I just noticed that it has been released. Looking forward to seeing renders! I'm going to have to wait until I upgrade to a newer Mac. My graphics card does not support OpenCL for running Lux Render. Oh well! I've got a version 1.1 MacPro. I CAN buy a video board to run Lux-but I hope to buy a newer Mac in the next few months.

For those who wonder-here is a list of OpenCL supporting Mac cards-an old article-since it refers to Snow Leopard

http://www.everymac.com/mac-answers/snow-leopard-mac-os-x-faq/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-opencl-macs-that-support-opencl.html

There are OpenCL and non OpenCL versions of Lux.

Hi!

Not for Mac OS on the Lux page that I found. Perhaps an older version?

http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone#osx

Quote - There are OpenCL and non OpenCL versions of Lux.

What card are you using?

256 meg GeForce 7300 GT

Quote - What card are you using?

I'm waiting also to see some renders...Someone hurry up lol

Thank you Eric for posting the news. I've been slammed!

Cheers.

Ha! Busy day eh?

Yep! 

Three sites to monitor and sales are going really well.

Cheers.

Still waiting for my registration info so I can get to rendering Paolo

Running a GeForce GT 520 1 gig memory card on Windows 7-64bit. 

Which version of Lux should I download?

Quote - Running a GeForce GT 520 1 gig memory card on Windows 7-64bit.  Which version of Lux should I download?

Lux non-OpenCL

Cheers.

Quote - Hi!

Not for Mac OS on the Lux page that I found. Perhaps an older version?

http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone#osx

Quote - There are OpenCL and non OpenCL versions of Lux.

Youve got the right page http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone#osx

Direct link to the OpeCL version

http://www.luxrender.net/release/luxrender/1.2/mac/LuxRender_1.2.1_OSXIntel_64bit.dmg

Because OpenCl is natively supported in OSX, there is only one version listed on the page, while Windows & Linux have two. The OpenCL version will work with CPU Only renders as well.  The difference  between the two versions is that the OpenCL version gives access to the SLG & Hybrid modes that require OpenCL. You should have no problem running in on your system without a more powerful GPU, you will just be limited to CPUonly renders (which isn't a bad thing, just needs a bit more patience ;-) )

I saw todays RNDA newsletter advertising Reality 3, the nice images caught my eye, and the page says its for luxrender. Yet on the luxrender site it links to pose2lux and thats free. I've heard of luxrender and reality for daz studio, and the impression was this studio only, so whats the difference twixt Reality for poser and pose2lux?

woops.. thought i had my spam filter tweaked right. .the registration mail landed in the wrong folder.  all is well and 1st render is currently baking.  not so sure about the lights and stuff tho.  with 2 inf lights converted to mesh and 2 spots converted to mesh i was getting pretty good speed.. but i'll play with the normal mesh light for a while before i start getting fancy

Glad to hear it Paolo! You deserve to be (ina GOOD way). Even if I can't (yet) use it on my current Mac. That WILL change! :-)

Quote - Thank you Eric for posting the news. I've been slammed!

 

Cheers.

Quote - I saw todays RNDA newsletter advertising Reality 3, the nice images caught my eye, and the page says its for luxrender. Yet on the luxrender site it links to pose2lux and thats free. I've heard of luxrender and reality for daz studio, and the impression was this studio only, so whats the difference twixt Reality for poser and pose2lux?

Well since you already mentioned the free thing...

For those who are on older versions of Poser pose2lux is compatible back to Poser 6, so for those of us who for a variety of reasons have not yet upgraded Poser we aren't being left out in the cold. 

As I have no real knowledge of the  workings of Reality,  I can only say that with a little basic reading up there is little in the way of materials that can't be added into p2l with some .xml files, Snarly kindly provided a guide for writing them when he was creating p2l.  Which can be found on the exporters official site, in the forums I believe.  From there it is simply learning what each material type does in Lux and coding accordingly.  And with Lux's documentation readily available on the site, even I picked it up in a week or so.  Basically you need to learn to use Lux, not a bad thing if you want to take what it can do to its limits. 

I think the most fundamental difference for the typical user is that Reality seems to have a far prettier interface and you don't need to edit files and bring them in.  For some a selling point I am sure, for me, I like the fun of hacking together my own materials and seeing what they do.  

A lack of documentation might be part of my desire to stick with p2l, I like to know exactly what I am buying ahead of time and a handful of videos and some (admittedly) pretty pictures won't sell me on thawing my credit card I like things like detailed features lists, a full walkthrough tutorial, something that says this can do something what I am already using can't...  Right now, I don't see it.

My two cents... And hopefully answers some of the questions, I am sure Snarlygribbly or LaurieA would be able to answer far more fully than I can, I got distracted by the shiny things in the materials and haven't resurfaced from that in about 2 years.

Quote - I saw todays RNDA newsletter advertising Reality 3, the nice images caught my eye, and the page says its for luxrender. Yet on the luxrender site it links to pose2lux and thats free. I've heard of luxrender and reality for daz studio, and the impression was this studio only, so whats the difference twixt Reality for poser and pose2lux?

Different interfaces (and P2L is written in python). You can write your own Luxrender shaders and use them in P2L with XML (Luxrender shaders are dead-easy too). I don't know if you can do that in Reality or not as I don't have it. Paolo can answer that one although I have no idea when he's gonna come up for air. LOL. Hmm...what else. Oh yeah, you can assign IES files to mesh lights with P2L. Other than that, I'm thinking each has pretty much what the other has, just implimented in a different way. P2L isn't nearly as pretty but it gets the job done ;).

Laurie

Until Paolo gets a breather, I'll chime in with some insight.  The main thrust & "selling point" of Reality is that it does the heavy lifting of intrepreting the Poser shader tree & nodes into a usuable Lux equivalent (no small feat) automatically. For example figure skins are automatically converted into the Reality "Skin" material complete with a decently tuned SSS volume for all of the skin surfaces. It even has a "hair mask" option auto generated from the diffuse color to block SSS from eyebrows, head or body hair etc...  The big difference between Reality 3 & Reality 2 for DS is that much of the guts of Luxrender have been opened up for the user to get their hands dirty & create their own Lux textures, in a more artist friendly way, especially if you are already versed & comfortable in the Poser Mat room concept.  He's managed to give the same flexibility in a "node-less" setup. I think you'll find it to be a nice mix between "click & forget it", & a tweaker's paradise :-)

BTW, the RUG (Reality User's Guide) that is very well put together & included with Reality3 will be online shortly to download from Paolo's site, so anyone interested can get a deeper look see before they plunk down their duckets ;-) I'm sure he is swamped on opening day LOL.

You can view the documentation for the earlier DS versions of Reality 1 & 2 right now to get a feel for what's in store. A lot of the concepts are the same, even though the UI & program have expanded greatly between then & now.

On a  couple of features that Laurie brought up, IES files can be added to lights in Reality 3.  You can also add textures to for example use a light as a projector.  You also have indepdant control of the Sun & Sky lights and can use the older sky model or the newer one recently introduced into Luxrender.  GPU Acceleration & SLG support are also included, but given that SLG is evolving at warp speed into a monster (check out the Frankenlux/SLG4/ LuxVR threads on the Lux forums to see what I mean), The GPU features will also see some significant changes & enhancements in the coming weeks & months to keep pace with Lux 1.3 when it reaches us soon. Pose2Lux give you a good way to get into using Luxrender & it's unbiased world, but for a very artist friendly yet flexible & powerful, intuitive, well supported bridge between the two programs, you really can't go wrong with R3.

note to self: avoid forum replies on less than 4 hours sleep :-) <back to the php/CSS3 coding...poof>

 Being one who is stoutly in the I want to disembowel the materials and see how and why they work the way they do camp, I would have to try it and see if it has the same level of flexibility as straight up coding them myself.  SSS is already available in Lux so that isn't a seller for me - I know how to add it to my materials, nor is it adapting the Poser shaders for me.  I always took Lux as a chance to break away from them entirely.  I have looked at the guides for earlier versions of Reality, but as they are for the DS version, and yes, may be similar, I am mostly curious as to what exactly it brings to the table for the Poser user that is not in those guides.  I do understand the launch day mania, with any luck, what I am interested in will not be too long in coming.

Also how accurate are the previews in relation to the final outcome of a material setup?  Do we need to bake and see regardless?   It is hard to see from the videos, some screen caps of the program itself would be nice to see.  If it could speed up my materials creation and adjustment it might be worth the investment.

Ah well need to get a newer version of Poser anyways first, it might nudge me to do so if I could see what I would like to know about. :)

Hello.

The RUG ( Reality User's Guide ) for Reality 3 for Poser is online:

http://preta3d.com/reality-documentation/

Cheers.

Ok, got a reference error(s).

First off...not really a reference error, just a curious choice...why are the mesh light pp2's located in the light library instead of the prop library?

Now for the actual reference error(s):

Both the mesh light pp2 and the Top Mesh Light pp2 have this geometry reference...

:Runtime:Geometries:Reality:Lights:MeshLight.obj

The actual location of the file in its default installation is...

:Runtime:Geometries:Reality:MeshLight.obj

Small error, just makes Poser work harder to find the file.

BTW: might want to remove the empty folders from the RealityPropsAndLights zip. No reason for them to be there...

Quote - First off...not really a reference error, just a curious choice...why are the mesh light pp2's located in the light library instead of the prop library?

That was deliberate. While it's true that they are props I decided that it would be confusing to ask people to look for  

Thank you for catching the error in the path. Boy, we used those during testing left and right and never heard a peep from Poser :)

"why are the mesh light pp2's located in the light library instead of the prop library?"

Ah...pardon! I forgot most people still use Poser's native library system, which doesn't give a damn what files are located where, and so is more than happy to show you a prop when you click on the light library.

Been using XL-Extended Library for so long I'd forgotten about Poser's (in XL, if it doesn't have the right extension, it doesn't show up in the library...)

"Thank you for catching the error in the path. Boy, we used those during testing left and right and never heard a peep from Poser :)"

I don't suppose Poser would unless you have the library search set to "none" or perhaps, "shallow"...

You know... it's early days I agree... and the learning curve just got steeper... but... really... I don't think this thing so far has a touch on Octane... 2c worth. I got the product.. and well... nothing but change, change change to get it to render somthing that meets my standards.

We'll see... I expect to be amazed, but first off... nah!

Attached Link: The Experiment

Cheers!

Awesome. How long did it take to render? You using Win7 or?

Glass AND liquids are a bugger to render to get any sense of realism out it. With that said, it took my i7 right around 8 hours to get the results seen in The Experiment. I could have stopped it much sooner, but the longer Lux runs, the richer and deeper the image gets...especially important to lots of glass.

Here's another one of a diamond/emerald. The results I think are great!

Good job!!! I just purchased it for my WinXP and Win7 upgrade computer...

Did you have to install Lux Render again? I already have it for another program

If Lux is already on your system, simply enter the path to it and you should be good to go! 

Well I started to play with Reality last night, I say play because I have yet to read the manual past the installation instructions.  The first render I tried had V4 in the scene and while the clothe textures were exported correctly the skin tone appears to be greyscale.  I also had log messages in Luxrender state it could not find the textures for a figure 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 with things like torso maps and face maps and so on.  Slightly confused as there is not figure 1 in the scene but I suspect that this may be to do with Sub Surface Scattering.

Last thing last night I got some colour into the V4 skin tone by going in the materials for V4 in Reality and changing the prompt for the associated image map from greyscale to colour.  I started a render but by then it was way passed my bedtime.

I am not sure I am doing this right so I will read the manual if I get time in my work breaks.  I have to say though that even with the little bit of playing I did last night I was impressed with the textures for the clothing.  If I can duplicate that for the skin tones I will be a very happy camper.

Please don't see this as a complaint, it is not, and it would be unfair if it was.  This is just what I have found 'out of the box' and I mention it only as it may be something others come across.

I've downloaded LuxRenderer, but if it's going to take me 5 hours to render a scene that PPro takes 20 minutes to do, I probably won't be buying Reality3 at all. That sort of wait for a render, no matter how good it looks, just isn't worth it for me.

ashley.. it's all about what you want to get out of your renders.  you hit the nail on the head for some people.  what is it worth to you to increase the quality of your renders.  i spent years working with poser before switching over to daz studio for a variety of reasons.  i've had some firefly renders go overnight also.  i'd say that if a ff render is only taking you 20 minutes, then there's absolutely no comparison to that final product and a 5hr lux produced render.  once again, it all depends on what you're looking to get out of your renders.  myself, i try to get the maximum amount of realism that my skills and tools will produce.  being that i don't want to muck around hacking lux's files manually, reality is the way i go at that.  i've, also, seen octane renders that approach(and sometimes surpass) what the reality/lux combo can produce; but the price point for that is beyond my means.  myself, i'm looking to see what some of my favorite poser artists can do when they try out reality and luxrender.

and i'm still trying to hit that sweet spot of character/pose/scene/lighting that makes me want to take a week and carbonflux an R3 render.  It's been ages since I worked with V4 so I'm having issues knocking the rust off my poser skills

Normally in the morning I sit sipping my coffee while reading posts and looking over the new pictures posted by artists, but today I have spent my morning reading up on Reality 3.

Being a Reality 2.5 for Daz Studio user I have been curious how much better Reality 3 will be. I will be a happy camper when it comes out for Daz

I have toyed around with just about every render engine out there. I stick with Reality because compared to the others the price is right and once you learn how the lighting and material settings work, it is a lot easier to use than most programs out there. I did try a very popular render engine out...I won't mention the name...and it drove me nuts just trying to get the skin right. I gave up on it and went back to Reality.

I will throw out a couple things to think about.

With Reality it exports to luxrender. I have a Quad core AMD with 8GBs of RAM and a NVida card. I usually have one picture rendering while setting up another one and repeatedly testing different settings. Meaning at times I have 2 renders running at the same time. It does slow down render times (I don't worry about the render times because I am never in a rush to do a picture) but it doesn't bog down my computer unless I have increased the subdivision on some of the the material settings.

I usually spend a lot of time throwing out the bump maps for each material and changing them to normal maps. Normal maps are easier for me to use than bump maps and give me the results I want a lot faster. I like the preview screen in Reality because it does help me with getting the settings right for each material. All this is time comsuming but once it is done I can save the ACSEL and the next time I use the same prop or outfit, it automatically loads the settings I saved, so I don't have to spend time with the settings again.

As for lighting.....as the saying goes...the proof is in the pudding. If you would like to see what the lighting is like just take a look at my gallery. I have used just about every type of lighting available for Reality...softbox, mesh lights, spot lights, IBL's/HDRI's and sunlight.  Just remember that depending on the lighting you might have to make slight adjustments to the material to make them look right.

There are some things that are tough to figure out at first but once you understand how Reality reads the different materials it is easy to use and the results are great. It takes some trial and error.

Just thought I would throw this stuff out for those that are thinking about purchasing Reality 3 and wanted some more info on it.

Quote - I've downloaded LuxRenderer, but if it's going to take me 5 hours to render a scene that PPro takes 20 minutes to do, I probably won't be buying Reality3 at all. That sort of wait for a render, no matter how good it looks, just isn't worth it for me.

I hear ya...BUT...when working with caustics and volumetric caustics, patience is the key for hyper realistic renders.

Working with characters is not so time consuming.

Some things I really appreciate with Reality/Lux is while the rendering process is going on...

The scene is obviously composed in poser. When you get it the way you want, you envoke Reality, make whatever material changes you need or want (thats a whole 'nother topic and a great topic it is!), then send it to Lux for rendering.

While in Lux, You see the entire scene at once unlike poser's top down rendering method. With each 'pass' the image gets clearer and crisper. The longer you let it render, the more depth the image attains.

You think it's too bright, you darken it, or vice-versa, on the fly. You can filter out noise, add lens flare...many, many other choices WHILE it's rendering and see the results on the next pass.

In poser to do the same thing would take many start render, decide something needs to be different, stop render, make your tweaks, start render, still not right, stop render, make your tweaks, start render...well, you get the idea.

Quote - I've downloaded LuxRenderer, but if it's going to take me 5 hours to render a scene that PPro takes 20 minutes to do, I probably won't be buying Reality3 at all. That sort of wait for a render, no matter how good it looks, just isn't worth it for me.

I can understand where you are coming from on this and, although I have now purchased Reality 3, I do not see me abandoning Firefly.  However I do see it as another tool and allows me to use Luxrender where I feel it can improve a render or it is for something special.

When I have free time I spend a lot of it playing with 3D and while having something take 5 hours may be a long time, if I am sat there anyway, having run in the background while I play with other software or different scenes does not seem to be a high price to pay. 

...OR simply go to sleep for the night and wake up to an amazing render! :)

Quote - Good job!!! I just purchased it for my WinXP and Win7 upgrade computer...

Did you have to install Lux Render again? I already have it for another program

you don't need to install Lux again unless it's an older version than 1.2.

Cheers.

Quote - I've downloaded LuxRenderer, but if it's going to take me 5 hours to render a scene that PPro takes 20 minutes to do, I probably won't be buying Reality3 at all.  That sort of wait for a render, no matter how good it looks, just isn't worth it for me.

If that's the case, then Reality is definitely not for you.

My own brief experience using Reality with DAZ a couple years ago taught me that Lux is the ultimate test of patience for 3D art hobbyists.  For me, however, the results are absolutely worth it.

Case in point, this was my first Reality render, created in March 2011, using DAZ Studio to set it up.  It took 48 hours in Lux (due in large part to the high resolution) to reach a level of image quality I was happy with, and would have been impossible to achieve with Firefly (it's work safe):

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2179882&user_id=463114&np&np

I switched back to Poser a couple of projects later after learning that Reality was incompatible with procedural shaders.  Thankfully, with Reality 3 for Poser, that is no longer the case, and I can finally stop being envious of DAZ users when I start new projects.  ;)

can i ask what python version you are all using,as reality 3 makes half my scene disapear,and wont use material nodes, someone over at rdna said you cant use python 2.7 and my poser 2012 is using 2.71. ive tried uninstalling butto no joy,are any of you using this python version and having any trouble?

Reality relies on Poser and the Python that is included in Poser.

We cannot force Reality to use a different version of Python.

I contacted SM and they are very curious about how this is happening because they cannot force Poser to use another version of Poser no matter how they tried. 

They have suggested that some software might have changed the way Poser searches for the Python modules.

I dont want this to sound horrible or anything because that's not me

I am Finding Reality 3 Very diffcult to understand I want to be able to use it but i just cannot get my head around the manual its just confuses the heck out of me.

No problem Demon2330, many times is just a matter of findinf the key of interpretation. 

I saw several posts of Poser newcomers who didn't know why they needed rendering :). It's a matter of steps.

Step one: get on the path 

Step two: ask for directions :)

Let's start with something simple: what is that first thing that you need to be clarified?

Quote - can i ask what python version you are all using,as reality 3 makes half my scene disapear,and wont use material nodes, someone over at rdna said you cant use python 2.7 and my poser 2012 is using 2.71. ive tried uninstalling butto no joy,are any of you using this python version and having any trouble?

Well the python shell in my Poser 2012 states that the version is 2.7.1 and I have Reality 3 working and launching Luxrender.  The only limitation i have is the abilty to be able to use it but Python does not appear to have an issue.

Quote - No problem Demon2330, many times is just a matter of findinf the key of interpretation. 

I saw several posts of Poser newcomers who didn't know why they needed rendering :). It's a matter of steps.

Step one: get on the path 

Step two: ask for directions :)

Let's start with something simple: what is that first thing that you need to be clarified?

Ok Trying what you suggested , I am going simple i am attempting to render some mugs that i converted from max 2012 to Poser 

at the moment lux render is giving me these stats on my system

the time then

threads 4 gpu's 4 - 41.51

S/Ps 37.53

ks/s 741.06

this is followed by KC/s 1945% and then eff 9% Geff

Sounds you are off to a great start. 

Let us know if we can help.

Cheers.

Ok...not too clear on how to do this from reading the manual...

How do you add reflection properties to, say, a stone or wood floor? Is it just increasing the glossiness? To me all that would do is concentrate the specular highlight. 

Quote - > Quote - Ok Trying what you suggested , I am going simple i am attempting to render some mugs that i converted from max 2012 to Poser 

at the moment lux render is giving me these stats on my system

the time then

threads 4 gpu's 4 - 41.51

S/Ps 37.53

ks/s 741.06

this is followed by KC/s 1945% and then eff 9% Geff

Okay demon.. looks like you posted the stats on the status bar.  I can give you an easy idea of what they mean.  "threads 4 gpu's 4" means lux sees that you're using a quad-core processor and a quad-gpu video card.  this essentially means nothing unless your processor(s) are buggered up and you've dropped a core.  "41.51 S/Ps"
means that your luxrender has processed 41.51 passes over your entire render.   "37.53 ks/s" is the speed that you're rendering at.. as in it's sampling 37520 pixels per second.  I'll skip the next for a second.. the 1945% efficiency and 9%Geff how efficiently luxrender is processing and finding your lights.  1945% effeciency is pretty good for someone using Reality for the first time.  The Kc/s is your samples per second multiplied by your efficiency.  This is the total number of light samples per second that luxrender is processing.  Since it's all about the lighting, the higher your efficiency the faster your render will clear up.  These, I've learned are truly the key stats.  You want lux to be able to easily process your lights(efficiency).  The samples/sec is primarily dependant on materials and the geometry of the items in your scene.

Place a simple nude figure with just hair into a cube with a single mesh light and you can see that efficiency jump to 4000% or better.  And your scene will clear up in a couple hours.

Render speed with Luxrender depends on several things(Paolo can correct me on this).  The gloss settings of your materials(high gloss slows things down) the amount of glass or water in your scene(will slow you down too), the number of lights you have in your scene, your materials/textures, and the total amount of figure geometry that lux has to process.

My advice is for a few renders.. keep it simple.  If you're rendering people, do one person either a nude or dressed in simple clothing, a single mesh light(use posers lights to light your scene while you're working on it so that you can easily position and aim your mesh light and then disable all but your mesh light in reality) maybe a simple background, and then enclose them all in the included posing cube.  Make sure that you scale the cube up enough to COMPLETELY enclose your lights.  If not it'll seriously gimp your render speed too.  Make a couple or more renders that way, then slowly add more ambitious/complicated objects into your scenes.  In no time you'll know how lux is going to react to various elements being added to your scenes.