I thought it might be good to have a Reality 3 & Lux render thread here for those who don't visit RDNA that much. The Reality thread in the Daz Studio forum has been a great place for everyone to share their renders, ask questions, and learn more about Reality, Lux, and DS.

Please feel free to post any of your renders - test renders, WIPS, renders for fun, your masterpieces, or anything else of interest. It would also be great if you could share lighting used, special settings, special materials/shaders and how you made them, or anything else about your render that would help others learn more about rendering in Lux via Reality 3.

Also, please feel free to ask questions, and/or post examples showing problems you are having or new techniques you learned. But the most important thing is to have fun and learn!!!!

I'll start it off with the very simple "quick" render below (full sized version is available in my gallery). I used the sun light included with Reaiity 3, linear tone mapping,  ISO 100, shutter speed 1/500, fstop 5.6. SSS was enabled for the skin shaders with a slight modification to the default SSS colors, and the gold metal bits were set to gold in Reality - polish reduced to 4500, with no other shader modifications. Rendered on a quadcore i7 laptop for approx. 18 hours, 650 s/p (didn't have to go that long, just left it running while at work on 14 hour workday, probably would have been fully cooked at about 6-8 hours).

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has done!

PS: Nudity checked just to be safe :) 

Great idea,  I will try and post some soon.

Also very timely as there is now an update to Reality 3 and it now supports Genesis and has a large number of fixes.

Hey Dustrider, thank you very much for starting this. I meant to do it but I jusyt could not find the time.

This is great, we have similar thread in the Studio forum which is already 250+ pages long so we have a long wayt to catch up ;)

Looking forwarding to seeing all the new images.

DustRider - that picture is how I see Lux should be used for rendering Poser figures.

You have taken advantage of what Lux is good at (lighting) in this scene. I see too many Reality/Lux renders that have wasted the whole purpose of using it, eg. figures rendered without an environment or a crappy one.

Clearly Luxrender is good for scenes as you describe however it is after all a render engine and has many differences to Firefly which can be utilised for all renders.  Also many of the renders being produced via Reality 3 are in many ways 'work in progress' as users start to use and understand both R3 and Luxrender.

Portraits can be enhanced by quality of jewelry which Luxrender is also good at and many other factors.

Anyway here is my last attempt, another figure without a scene but I am playing with skin tones and trying to age my V4 character using the merchant resource for old skin that is on sale here at Rendo.  I was not happy with my first attempt and this one has the 'smooth surface' setting switched off for the bump under modifiers and also uses micro facets.  The setting keep sharp edges is unchecked. 

Very nice results everyone!

I tried to play with a variety of textures on this one.  Five hours with two mesh lights (which was probably one too many).  Just a simple .jpg background on the back wall of the cube.  I wish the hair had a little more glossiness and definition to it, though.  Not sure if that's a problem with black hair or my settings weren't ambitious enough.

Quote - And my favorite so far!

Great renders - I like this one the best as well, the details on the feater mask are incredible!

Quote - > Quote - DustRider - that picture is how I see Lux should be used for rendering Poser figures.

You have taken advantage of what Lux is good at (lighting) in this scene. I see too many Reality/Lux renders that have wasted the whole purpose of using it, eg. figures rendered without an environment or a crappy one.

 

Clearly Luxrender is good for scenes as you describe however it is after all a render engine and has many differences to Firefly which can be utilised for all renders.  Also many of the renders being produced via Reality 3 are in many ways 'work in progress' as users start to use and understand both R3 and Luxrender.

Portraits can be enhanced by quality of jewelry which Luxrender is also good at and many other factors.

Anyway here is my last attempt, another figure without a scene but I am playing with skin tones and trying to age my V4 character using the merchant resource for old skin that is on sale here at Rendo.  I was not happy with my first attempt and this one has the 'smooth surface' setting switched off for the bump under modifiers and also uses micro facets.  The setting keep sharp edges is unchecked. 

I really like the surface details you got on the skin, thanks for sharing how you did it!

Quote - Single meshlight and a single IBL, about 4 hrs rendertime.

Simple yet elegant - I really like the freckles, what texture set did you use for the skin?

Quote -

I tried to play with a variety of textures on this one.  Five hours with two mesh lights (which was probably one too many).  Just a simple .jpg background on the back wall of the cube.  I wish the hair had a little more glossiness and definition to it, though.  Not sure if that's a problem with black hair or my settings weren't ambitious enough.

Very nice - I always have "problems" getting the detail I want out of black hair or cloths. Increasing glossiness may have helped, hopefully someone else will chime in and give a couple of hints on what would help (Paolo??).

Thank you Dustrider. The texture is Thorne's Erika with the diffuse colors set to white.

It was rendered in mono using the reality meshlight prop and the reality IBL.
In Lux, Reinhard/non-linear, and Lux light gain of .01 for the IBL and .25 for the meshlight.

After the render was done I noticed that the eyelash diffuse color was somehow set to orange, and the crinkles in the hair are a bit bothersome. Somehow it seems that I can get lost in tiny details that no one would notice and completely miss the big stuff.
I'm about an hour into my second try with that render.

Predration Nature, Frad Bambi.

If you ask nicely, Raine may zip up the base scene. The base scenei s just the Reality Cube and lights set, none of the content in the image comes with the scene.

Click on image for larger version.

All the best.

Graet Uncle lROG

Just a little trick I have noticed in Reality 3.

R3 makes it's best guess at the materials but they do need tweaking sometimes but finding the right part can be difficult, or at least it was.  OK for figures it is relatively easy, if you want to change the face, skin face is easy to find but what if it is a complex scene.  For example a street scene with a number of buildings and you want to change the material of one door out of many, how do you find the door. 

Open up the material editor in R3 then, in poser, go into the material room and select the door with the eye dropper now go back to reality materials and that door is magically selected ready to tweak.....neat trick.

Thanks tor the tip hornet3d, it works.

This thread would be much more useful if people would post render times and sys config.

Great work though...

Quote - This thread would be much more useful if people would post render times and sys config.

Great work though...

My system details are always at the bottom of my posts.  The time of the render I have added here is more difficult as I stopped and resumed it and Luxrender only displays the resume details in its stats.  I think it was around three and a half hours in total.  I will make better notes for the next time I post in this threads.

Total time was just over six hours, dark scenes do take longer, although I was tempted to stop at four hours as the graininess added something to the scene.  I think it was better after four hours but then I am still playing.

This is a close up of the Freak 4 exported from Poser Pro 2012 into LuxRender via the excellent Reality 3 plug-in.  The render was one of my first tests with Reality.  I'm still learning how to use Reality and Lux, but this was a very encouraging first start. :)

Lee

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Quote - Thank you Dustrider. The texture is Thorne's Erika with the diffuse colors set to white.

It was rendered in mono using the reality meshlight prop and the reality IBL.
In Lux, Reinhard/non-linear, and Lux light gain of .01 for the IBL and .25 for the meshlight.

After the render was done I noticed that the eyelash diffuse color was somehow set to orange, and the crinkles in the hair are a bit bothersome. Somehow it seems that I can get lost in tiny details that no one would notice and completely miss the big stuff.
I'm about an hour into my second try with that render.

Thanks bevans84 for the info on the texture (I'll have to look it up), and the extra info on your render!

Quote - One of mine, helped by LadyRaine who created the base scene setup to get me started.

Predration Nature, Frad Bambi.

If you ask nicely, Raine may zip up the base scene. The base scenei s just the Reality Cube and lights set, none of the content in the image comes with the scene.

Click on image for larger version.

All the best.

Graet Uncle lROG

Awesome first render Paganeagle!

Quote - First try at a night time scene with R3.  The light from the left side is a mesh light and there is the top mesh also.  The light underneath the craft is a spot with a cone from the primatives in Poser.  The material is changed to 'null' in the R3 material editor and a volume added.

Total time was just over six hours, dark scenes do take longer, although I was tempted to stop at four hours as the graininess added something to the scene.  I think it was better after four hours but then I am still playing.

Great FX! I'm impressed it only took 6 hours, dark images take a lot more work with lux (both in render time and set up).

Quote -  

This is a close up of the Freak 4 exported from Poser Pro 2012 into LuxRender via the excellent Reality 3 plug-in.  The render was one of my first tests with Reality.  I'm still learning how to use Reality and Lux, but this was a very encouraging first start. :)

Lee

Great render Leemoon! The mucle details are incredible, are the details/shadows all from the lighting in lux, or are they partially for the texture map?

Quote - About 2 hours on my I7.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Your definitely getting the hang of lux, another great render! Two hours is quite fast. What was you light set up like?

**maveris **has poser a free light set for Reality 3. More details and the download location are in a thread over at RDNA here.

Info for the Resident Pic:-

16 Threads

Tone Mapping:- Linear

ISO:-50

Shutter:- 1/1000

FStop:- 8

Gamma 2.20

Film Responce:- Kodachrome 64

I just played with the light gain settings to get a darker effect.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

A little trick that worked for me after LadyRaine told me:-

Get your lights set up, for the Resident one, I used 2 lights, a lightmesh and the sunlight mesh.

For the lightmesh, I used the Point at option for Objects in Poser, and pointed at V4 body.

Then I let Reality do it's bit to export to Lux.

Once it started to render I changed the Tone Mapping from Reinhard-non Linear  to Linear, then click on the Estimate button.

Go down to the Gamma + Film Response section, and then change the settings to the various film options to experiment.

Go into the Lights option and change the gain if required.

Let Reality do it's thing.

I hope this has been of use.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Thanks for the info on the Umbrella!!! Very nice. I like the way there is a light dot to show exactly where it is pointed!!

Another trick for those that have 2 systems. A big thank you to Sarge for this one.

I have my old clunker that I have for the internet etc.

So........

Get your scene set up, lights etc.

In the Reality Render Editor go to the Render tabTexture Collection option.

Select the Enable Texture Collection option.

Now select the Output option. Use the Change button for the Image File Name. Create a folder (it makes it easier) and go into it. Give your Image a name.

Go to the Change button of the Scene File Name option.

Just give it the same name (it will be set to the folder you made).

Now when you use the Render Frame option, it will take all the texture information in the scene and put it into the two files.

Let Lux load the scene and run for a few minutes to get it started.

Select the Pause option.

Your scene files etc. will be saved back to the folder.

Copy the folder to a flash drive and just put onto a higher grade machine and run Lux (make sure you have it insatlled. Lol).

Now just do the bit I put in the previous post about |Tone mapping and Film Response.

I did this to put the files on my I7 machine and it flew!!!!! LOL.

Thingts that took an hour to do on this old clunker took 5 minutes on the I7.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

2 hours on I7.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Nice one paganeagle2001. It sounds like you're getting the hang of it :)

Thanks Paolo, it was frustrating at the start, but now I know the little trick, it is a dream to work with.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Quote - > Quote -  

This is a close up of the Freak 4 exported from Poser Pro 2012 into LuxRender via the excellent Reality 3 plug-in.  The render was one of my first tests with Reality.  I'm still learning how to use Reality and Lux, but this was a very encouraging first start. :)

Lee

Great render Leemoon! The mucle details are incredible, are the details/shadows all from the lighting in lux, or are they partially for the texture map?

Thank you for the great comment. :)

The texture is Mec4D's Buddy 2.0 texture set.  I've injected a bunch of M4 morphs (F4, Morphs ++, M4 Enhanced, etc.) and used the Yhago magnet set.  I believe SSS is turned off in Reality/LuxRender in this image.  There are 2 mesh lights in the scene and the background is the DAZ Multiplane Cyclorama (hard to tell in the close up).  It's amazing to see the shadow detail and reflections in Lux.

Lee

2 hours render.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Quote - My usual settings for Paladin.

2 hours render.

All the best.

Great Uncle LROG

Looks like you've got a really good handle on Reality 3 now - Another great render!

Quote - One of my first renders with R3/Lux.  I used the overhead Meshlight.  Experimenting with shiny surfaces was the main focus.  Render time was about 6 hours on quad-core PhenomII w/8gb ram.

The paint on the car is outstanding!!

I just posted a new video tutorial on how to control the lights individually and how to adjust the exposure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evw2yjC4sa4

Cheers.

The main point of interest, for me at least, is that the materials are a direct conversion from the poser materials but in Reality 3 I have converted the blue neon strip and red lights to a light in the type field rather than glossy.  I like the way it has picked up the colour and the light from the strips on the floor and the red reflection on the left wall and ceiling.  Of course you can do the same in Firefly but this is so much easier, for me anyway, than playing with nodes in the material room in Poser.

Quote - Lost count of how long this took to render as I ran it in background while I did other things, it was however a very long time.

The main point of interest, for me at least, is that the materials are a direct conversion from the poser materials but in Reality 3 I have converted the blue neon strip and red lights to a light in the type field rather than glossy.  I like the way it has picked up the colour and the light from the strips on the floor and the red reflection on the left wall and ceiling.  Of course you can do the same in Firefly but this is so much easier, for me anyway, than playing with nodes in the material room in Poser.

Great render Hornet3d - The lighting FX are fantastic (for anyone who hasn't done so, you really need to click on the image to see the larger version and get the full effect), they really give the environment an extra boost in realism.

My First completed Reality/Lux render.  Loving this!

Quote - My First completed Reality/Lux render.  Loving this!

Great reander with a very unigue figure. Is she a custom figure you made?

Procedure  in Poser :

- loaded a previously made scene (just Miki and the sign) in Poser and replaced the lights by a SUN.

• Modified that sun to my usual Poser settings :

  - Shadow value 0.5 (if you keep the sun at 1.00 besides pitch black shadows you sometimes also get artefacts in your renders).

  - Map Size value 1024 for sharper, better quality shadows.

  - All colours set to 1 and intensity to 100%.

Procedure in R3 :

Changed the material for head and body to skin.

Applied one of the film presets (can't remember which one) for a more tanned appearance. I miss ORWO films in that list btw.

Postwork :

Applied an Exposure auto-fix in a photo-editor to brighten up the scene.

I remember the FKK signs in Croatia, long time ago. If I remember well they indicated a nudist beach. From your image I think I'm not to far from the mark, am I :)

Quote - > Quote - My First completed Reality/Lux render.  Loving this!

Great reander with a very unigue figure. Is she a custom figure you made?

Actually it is.  I've used her in a few of my renders, which is rare because I usually don't use a model more than once.  Thanks for the compliment!

Render after 5 hours, applied Kodachrome 25, noise reduction, vignetting and a few other photographic effects which may or may not have worked. Still requires some postwork, a few red artefacts here and there and Miki's all too visible elbow and hand joints to be photoshopped.

I'm still reduced to the single figure rendering, as soon as I add something things go horribly wrong, such as the invisble car (except the wheels).