Questions I have about Reality 3.0 are as follows.  If anyone has solid answers, please post them.

1. Do I need LuxRender installed separately on my system?

2. How do I know if I have OpenCL installed on my system.  Lux has two versions, one with CL and one without.  Is this an issue with Reality?

3. Does my final rendered image revert back to Poser for saving or exporting?  Or does Reality simply send my entire file to Lux for render?

4. And building on the third question, what are the export file formats from Lux?  BMP, JPEG??  Could not find this anywhere on the Lux site.  I need TIFF or Photoshop image saving so that I retain the mask that Poser produces.  If I can't export and have a mask, to separate character from background image, then Reality will be useless.

NOTE: I work in Poser now by importing backgrounds rendered in another program and then render figures over them.  This enables me to have a knock-out mask of my figure along with my final image.  But JPEG and other formats don't support this.  Only TIFF and photoshop formats, which Poser2012 does export in.

Also does anyone have any time-versus-render speed comparisons on Lux?  Poser is slow enough as it is...so if Reality/Lux is slower...well again, may not be worth the effort.  I know settings are everything...but I'm just curious about a literal test render comparison.  Is one faster than the other.

Any info appreciated.  Thanks.

Very valid questions, I was about to ask basically the same ones,plus how does it compare to octane render(stand alone and plug in to poser),I have basically given up on octane because of the extra time it takes to re-edit textures and plus my graphics card runs out of memory.Plus, what is its speed like, i dont want to wait 20 hours for a nice a4 sized shot,about 20 minutes is about where i run out of patience-poser firefly does the trick for me, so can reality/lux do this in a similar time frame?

Here's what I know:

1. Yes

2. OpenCL concerns GPU acceleration. AMD are better than Nvidia in this regard.  You don't need opencl to render with Reality.

3. It sends the entire file to Reality.  You select the render location in the render window.

4. PNG, EXR and Targa.  PNG supports alpha transparency.

For me Reality is much slower than Poser. The point with Reality is not speed but unbiased rendering. I'm no expert on the matter but the lighting is vastly superior to Poser.

Quote - 1. Do I need LuxRender installed separately on my system?

1. How do I know if I have OpenCL installed on my system.  Lux has two versions, one with CL and one without.  Is this an issue with Reality?

2. Does my final rendered image revert back to Poser for saving or exporting?  Or does Reality simply send my entire file to Lux for render?

3. And building on the third question, what are the export file formats from Lux?  BMP, JPEG??  Could not find this anywhere on the Lux site.  I need TIFF or Photoshop image saving so that I retain the mask that Poser produces.  If I can't export and have a mask, to separate character from background image, then Reality will be useless.

1. Reality is the connection between Poser and Lux. So, yes, you need to install Lux, which is free and pretty small.

2. OpenCL is GPU acceleration. You need to check with your card manufacturer if the card has OpenCL drivers. Every Mac bult in the last three years has OpenCL built-in. In general I would not care for OpenCL acceleration at this stage. Things might change in a month or two.

3. No, your image is saved in whatever file you specify in the Render tab. The default format is PNG. You can also sue Targa or OpenEXR.

4. See above.

LuxRender is about accuracy and realism. That is the whole focus. Lights are predictable because they behave like real-life light. You can adjust the exposure of the lights while the scene renders and resume a stopped render, even weeks after you stopped it.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the comments and info.  Would still like to hear from someone who's compared a render in Firefly to same render in Lux to show speed comparison and also some quality comparison.  If anyone has images, please link us so we can see.

I haven't used Reality, but I've used Pose2Lux to get things from Poser to Luxrender. Luxrender takes a much longer time to render than Poser does, Lux being an unbiased renderer and Firefly being biased. You WILL get better lighting and more realisic materials than Poser, but you will sacrifice time to do it. Quite a lot more time. My "The Muse" image took over 9 hours....the same thing would render in Poser Pro 2012 in about 30 minutes. I'm not trying to turn you away, I'm just trying to tell you the "reality" of it so to speak ;). I was not using the gpu, but the cpu for rendering and number crunching.

Laurie

Quote - Thanks for the comments and info.  Would still like to hear from someone who's compared a render in Firefly to same render in Lux to show speed comparison and also some quality comparison.  If anyone has images, please link us so we can see.

People have asked this before (with Reality for DS, with Luxus for DS, with Pose2lux here and now with Reality for Poser).  Its a fair question, but its a different render type, different materials, lighting, etc.  Also, a "great" Poser artist can make awesome stuff with lighting, and the same with Lux.  Ask folks here, and they may be great with Poser, but new to Lux.  Not really a unbiased comparison. (no pun intended)

Some people will be fine with a render being "done" in 30 minutes, some may like to let them "cook" overnight.

You will have as much luck going to sites that have lux renders, and compare them to poser renders.  Both of the great ones are great.   ...but you should get an idea of the overall look that both give.

Not trying to dodge the question, I just don't think its an apples to apples thing.

The other thing is the learning curve, Pose2lux and Reality are vastly different. Pose2lux requires a lot of understanding of what each part of it does, I never got used to it due to there being too many settings to adjust..

Reality on the other hand simplifies the settings a lot and allows you to get your render going faster rather than spending a lot of your time fiddling with too many settings.  

Quote - I haven't used Reality, but I've used Pose2Lux to get things from Poser to Luxrender. Luxrender takes a much longer time to render than Poser does, Lux being an unbiased renderer and Firefly being biased. You WILL get better lighting and more realisic materials than Poser, but you will sacrifice time to do it. Quite a lot more time. My "The Muse" image took over 9 hours....the same thing would render in Poser Pro 2012 in about 30 minutes. I'm not trying to turn you away, I'm just trying to tell you the "reality" of it so to speak ;). I was not using the gpu, but the cpu for rendering and number crunching.

Laurie

I'm really interested in Reality in combination with LuxRender, but this is really putting me off. Since I've got Vue, I don't use Firefly anymore, Vue gives me much better looking renders, even for my toon work as well as realistic work, but it takes longer to render an image. That is not because Vue is slower, it's my fault, I keep on adding stuff in Vue to enhance my image, but those things take more time to render. If I just bring over the whole poser scene and render it as is, only adding lights in Vue, it will render in about the same time.

I've looked at Octane before, but none of the renders could convince me that it's better then what I can do now in Poser or Vue, far from it, most poser scenes rendered with Octance simply don't look as good as I can do in poser. Yes, it's fast, but only if you sacrifice quality. If you want good quality, Octance suddenly isn't fast anymore, it's just as slow as the rest.

Where Octane images completely failed to impress me, LuxRender images do the opposite, they really do impress me.... quite a lot. But.... even though the advertising for Reality makes it all sound so easily, the reality is different. I do find the advertising very misleading, from what I've learned by now is that you need to do quite some effort to get your poser scene rendered at their best in LuxRender, it's not simply a matter of sending your scene to LuxRender and render it. On top of that comes the render times..... 30 minutes vs 9 hours is simply not encouraging, ok this may be an extreme, but from I've heard before and now, LuxRender delivers great quality at a cost, long long rendering times.

So, adding it all up, I'm going to stick to Vue, that way I'm avoiding having to learn poser all over again in a different way and keep my rendering times within certain limits. But I must say, I'm very impressed by the LuxRenders so far, but it would be more fair to customers to really explain before hand what is needed to get such images and not make it sound like pose, click, render, done.

All depends what you want from your renders to be fast then you use a biased render engine.  Luxrender on the other hand being unbiased will take longer and anyone going into it should know what to expect..

Every 3D renderer has its pluses and minuses some do things others do not and vice versa it all depends what you want to do and how much time you are willing to put into it.

About one of the better things about LuxRender is being able to adjust the light intensity, and effects while it is still rendering.

The main minus is that if you don't like something about your scene you will have to restart again especially annoying if the rendering has been going a while.  But most renderers tend to do that to a degree..

Only just started playing with Reality and I did expect that the renders would take a lot longer.  On the plus side, you can continue to work in Poser while it is running.  With Luxrender you can pause and restart a render at a later date and you can change the lighting during the render.  I know this is true of other render software but if you are comparing with Firefly I think they are important differences.

my system gets pretty hot using poser with IDL ... I'm thinking Reality would bring it to its knees? Onboard graphics..AMD ..but

Quote - my system gets pretty hot using poser with IDL ... I'm thinking Reality would bring it to its knees? Onboard graphics..AMD ..but

 

It depends on the system really.  I have had some firefly renders last more than 24 hours.  Once the processor is running at 100% it will find the levels of cooling irrespective of what software is using all it's power.  So I guess Luxrender would be no different to Poser on most scenes

The LuxRender sure is nice, I like the reflection of the light from the sphere on the face. I'm really curious what the specs of machine your machine are?

Laurie

I picked up Reality for Poser yesterday and tried rendering a saved Poser image using Lux. It DOES take much longer, and even when I've got the singular light I have in the scene turned down to something ridiculous like 5% intensity, I'm getting hot spots and the image looks way too bright.

So, it's clear that I have some learning to do insofar as managing light is concerned. I read in the documentation that I can adjust light "on the fly," but I've not noticed how that works yet.  More reading and experimentation is in order.

On the positive side, the Reality plug-in works seamlessly inside Poser, and I really LIKE that I can resume a render in Lux whenever it suits me. I may not use Lux for every render because it takes so long, but in instances where I really need the quality, this might be the way to go.

:)

Quote - I picked up Reality for Poser yesterday and tried rendering a saved Poser image using Lux. It DOES take much longer, and even when I've got the singular light I have in the scene turned down to something ridiculous like 5% intensity, I'm getting hot spots and the image looks way too bright.

So, it's clear that I have some learning to do insofar as managing light is concerned. I read in the documentation that I can adjust light "on the fly," but I've not noticed how that works yet.  More reading and experimentation is in order.

On the positive side, the Reality plug-in works seamlessly inside Poser, and I really LIKE that I can resume a render in Lux whenever it suits me. I may not use Lux for every render because it takes so long, but in instances where I really need the quality, this might be the way to go.

:)

Just as a test, have you removed all the lights in Poser and then added mesh light from the runtime included with Reality? I tried that last night and the lighting was just about right.  Having read the manual earlier on there is a section on the use of Poser lights which I need to experiment with once work is out of the way once more.

Quote - The image was done with Poser 8 and Pose2Lux. It took over 9 hours. Now, I could get close to this with Poser 9/PP12 and an emitter. This image took more than 9 hours btw, with the help of two computers - a quad core and a dual core. Poser 9 has closed the gap between the two programs considerably, but of course the Luxrender render is superior. Just know what you're getting yourself in for. If you don't mind having your computer tied up for a whole day (and perhapd multiple computers), than it's for you.

Laurie

I love the cloth, but the figure looks a bit like a doll, but that may be the whole idea. I don't see where the 9 hours worth of rendering is though, knowing I could get close to this with Poser 9 and even beyond this with Vue and sure wouldn't have to wait 9 hours using 2 computers at all. But, to each his own I guess and as long you think it's worth 9 hours waiting with 2 computers dedicated to rendering, go for it.

Quote - I love the cloth, but the figure looks a bit like a doll, but that may be the whole idea. I don't see where the 9 hours worth of rendering is though, knowing I could get close to this with Poser 9 and even beyond this with Vue ...

That was sort of my point ;). I did that in Poser 8 and Poser 9 is starting to converge with the quality of Luxrender. Not there yet, but it's closer. FWIW, that image was also done before Rhionon and I worked on a really nice SSS skin recipe. LOL

Laurie

Reading the manual part of the idea of Reality 3 is to make textures easier such as working with a types called glass or metals rather than dealing with nodes.  It might be that some talented people could get very close to a Luxrender using Firefly if they are good at creating materials while others, who are less skillful, could get a much better result because the materials are easier.  I am not saying that is the case (just floating an idea) and I need to work with Reality a lot more to understand it's advantages and disadvantages.  It does however seem to try and simplify Luxrender for Poser users.

Its only release day and there are bugs and missing features, as one would expect.

I bought R3 so I can learn how to drive it. The bugs will shake out and I really hope the performance will get addressed with a new version of Lux.

I am having fun and I'll save up the bugs I find until I am sure they are not of the RTFM type.

Quote -  

Just as a test, have you removed all the lights in Poser and then added mesh light from the runtime included with Reality? I tried that last night and the lighting was just about right.  Having read the manual earlier on there is a section on the use of Poser lights which I need to experiment with once work is out of the way once more.

Yes, that was the first thing I tried. The mesh light created very even illumination, but what I wanted were deep shadows that derive from a single point light. I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.

[quote

Thats the first thing I tried. The mesh light created very even illumination, but what I wanted were deep shadows that derive from a single point light. I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.

Now I understand what you are trying to do and yes the mesh light does gove even lighting.  TYhe section on lights in the manual is very good and cover the differences in the way Luxrender uses lights to Firefly.  Certainly the there are differences and shadows is one aspect that appears to be very different.  Anyway I am off home to play and see if I can get my head around this. 

Another option for more dramatic shadows with a mesh light is to reduce it's size/scale. As you reduce the size, the light behaves more like a point light source. The key with Lux is to think how light behaves in the real world. A very large soft box (large mesh light) will give very soft shadows, where a smaller light source, say a soft spot light (small mesh light) will give more defined shadows.

Hope this all makes sense and helps a bit.

Quote - I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.  

In the "Lights" tab you can set the colour temperature of your lights. A lower temperature makes a warmer, yellowish light.

Wow!  Thank you, Dustrider and Xen for the tips.  I'll try them out.

:)

Just my two cent. I have worked with the free Poser to Luxrender plugin before and although it needs a bit more tweaking it can easily be tested to give you a feel of how Luxrender works. Reality, which I tried today is much simpler in use as it needs less tweaking, it already knows what is skin, cloth, etc, but I sadly already had issues that it did not understand all node information and the clothing textures came out dull. The metals and glass materials Reality come with are much superior to Poser versions and they do truly reflect lights, etc...Luxrender renders are more true to what we see around us and the lights Reality ships with are easy to use and achieve good natural looking renders. In my case I am sadly very limited as to the size of renders. Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

If natural is what you aiming for Reality will do it, but you might not be able to add much stuff to your scene or render big. It is all system dependant. A basic render in Lux took 52 minutes for me to find it OK (1000x1000). It thus also might depend upon how much time you are willing to give it....

RDNA has the official forum and many people have posted there. Maybe it is worth having a look?  

  edit - click for full size

I'm a noob, with tons of ignorance and desire. :)

I bought Reality 3d, installed, followed manual for a QuickStart. nothing.  Says it's rendering.  Let it go all night.

It works, but no idea as yet what I'm doing wrong.  Nice dots on black background though.

Printed out manual, to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I was under the misconeption it would be fast.  IT IS NOT.  It would still be worth it if the results were jaw dropping, but I'll have to wait and see.

For me personally, Firefly is slow.  I know I should be patient, really I do, but I'm not. Too much to do. 

My guess is that if I ever get a render to work, I'll rarely use it, simply because it takes so long.  Maybe they will address that with fixes.  Hope so.

Until then, back to Firefly.

Quote - I'm a noob, with tons of ignorance and desire. :)

I bought Reality 3d, installed, followed manual for a QuickStart. nothing.  Says it's rendering.  Let it go all night.

It works, but no idea as yet what I'm doing wrong.  Nice dots on black background though.

Printed out manual, to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I was under the misconeption it would be fast.  IT IS NOT.  It would still be worth it if the results were jaw dropping, but I'll have to wait and see.

For me personally, Firefly is slow.  I know I should be patient, really I do, but I'm not. Too much to do. 

My guess is that if I ever get a render to work, I'll rarely use it, simply because it takes so long.  Maybe they will address that with fixes.  Hope so.

Until then, back to Firefly.

Did you adjust the settings under the Tone Mapping section in Lux Render? If say you select linear mode you will get settings like Film ISO, Shutter, f-stop and Gamma just like you would a camera.  If those settings were set wrong in Reality they will come out dark in Lux adjusting the Tone Mapping settings will make a big difference.

And well as for fast no it isn't due to Lux being an unbiased renderer it takes a lot longer to get really good results compared to programs like Poser, Daz Studio, Carrara, Vue and so on.

Some of my Firefly renders can take a day or two, already... he he ;)

Just downloaded my copy of Reality for Poser. Looking forward to trying it out on a render or two. The UI seems nice and snappy certainly.

I'm used to renders in Vue taking days. I've had a Vue render take over a week before.

Guess I'm patient.

Also, my Poser time can be limited, so there are often big gaps between times, when I can leave a render running...

Quote - In my case I am sadly very limited as to the size of renders. Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

That's disappointing.  I usually render larger than that. 

What kind of system resources do you have, if you don't mind my asking?

Here's my settings

Quote - Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

Hmmm... that's bad news. I render 3000x3000 usually and can't go much smaller than that and still have a usable image. Oh well.... have to see how it goes! :ohmy:

Quote - > Quote - The LuxRender sure is nice, I like the reflection of the light from the sphere on the face. I'm really curious what the specs of machine your machine are?

Here's my settings

Thanks for those, my pc is a bit faster, but not that much at all. I don't think I want to wait over 5 hours for a single figure render. Besides rendering at 1000x1000 or 1200x700 is bad news for me, since I render for print and need much larger sizes.

Having said that, I'm still looking forward to seeing more images rendered with the help of reality3.

I don't mind the time it takes so much, a big Vue render can take a couple of days. But like aeilkema I render for print so they have to be big.

Attached Link: sample

I think I have to agree with those saying Poser retains the best engine.  Quality is surely an important factor, but like everyone else, I don't have time or resources to await hours for a single image.  I am more of a professional than hobbiest, so I have to be able to turn my work out with reasonable speed.  So for now, I think I will pass on the REALITY software.

Thank you all for your comments, insights, and links and samples.  I was not expecting such an awesome and informative response.  Thanks so very much!

yeah, the response was good and left me of the same opinion as you, I stick with poser pro2012 for now and when i have time experiment further with octane as i have already purchased it.

thanks everyone for your time and advice

cheers

I'm interested in Reality for the way it renders props - glass and the like with realistic lighting. That looks good. I can see it (hopefully!) being useful for me where I've got a fairly close-up scene with a character that looks much better with Poser smoothing than it looks in Vue, but needs realistic lighting effects for the scene. We'll see. If I ever get round to trying it! ;)

I'm having buyer's remorse right now . . .  I've been playing around with Reality for two days and I've yet to render a Lux image that I'm satisfied to see.

I'm going to agree with many people here, and say that, I'm not seeing much of a difference between the quality of a Firefly render and that of a Luxrender...which is no great surprise. I've used Luxrender a great deal with Blender, and it is a great engine, but like all unbiased engines, it's slow.

We have to remember that unbiased engines were originally created for arch-vis and product rendering.

Since getting Poser Pro 2012, I've been quite impressed with Firefly-yes some things are still frustrating, but I actually believe that with SSS, Poser can finally render a character better then any 3rd party solution. I was one of many, that never used Poser for rendering and always exported to a 3rd party renderer...in my case Vue Infinite.

I'm actually rendering an image now in Poser, the first time since Poser 4! Yes, I've banged my head against the desk a few times in setting up the scene, but I'm liking what I'm seeing, and for studio type character renders, I belive Firefly is very capable and more than a match for Luxrender. Yes, you won't get physically acurate IES lighting etc with Poser, but really, outside Arch-vis and product rendering, who will notice or care.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new tools, and if somebody has a need for it, be it Reality 3 or anything else, then great...and in all honesty Reality 3, for what it is, is a very fair price.

I just have to say LAJ1's portrait is a case in point - fantastic rendering!

An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

Quote - An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

By your description, it sounds like a review written by someone who has never purchased, and therefore cannot have used or reviewed the software.

Yup - you need to purchase a product to review it, I believe.

Are you thinking of a Facebook comment perhaps?

Quote - I haven't yet seen a character render in lux that is that much better than I can get in poser alone with much shorter render times. ex - this was 3 years ago and rendered in (poser only) 30 mins.

WOW, now if I could render like that in Poser I would not use Reality for Characters either. Care to share your secret.

In truth I expected to use Luxrender on a limited basis and mainlty for scenes withotu charaters but as most my renders have a human element I just had to try characters first.

"Are you thinking of a Facebook comment perhaps?"

Nup, it was there yesterday, and now it's gone.

Do we assume the right to review is conditional on proof of purchase and usage? The comment was based on the reviewer's use of Lux, which remains pertinent regardless of the Reality bridge.

I suppose the review was removed because it pertained more to Lux than Reality, and therefore not really a "product review". Splitting hairs concidering Reality is entirely 3rd party dependent on Lux. Don't like it when pertinent opinions are arbitrarily disapeared.

Quote - An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

I think anyone doing any sort of research would not be buying this for speed of render. It is not cheap product so I would expect most to do some research before buying.  I purchased it on sale and used my Render rewards so it was not a massive outlay but I also did research and went into it with my eyes open.

I did not expect it to totally replace Firefly before I purchased it and, with my limited use, I would say this will be the case.  I do however think it is a good tool to have in the box and I can see me using it for certain renders.  All in all I am happy with my purchase.