was all I had. 

Frankly, I find it a difficult program to use, but still easier than blender. You'd have to work at it every day for a year to get good (This is learning on your own, mind you). I really just use it for skies! Load Atmospheres, play around with the sky options, render options, then wait between 2-9 hours for a giant IBL. Next time I run it, I'll try the hdr save though. I had one going last night but the power interruption killed that. 

On a related note, I've been trying the hybrid cpu+gpu mode again. File loads fine, but at the same point where my cpu-only boots up in the log, the hybrid pops up with "Luxrender has experienced a runtime error and has closed in an unusual way".... and to contact program support. It's coming out of Windows c++. 

Any ideas?

Quote - > Quote - SBT.. i'm not sure about this whole Vue thing.  It may be beyond the scope of my talent. I'm not sure.  I usually do well following tutes to learn how to do things.  Comes from taking bunches of online college courses.  I've been following some geekatplay tutes and my stuff looks like crap.

It took me awhile to get used to, but at the time, this was before I had come across Studio even, so it was all I had. 

Frankly, I find it a difficult program to use, but still easier than blender. You'd have to work at it every day for a year to get good (This is learning on your own, mind you). I really just use it for skies! Load Atmospheres, play around with the sky options, render options, then wait between 2-9 hours for a giant IBL. Next time I run it, I'll try the hdr save though. I had one going last night but the power interruption killed that. 

On a related note, I've been trying the hybrid cpu+gpu mode again. File loads fine, but at the same point where my cpu-only boots up in the log, the hybrid pops up with "Luxrender has experienced a runtime error and has closed in an unusual way".... and to contact program support. It's coming out of Windows c++. 

Any ideas?

Did you set the OpenCL workgroup size under output, I get a runtime Windows C++ error when I forget to set it to 64

Quote -
Did you set the OpenCL workgroup size under output, I get a runtime Windows C++ error when I forget to set it to 64

Yup, set to 64. Even had collect textures on the third try. Might have to see if the vid driver is too old a bit later. Gotta run some errands now, but if you think of anything else, light 'er up! Thank ya, Robert!

sbt.. yeah.. what rob said.. that is if you have an nvidia vid card.. open that opencl group size up to 64 and then get back to the stone ages.. radeon is where it's at.. :P

that's one thing.. does the collect textures speed up rendering? i've always had it checked because it seemed like the thing to do.

Quote - Did you set the OpenCL workgroup size under output, I get a runtime Windows C++ error when I forget to set it to 64

One would have thought that nVidia would have fixed that bug by now, since it is an old one.

Quote - > Quote - Did you set the OpenCL workgroup size under output, I get a runtime Windows C++ error when I forget to set it to 64

One would have thought that nVidia would have fixed that bug by now, since it is an old one.

I've never had it happen with the pop-up box. Usually Lux just crashes. 

This is in Lux 1.1 by the by. Off to check my 'stone age' drivers 

Add; While checking out drivers, check out what nvidia is doing with GPU cloud networks:http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-gaming.html

Quote - that's one thing.. does the collect textures speed up rendering? i've always had it checked because it seemed like the thing to do.

With GPU rendering, its pretty much manadatory. The idea is that all the texture maps are being collected into one huge map, kinda like Texture Atlas if you've used that. Textures, rather, than geometry, is what sucks up all the memory in a render. To get an idea, watch the log when you call Lux and see how many textures are loaded. Then multiply by the average 2k texture (most human characters have 27 maps, ranging from .5 to 4k for reference). That's why its about the only way to get 2gb of video ram to process a larger scene. 

The one I've got running now is 5.7gb at full size, CPU only, and nine additional light channels. Just got the driver dl'ed, so maybe I'll get a test frame done later tonight. Time to go for the nightly father-daughter visit! 

Quote - With GPU rendering, its pretty much manadatory. 

I'm sorry but I have to make a distinction here. Texture collection is only necessary with SLG, it should not be used for rendering with Lux, even with GPU enabled.

SLG loads everything, geometry and textures in the GPU. Because of this, it is necessary to collect and reduce the textures because, at 2K or 4K per texture, you exhaust the GPU memory very easily. It has nothing to do with speeding up, it is a matter of fitting the textures in memory. There is, obviously, a degradation of quality but that's all that we can do until we can get GPUs with 4or 8 GB of RAM.

Lux doesn't use the GPU for the textures, it takes advantage of the extreme soeed of the GPU in crunching floating point operations to make the raytracing portion faster. All the textures are kept in the main memory and so they can be used at full resolution.

So, when using Lux with GPU acceleration you should turn OFF texture collection. Of course, there is another use for texture collection, and that is to make it possible to tramsfer your Lux scene to another machine. That has nothing to do with GPU or not and it should be used as you prefer but generally you want to set the size of the textures to the original.

Hope this helps.

I probably should have clarified my use of 'GPU' to mean GPU rendering with SLG, as you are correct. 

Now with hybrid mode (CPU+GPU accleration), I still haven't gotten it to work correctly, and that was with just GPU checked and not collect textures on the first and second attempts. I tacked on the Collect Textures on my third attempt just as trouble shooting. 

I just got home a minute ago but updated my vid driver before I left. Is there anything I'm missing that could be fouling Lux to make hybrid mode function? 

Just went to try out hybrid with my current scene, and all is back to the same results as many previous attempts. All loads fine until it gets to my video cards, then Lux crashes. Drats! I wonder if its because they are in SLI... 

Report back shortly.

I am curoius about starting one scene on one machine and completing it on another. I know one has to collect textures what else does one have to do besides obviously having the same version of lux on both machines?

So far as I know Bob, other than what you mentioned, all you need to additionally gather are the lux files generated on the primary machine and their resource folders. Check out the Lux wiki for specifics. 

GPU acceleration slows rendering on my fx8150 ati 6870 setup.

rayman.. it shouldn't.  with that vid card you should get a nice jump in s/s as well as having a huge jump in your efficiency.

Hmm.  Is anyone else experiencing issues with Hybrid mode when using the Sun light?  I just tried that car scene (from a few pages back) with Hybrid and Lux1.1.  The Sky light worked fine, but the Sun light put out no light whatsoever.  I tried it in Lux1.0 rc1, same thing.  I turned off hybrid, and it worked again.  Either it's a Lux issue or it's my old POS nvidia 9500 GT.

It's not like I get a great boost from such an old card to make it critical, but it is irritating.

I just ran a very strange extremely un-scientific test.  I ran the same image for 2 minutes, first with CPU only then with GPU acceleration.  

CPU only had .86 S/p at 21 kS/s.  GPU accel got 3.8 S/p at 102 kS/s.  

**But **the CPU only image looked better and was clearer.  Why did that happen? I don't normally use GPU accel because I like to play games while a render is running and I never saw much of a difference in speed the few times I tried it, but I can't understand why the image looks so much worse if it's running faster by the numbers.

Brad.. can't really say.  It seems that a lot of ppl in this thread have problems with hybrid rendering.  I've never had a problem at all so can't really duplicate any issues.  With the bigger, faster computer I've not really had a need to use it but I do know it just about triples my rendering speed and stuff looks just as good with it as without it.  Where I find that my images clear up faster is in the efficiency.  I get my efficiency up over 2000% and they're looking pretty good after only a couple hundred passes.  When it's down near a couple hundred percent it can take a thousand or two thousand passes to look really nice.