I have Poser 9 and am going to puchase Reality 3 soon. My question is I'm also thinking of purchasing IDL Studio 2 (or is there better?) so do I need to have IDL Studio 2 (or any other lighting system) if I'm going to get Reality 3?

Maybe I'm talking about apples and oranges, but I'm not familiar with lighting options or rendering setups.

As far as I'm aware, Reality 3 has mesh lights that you can use for Luxrender included with it. Throw out everything you think you know from Poser. It doesn't apply. No Poser light set is going to make your Luxrender renders look any better. And oh, if you didn't know you likely won't need IDL Studio for Reality but you WILL need Luxrender. Reality is the exporter, Luxrender does the number crunching and heavy lifting (ie rendering) ;). Also make sure that you are prepared for very long render times. I'm not trying to disuade you but to make sure you don't spend your money on something you might not want. LOL. I know people that weren't prepared for that and can't get a refund (because technically it works as advertised). If you have a powerful openCL capapable graphics card you'll be in better shape for faster rendering.

Luxrender can do beautiful renders...just be prepared to wait a long while for them (unless you have one of those ultra speedy openCL graphics cards....lol) ;).

Laurie

Thank you, LaurieA. How can I tell if I have an openCL capapable graphics card?

I think newer ATI cards are (I think...lol). I think Nvidia cards are less likely to work. More info here. Also a link there to even more detailed info. If you have a graphics chip on your board, it's likely not openCL compatible.

If you're not even sure what's in your computer, Piriform makes a small program called Speccy that will tell you all the hardware that's in your computer.

Laurie

So when I go to download the luxrender for Poser it takes me to this page:

http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/poser

Then I click on Poser and it takes me here: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/poser

Then clicking on the link I go here: http://www.pose2lux.com/

Then clicking on the 'here' (You can download the latest copy here.) I am taken to:
http://www.pose2lux.com/content/downloads. And then I click on ** Pose2LuxPro_0.8.8** and I finally get a zip file containing what is in the screenshot, but now I don't know what to do.

Is this an alternative to Reality 3? I'm now getting confused. And then it says:

"Of the two main Luxrender builds available - Luxrender 0.8, the currently stable release and Luxrender 0.9, the development build - we recommend you use Luxrender 0.9 with Pose2LuxPro 0.8.8, our current version. According to the developer SnarlyGribbly:"

So, am I supposed to download Luxrender 0.9 as well?

Do I really need to do all this? Does doing the above amount to a free version of Reality 3?

Scratching my head over this.

Pose2Lux came out for Poser8/PP210 and was the first exporter for Poser to Luxrender, written by Snarlygribbly. It also can be used in Poser versions back to and including Poser 6. Reality works with Poser9/PP2012 only.

For Reality or for Pose2Lux you will need Luxrender because the two former softwares don't do any rendering - they only translate your Poser scene into something that Luxrender can understand, where then Luxrender takes over and does the actual rendering.

You need to learn a little bit more about Luxrender to be successful with Pose2Lux than you do for Reality. You can write your own Luxrender shaders and use them in Pose2Lux. Its free but not quite as easy, or as pretty as Reality. It does, however, get the same job done ;). Reality is more click and render than Pose2Lux is. I've used P2L and found it very easy - however, I did learn about Luxrender and am capable of writing my own shaders, so take what I say about ease of use at face value. LOL.

Either way, same principle applies - you need to think of it differently than Poser, no matter which one you ultimately decided to use. You can use mesh lights for either Reality or P2L, even a simple low res ball prop will do or a plane. You unfortunately are looking at much longer render times than you were ever used to from Poser. And that doesn't matter if you use Pose2Lux or Reality since it's Luxrender itself, being unbiased, that does a slow render. Just lettin' ya know. LOL.

To recap:

Pose2Lux is free - not quite as easy as Reality is said to be. Probably somewhat more customizable since you can use any shader you can write out in XML. For Poser 6 and up. Will not update your Luxrender render in real time if you make changes. You must re-export.

Reality is not free - snazzier interface, you need less Luxrender knowledge, sends any changes you make in Poser to Luxrender and updates it in real time. Somewhat easier to use than Pose2Lux.

For either of the above, you will still need Luxrender installed.

I had Pose2Lux exported images in my gallery if you wanna peek. They look just like Reality exported renders. LOL.

Laurie

If you click on the standalone version on the luxrender site you can download the non-OpenCL version of Luxrender.

On the whole render times are slower althougn I did a render of a glass chess set in Luxrender yesterday in 15 minutes and I doubt Firefly could have produced the same in a similar time.

The are a couple of renders of V4 in my gallery one after 60 mins in Luxrender and another after 90 mins to give you some idea.

My system supports OpenCL but the renders in my gallery are without this active as I suspect it was the cause of a couple of 'Bluescreens' although this would be down to the driver rather than OpenCL.

Only other two points I have that are different to Firefly is that you can make changes to light strength, colour temperature and the like during the render with Luxrender and you can also suspend a render and resume it at a later time.

A mesh light, top light and sunlight are included in Reality 3 as a seprerate download.  You don't need light sets for Poser but they will work but are only effective with renders in Poser they will not work correctly in Luxrender.  You might want to try luxrender out and see if it suits you, if it does and you think you will use it as your main render software then I would skip buying any light sets.  If you are using Firefly in Poser I think I would try BBs envi sphere before I spent out on lights...just my opinion.

Quote - As far as I'm aware, Reality 3 has mesh lights that you can use for Luxrender included with it. Throw out everything you think you know from Poser. It doesn't apply. No Poser light set is going to make your Luxrender renders look any better. And oh, if you didn't know you likely won't need IDL Studio for Reality but you WILL need Luxrender. Reality is the exporter, Luxrender does the number crunching and heavy lifting (ie rendering) ;). Also make sure that you are prepared for very long render times. I'm not trying to disuade you but to make sure you don't spend your money on something you might not want. LOL. I know people that weren't prepared for that and can't get a refund (because technically it works as advertised). If you have a powerful openCL capapable graphics card you'll be in better shape for faster rendering.

Luxrender can do beautiful renders...just be prepared to wait a long while for them (unless you have one of those ultra speedy openCL graphics cards....lol) ;).

Laurie

o.0 hoooow long are render times?

as I was just looking at the page to purchase.

Then again I might have to wait till I get "monster"(the upgrade from "beast" which was the upgrade from "baby")

It depends on your graphics card and whether it's compatible with Luxrender or not ;)

If it is, you're good. If it's not, you''ll have to wait ;). Perhaps many hours...depending on your machine specs.

Laurie

Quote - It depends on your graphics card and whether it's compatible with Luxrender or not ;)

If it is, you're good. If it's not, you''ll have to wait ;). Perhaps many hours...depending on your machine specs.

Laurie

hmmm as my last post in DA the render took over 24 hrs....hmmmmmmmmm  

Quote - > Quote - It depends on your graphics card and whether it's compatible with Luxrender or not ;)

If it is, you're good. If it's not, you''ll have to wait ;). Perhaps many hours...depending on your machine specs.

Laurie

hmmm as my last post in DA the render took over 24 hrs....hmmmmmmmmm  

Well, then you may not mind it. Heh. I never did. A lot of folks do tho ;).

Laurie

Render times depend on many factors. One important one is the presence of refractive/reflective materials. The more there are the longer things take to clear up noise. Here is an example: It is the same Poser Scene in Lux (via Reality 3) and in Vue 11 Infinite. Similar camera angle, same lights (Three mesh lights: one square from the top, one sphere inside the container and the floor lights). The LuxRender one is shown after 25h of render time (it was mostly ok with a little noise left on the character after about 20h). The Vue render was done in 35 minutes with Global Radiosity light model.

This is on a reasonably powerful system (i3930K six core with 32GB of Ram). I did not use my GPU in LuxRender. It is a bit hit and miss with my GTX670 and Lux, but if it works it usually speeds things up a by a factor of 1.5-2 in hybrid mode.

Ciao

TD

There are a couple of portrait renders in my gallery that took 90 minutes and 60 minutes which I would regard as acceptable for what would have been a Firefly render. The render times are therefore very dependant on the scene.  I also did a render of a glass chess set in around 30 minutes, no reflections as such (nothing to reflect) but the glass material was, in my opnion, better than Firefly would have produced in a similar time.

I understand the concentration on the render times but not so much is said about the ablilty to change exposure and colour temaperature along with a load of other stuff, during the render.  Or the fact you can see a full, if noisy, render within the first minute or so, you can suspend the render and resume it days or weeks later.