but when i open Lux, i don't see any way to import an obj, select an obj, or tweak a material or add a Lux procedural.

Is Lux materials all dos window text based?

what key understanding am i missing?

 
Thanks!

Heck, I still haven't figured out how to go into the shader sharing files from Reality 3 from Poser 10 to Lux.  I can't find that flippin' "Share" Button.  XD

And...that information you've linked to is for LuxRender inside of Blender.  

You can't import anything into Lux itself, it's a rendering system.  The imports on textures and objects are within a 3D application that is used to put the scene together and then export/imported into Lux to render it.

Hi.

LuxRender only works with its own file format, the Lux Scene Definition File. The SDL is a text file that can be edited by hand but that is a dounting task and it cannot be done manually from scratch because you would have to write by hand the coordinates for all verices in your figure.

So, there is the need for a program to export the geometry from programs like Poser, and also to have the ability to edit materials, lights, volumes and other parts of the SDL.

That's why we need Reality. Reality reads all the elements in your Poser scene and it exportes them to the Lux SDL. Reality also has a built-in material editor so that you can select a material and, for example, use the procedural textures of Lux for creating special effects.

Reality also stores all your Lux information inside the Poser scene file, leading a to a seamless experience. If you need to revise your scene later on you simply load it in Poser and then call Reality.

Hope this helps.

i'm still deciding if Lux is the direction i want to go in.

I'd like to try pose2lux before spending money on reality or more poser upgrades.

so the answer is, there is no 'Lux' gui to edit materials. It's strictly lights.

I don't see a way to rotate the camera? or move a light?

Quote - And...that information you've linked to is for LuxRender inside of Blender.  

 

You can't import anything into Lux itself, it's a rendering system.  The imports on textures and objects are within a 3D application that is used to put the scene together and then export/imported into Lux to render it.

Maybe it's time to try Blender again.  It's so scary looking. 
It doesn't look like the vray for blender is released yet.

You edit the scene, add and remove lights and materials as well as props in your 3D program and use the plug-in to transfer that scene into Lux where you can edit the lights used as well as all materials before Lux renders.

Inside LuxRender, you can still work the lights- but only settings, not placement.  Trust me, it is well worth the investment to learn the process.

And lookie here, just after I added my repsonse I get this email:

http://hivewire3d.com/reality-3-for-poser.html?utm_source=HiveWire+3D+Weekly&utm_campaign=9068ae315c-2013_01_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9fe47c9994-9068ae315c-104841797&mc_cid=9068ae315c&mc_eid=4145ae0d39

This is a great price for Reality 3 for Poser.

the Blender version is free?

Misty,

As I understand it... in a nutshell...

If you want photo-realism, go to an unbiased Render engine like Lux or Octane.

If you want throughput and production output, and to take full advantage of Poser's Material room, stay with Firefly.

I'm sure if I'm wrong, someone will correct me, but this is what I've gotten out of watching this debate go on the last two years. There is no right answer... it depends on what is important to you. I've seen some beautiful renders come out of Lux, but then again, I've seen even more come out of Firefly.

What's important to you?

If you want to give Reality a try, Lara, its'a only $20 at Hivewire right now...

mmmmm as a blender user (more cycles then lux (its too slow))

and a part time poser user who tried posetolux

and I have NOT ever used reality but chat to those who do

try the deal (20 bucks is a nite out??)

if you dont like it bill me ;-) I'll take you for the nite out

(errrrr you are in the USA aint you?? if your a brit it was a joke)

Diffrent engines offer something diffrent.User's choice.

heddheld a night out for 2 in US.at lest $200.00 for a halfway desent date.

*Quote - Misty,*As I understand it... in a nutshell...

If you want photo-realism, go to an unbiased Render engine like Lux or Octane.

If you want throughput and production output, and to take full advantage of Poser's Material room, stay with Firefly.

I'm sure if I'm wrong, someone will correct me, but this is what I've gotten out of watching this debate go on the last two years. There is no right answer... it depends on what is important to you. I've seen some beautiful renders come out of Lux, but then again, I've seen even more come out of Firefly.

What's important to you?

Very well said Basic! IMHO Reality 3 is definitely worth the $20 sale pice to add an unbiased renderer to your rendering tool kit. Sure, you could export your scenes to Blender, then use lux from there, but it adds a lot of extra work to your render process. Reality gives you a great interface for editing your lux materials, but the real big plus is how well it converts most of them from Poser to Lux, without the real need for editing many of them.

Pose2Lux looks quite capable too, and probably preferable to exporting to blender to use lux. If I get a chance over the next couple of days Im going to give Pose2Lux a try just for comparison, But I'm guessing Reality will still be a much easier to use product. I also need to give the new version of reality a test run with the updated GPU rendering, just to see how it compares to Octane.

But be aware that after using Poser, you will need to learn how to light your scenes for Reality/Lux. For me, lighting in unbiased renderers is much easier than in Poser, but for some the opposite is true. Some people love Reality/Lux and won't work without it, others find it less appealing. It really depends on if you are willing to put in the extra effort to learn how to do things, and optimize your scenes with a different renderer.

Quote - As I understand it... in a nutshell... If you want photo-realism, go to an unbiased Render engine like Lux or Octane.

If you want throughput and production output, and to take full advantage of Poser's Material room, stay with Firefly.

Certainly true for material room advantages, and also for maintaining a streamlined workflow.  I think throughput and production output can also be gained using Octane, if you have the hardware.  Octane can ouput highly photorealistic results in less time than Firefly in most cases, and definitely less time than Luxrender in every case.  The disadvantages to Octane are the texture map limitations of GPU rendering, and the hardware requirements.

One of my big issues with reality 3 was that a lot of the procedural textures that I used in the material room to customize different things was rarely translated into lux the way they looked in the mat room.  now.. i've not tried all i have as I have nearly every set that ParrotDolphin, tabala and sveva have ever released; but, so far.. 3.1 has translated everything I've thrown at it perfectly.

i haven't really had the time to full stress-test R3.1 yet; but, I'd say Paolo has done a stellar job on this update.

the only external renderer for Poser is the Reality/Lux combo? else ...

wings3d has kerkythea and pov-ray.

DS can use the standalone 3delight, ?/Lux combo, Octane(?), else ...

PoseRay will convert Poser scenes to Kerkythea

There is a Poser plugin for Octane too.

For Blender there are also plugins for Thea Render and Octane. If you want to export from Poser to Blender, you have a lot of choices for renderers. Cycles would of course be a great choice via Blender for a free GPU based unbiased renderer.

It really just depends on what you want to do, and to a certain degree how well you get along with exporting scenes from Poser, and working with the static scene in Blender, or other external app.

blender will /can use mosrt of the render engines out there

and theres a heck of a lot of them!! from free to sell your soul rofl

this is my next one to try (from blender)

http://appleseedhq.net/about/features

i'm afraid to look at how much octane and the plug in goes for >.<

do most people basically use blender as a gateway to the other renderers?

Quote - i'm afraid to look at how much octane and the plug in goes for >.< do most people basically use blender as a gateway to the other renderers?

I wouldn't say that.  Most Blender users are using Cycles now, and not these other plugin renderers.  I think Luxrender is being used more by Poser and Daz users than Blender, and some of those other renderers don't have much of a following yet, because Blender already has Cycles built in, and it's a great engine that is also still in development.

I think 3dsmax still leads all other software for the amount of plugin renderers available and in use, although that means nothing to most users here.  However, most render engines build plugins to that app first, because it has such a large user base, and has proven to be a springboard for the success of many plugin render engines (Vray to name just one).  Users of that app seem to be willing to spend the money, and are always looking for render engines that are ground-breaking and fast.  Octane, for example, gained it's success primarily as a 3dsMax plugin render engine.

If you use Blender, I'd suggest just learning to use Cycles.  It's as good as most of these other engines, and there's no additional setup required.

lol blender is too much like work to be a gateway

but some do, blender has lots of export options and addons for render engines

it can do pretty much anything you can imagine

but you'll either hate it or love it

Quote - i'm afraid to look at how much octane and the plug in goes for >.<

do most people basically use blender as a gateway to the other renderers?

 

There are so many render engines now.

Not all suport Blender but ya could probably code a bridge or someone might have coded a bridge.

wondering how cycles handle the cornell box test?

started a try with blender yesterday. first stop was learning how to tumble that cube in any direction.  then trying to print the manual to pdf, acrobat was grabbing that wiki bar and it covers over text.

next hurtle is learning how to toggle edge mode, vert mode, etc.
and decluttering that interface a bit. found the thing to open the interface options, but couldn't close it again. i ended up with 2 interface options open. doh

Good luck.  I personally hate Blender's UI and workflow.  I never got used to it, and only learned it as a backup, in case something ever happens that I can no longer use my current modelling application.  That said, it's a powerful application, and as people always point out, can do just about anything the overpriced high end applications can.

As for Cycles and Cornell Box:  looks like it handles it quite well.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?216866-Cycles-tests-the-new-blender-CPU-GPU-renderer-of-awesomeness

Depends on your hardware too, but the lighting algorythm is flawless, if you let it render until there's no more noise.

Check out some of the test results in that thread, and I'm sure you'll be as impressed as I was, considering the engine is free, you can't go wrong.  The only obstacle is Blender itself.  You can get by learning just enough of the software to import scenes, and use the renderer though.

heres a good place to start with blender

http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

have fun

Quote - wondering how cycles handle the cornell box test?

started a try with blender yesterday. first stop was learning how to tumble that cube in any direction.  then trying to print the manual to pdf, acrobat was grabbing that wiki bar and it covers over text.

next hurtle is learning how to toggle edge mode, vert mode, etc.
and decluttering that interface a bit. found the thing to open the interface options, but couldn't close it again. i ended up with 2 interface options open. doh

To get the idea of Blender 1 month to get real good 6 months.
All the main app's that do anything and every thing are so big ,takes a while to get it all.
They all work a lot a like so if ya can run Blender ya can run C4D,Max,LW etc etc.
just takes a few days to get where the tools are and that app's quirks.

learning main app's at first drove us all insain but keep at it and once ya get it.ya have a skill for life.

Hi,

Luxrender , render animations Poser?

Lux is very slow!! a lot slower then firefly

although there is a gpu version I believe, I haven't tried it

so yes its possible but the time required may be a big problem

(unless you got a render farm ;-) lol )

feeling so lost in Blender without a right-click menu.

does Silo have the right-click?  Like to add a mesh to the scene?

if you were going to model something like strands of poser dynamic hair, would have to scale it pretty tiny

is there any room for innovation left?  lol

Wings has a right-click menu...

shift +A to add a mesh in blender

Thanks heddheld  :)  -  Blender is hard not to be frustrated, but sticking with it so far. 
rotating that monkey head, iz spinning too fast, lol

WandW - I luv Wings right-click menu!

Blender seems to be handling higher poly counts well. 

http://www.youtube.com/ has Blender video's

http://blenderartists.org/forum/ 

http://cgcookie.com/blender/

and a lot more

There's a lot of help on the web for Blender.

stick with it Misty ;-) one day it all clicks and you'll love it

hold down shift and it gives finer control of rotations etc

and in user preffs is a couple of things to change (if you haven't already)

on interface tab

tick zoom to mouse position and rotate around selection, it does help lol

but most of all have fun

The backwards button arrangement in Blender still bugs me enough that I avoid it and go straight to Wings. LOL. If I want to use another render engine I use Luxrender thru Pose2Lux or Kerkythea via .obj export and Poser's collect for output and then just tweak my materials in Kerky. Editing materials files for Luxrender is rather easy, but you need to study the materials and keep backups of your files. Can be done tho - I've done it many times.

Laurie