Quote - Now Maya you certainly can't sell...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.

Erm.. Autodesk lost the lawsuit. The court affirms the right to sell used software.

Autodesk switched to an activation license system now to prevent transfer of software license.

Quote - Can you subdivide in Messiah? 

Just Press Tab with the object selected.

Quote -
Did you ask around before doing this or just jump in and do it? My next question is, how big is the file? No sense making a VHD larger than really neccesary right?

If you ask around, people will tell you that it doesn't work. I am confident enough to take the risk and jump in. Anyway you can use the messiah license utility to verify that vhd does have a consistent key id for messiah.

The license is just a few lines of text, paste it into a text file and save it. The file size is <1kb. The minimum size of a vhd is 16mb though.

I received the email, licensed messiah to a vhd and it works without a hitch. This saves me a usb stick/port and the danger of losing the license due to hardware failure. 

Whether vhd works or not can be easily verified by running the messiah license utility on the vhd, the same id is returned everytime, even on a winxp pc with a third-party mounter.

Of course go with a usb stick if you are unsure, it is just an alternative for more adventurous folks.

Quote - So now I guess my next question is how large a partition is needed for this "KeyFile"?

The keyfile is very small, so the smallest disk size should work(16mb for vhd).

Quote - I wonder how it would respond to a virtual driver like Daemon Tools that can mount ISO images

CD-Rom/DVD-Rom and thus ISO etc won't work afaik, the hardware needs to appear as a harddisk.

For windows 7 users, there is an alternative to using a usb flash drive for licensing.

Windows 7 supports the creating and mounting of virtual hard disks(vhd). Create one and use it to generate the license. The vhd is just a file so you can backup and restore it easily.

On a side note someone added a shadow/reflection catcher to LuxRender. The code is not merged to the main branch yet though.

background picture

IBL + shadow-catcher plane aligned with table

There is no need to convert the HDRI files to OpenEXR format, LuxRender supports .hdr format.

LightSource "infinitesample"<br></br>
    "string mapname"
["kitchen_probe.hdr"]<br></br>
    "float gain" [1.0]

The shadow termination problem affects all current unbiased renderers(including Maxwell, Fryrender, Octane etc), so I don't think it will be fixed.

Quote - is the noise reduction done o top of the render or just with the lighting?

does it destroy details form the textures ? 

It is a post-effect, i.e. done on top of the render.

It is ported from GIMP, so a dedicated noise-reducer like neat image or noise ninja may do a better job.

Fryrender, a commercial physically-based unbiased renderer, has a toon render core so it is not impossible for luxrender to have one, although I don't  think the current developers has any interest.

The main difference between biased and unbiased renderers is in the lighting calculation. The material/shader system in luxrender is based on the same models used in biased renderers.

The sun-sky system is similiar to the one in Yafaray, so you can use that as a guide.

aconst: Horizon brightness
bconst: Luminance of gradient near the horizon
cconst: Sun brightness
dconst: Sun size
econst: Backscattered light

http://www.yafaray.org/documentation/userguide/backgrounds#sunsky

Perhaps there are other factors, but adding the aspect ratio to the fov calculation fixes the camera view issue for me.

Quote - ok I did a test with Sketchup and the beta SU2LUX... no camera distortion. both views - SU and Lux - matched.

so. whats the common demonitator between DS and Poser cameras?

Dizzi posted the reason a while back iirc.
LuxRender's field of view is determined by the shortest dimension while poser uses horizontal fov,  so currently you get the wrong view when width > height.

Quote - So, am I to assume that they've been fixing the main download version and yet not changing the version number? How confusing....

I did download LuxRender and installed it before the last weekly build was posted, so I guess if I download it again and reinstall it's going to fix the fireflies problem...

Laurie

They did not change the official download version. If the weekly build fixes your fireflies problem, stick with it.