Check out the news here:

http://carraracafe.com/luxus-alpha-released-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara/

Man you are fast!

Thumbs up!

Updated release, more details here:

http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/

For fun, I thought I'd do my own Carrara version to see what I could come up with.

If you look closely at the Carrara image over in the Carraracafe thread, the lighting uses buffered soft shadows and has several light sources employed.  From the way it looks, it doesn't employ GI at all.

The image I'm posting here has two lights (which I believe is more similar to the Luxrender.

Kinda interesing stuff.  One thing I'd like to know is what the render times for the Luxrender are like.

Render times are much longer in Luxrender, but you also get to change a lot of the lighting while rendering. In the example above you can turn off the desk light light completely, while rendering or even after finishing.

Luxrender also outputs HDR images.

Carrara vs Luxrender can probably be debated forever, like in other forums that have battling unbiased vs biased renderers. I just see it as an alternative tool that has some benefits and some disadvantages.

Kixum, try your new scene in Luxrender, I'm guessing the results will be similar...

Well said.

Let me be clear here that I'm glad to see that Luxrender is becoming a part of Carrara.  When Carrara expands itself, we (the user community) benefit.  I have dreams that someday, Carrara will become a package that will be used in a much larger professional community.  The only way for that to happen is if Carrara can do more things that can serve the needs of more users.

I will try my scene in Luxrender but I will wait for it to go beyond beta.  It sounds very early to be making practical comparisons just yet.  The translation of materials sounds like it has a few miles to go.

I am very much looking forward to it!

My main goal of this post was to see if I could produce something that looked similar to the Luxrender example posted over at the using the Carrara engine (and the result I cooked up was interesting).

Im anxious to see more of everything!

Huge update again, lots of materials added:
http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/

Kixum, I think the plan is to release a first version without auto material conversion, since that function takes a lot of time to develop and Carrara users are used to work with shaders.

Attached Link: http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/

http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/

Attached Link: http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/

Same download link as usual.

Great! Thanks!

Major update today:

• All options for materials should now be visible.

• All the texures of the 1.0 spec implemented (exception band and multimix)

• Added Mac Build.  Install/Copy LuxRender such that there is a folder right next to your Extenstions folder called LuxRender that contains the LuxRender application.
  Win64 - http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
  Mac64 - http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Mac64/Luxus.zip

Is anybody having an issue with LUX not accepting UV coordinates out of Carrara?

I rebuilt each shader tree before exporting to Lux; went with the Lux Matte material with the corresponding texture map plugged into the color channel, but something's obviously off.

I shut Lux off after 2 hours; the Carrara render took one minute forty-three seconds. (In case anybody's wondering!)

I have issues with objects with multiple shade domains. like Victoria... all render as a white material. Any idea??

JT411 this look amazing! Need to setup more in light inside Luxrender to get better results yet.

Hi GK,

Yeah, I can't get V4 to work either; just renders plain white.

I'm not sure if I'm just missing a step or two, or maybe there is an issue with UV export. (At least concerning Poser content)

1 - The first image is only a load and render test, just some adjustments in Luxrender at all.

2 - Second one is using some Luxrender shaders already with textures (not all scene, Vic dont have any change in shaders yet)

3 - Third is the same scene with an Infinite light (using HDRI image).

Look very very good so far, the only strange thing is those sparkles with HDRI, but I think is something with Luxrender that I need to understand. Note that the second and third images are the same I just turned off the Infinite light to get a image without have to restart everything again.

Some things that I really didnt know is about how Bump maps work in Lux, I see the Bump map slot but no slider to set the deeph. The same thing for Alpha channel, but I think is something that will be implemented later.

Now is time to people start to share theyr Lux shaders so we can studie more ways to work with this new feature!

Well it may be a work in progress, but it IS fantastic news.

Speaking as someone who has used the DAZ version in the past I see this as another option to "get more real", and I will use what ever tool is best for that particular job.