Today Pret-A-3D announces the features for the upcoming plug-in "Reality." Click on the image below to see the video:

Reality features at a glance:

• Interface between Daz Studio and LuxRender. LuxRender is the physically-based, Open Source renderer developed at http://www.luxrender.net
• Mac OS and Windows versions available. For Windows, both 32 and 64 bit versions will be released.
• Automatic conversion of Studio shaders to LuxRender materials
• Support for fine-tuning of materials
• Materials available: - Glossy
• Matte
• Matte Translucent
• Water
• Glass with volumetric dispersion
• Fog
• Realistic Metal
• Mirror
• Presets for gemstones, different types of glass, human cornea and more.
• Built-in material preview
• Turn any .OBJ into a water object.
• Indirect light, caustics, reflective surfaces. All materials work like in real life.
• Intuitive light and materials setting. It works like a photo studio
• Bump-map and displacement maps supported
• Built-in subdivision
• Sun light, spotlights and mesh-based lights
• Shallow Depth Of Field with one-click setup and camera-like controls
• Render scenes outside Studio, allowing you to continue work in Studio while rendering.
• Stop and resume any render.
• Multi-processor/hyper-threading ready.
• Network rendering support thanks to LuxRender
• Built-in UV Map+texture viewer

Reality brings the world of physically-based materials to Studio. Now you can shine a light in front of a Daz character and see that light reflected accurately on the cornea of the character. No need to use reflection maps that rarely match the lighting in your scene. Water can be fine tuned to any degree, changing color, clarity, and ripple amount.

Metal presets are available for Gold, Silver, Aluminum and Copper. Metal is reflective to any degree of polish and supports anisotropic reflections. Availability date and price to be announced. This is an image rendered by Daz Studio artist "Mattymanx" after just a few days of use of a pre-release version of Reality. Click on it for full size version:

The same exact scene rendered with the built-in renderer of Daz Studio, without using Reality:

Reality includes the ACSEL (Automatic Custom ShadEr Loading) technology that reads specially fine-tuned shaders for a given model. With ACSEL, content creators will be able to provide specially fine-tuned shader settings that will deliver the best realistic result for their Studio models right out of the box.

If you would like to learn about ACSEL and how it can make your products stand out please contact Paolo Ciccone: phciccone@gmail.com.

I take the occasion to thank the development team of LuxRender, for creating Lux, the amazing program that the Reality plug-in is designed to work with. Without Lux there would be no "Reality" so please be sure to go to http://www.luxrender.net and leave a thank you note for all the people who made this possible. Credit: bottle collection in video modeled by Jeremy Birn.

If you can find a way to make a plugin for Poser (maybe thru Python?), I'll bite ;o).

Laurie

Hi LaurieA.
At this time there is no plan for Poser. Daz Studio is free and this plugin will work with the free version.

Thank you for your interest.

Sorry, don't use DS :o).

Good luck tho!

Laurie

Impressive, downright spectacular on objects!!  Now let's see more humans!!

**nakamuram, thank you. Here you can see the high-quality images used in the video. That should give you a better idea of the level of detail. Look at the metal in the earrings for Victoria and the reflection in her eyes, all created by the fresnel effect on her cornea. The reflection is on the actual eye surface, and not on the iris.

http://preta3d.com/wp/reality-high-quality-images-from-the-video
**

I saw those -- I'm looking for full body shots in indoor and outdoor scenes.  And good closeups with realistic looking skin.

is it just me, or is the two images in the OP not the same scene, the first image has highlights coming from the left and behind the car, while the second image has the light coming from the right and infront of the car.

Also, the materials havent been configured in the non-reality render. which IMO gives a far too unrealistic before-and-after comparison.

you should have 1 render in Reality, then another render in Studio, but the studio render should be configured to attempt to copy the quality/realism of the Reality render. If your renderer is that good, the differences will stand out (prehaps more so) without having to resort to innacurate with/without shots

Quote - is it just me, or is the two images in the OP not the same scene, the first image has highlights coming from the left and behind the car, while the second image has the light coming from the right and infront of the car.

Also, the materials havent been configured in the non-reality render. which IMO gives a far too unrealistic before-and-after comparison.

you should have 1 render in Reality, then another render in Studio, but the studio render should be configured to attempt to copy the quality/realism of the Reality render. If your renderer is that good, the differences will stand out (prehaps more so) without having to resort to innacurate with/without shots

The DS Render is exactly what you would get without doing any adjustments to the surfaces which is how alot of us start off in DS.  The point of comparing these two was to show that that was as far as I need to go in DS for this scene.  All material adjustment for the Lux render was done via Reality.  I have thought of doing a pwSurface2 version as it is my forte for DS renders and the default DS shader cannot touch pwSurface2 in quality so I didn't even attempt to try and make it mimic LuxRender.  The light is in the same place on both though I dont fully understand how LuxRender does sunlight compared to what I am use to in DS for lighting.  However I do know that the car was sitting almost in front of the lower garage door in the Backstreets.  As a result it has a tall building to the right side of the pic which is shadowed cause of the sun and there is quite a bit of room and a lot of open space between the building off to the left of the car which means there is alot of sky to reflect in the car body and glass.  Also lets not forget that DS does not do IDL by default so it really throws things off in the DS image.

Thank you Mattymanx. What this example shows is that with Reality you get a lot of things working straight out of the box. The sun is a realistic sun, meaning that both the height and the rotation of it influence the quality of the light. You don't have to do anything else. If you position the sun closer to the horizon Reality will export it in that way and Lux will understand that that is sun at sunset or sunrise and therefore it has a more orange tone and the sky is taking the tones of that time of the day.

Reality allows you to focus on the artistic aspect of your scene instead of spending so much time tweaking the shaders to simulate realistic light.

Very nice but like LaurieA I don't use DS, a Poser version somewhere down the road would be an easy sell.

ps LuxRender is available in Linux native version as well will your plugin work with that version (DS can be run with Wine in Linux)?

Quote - Very nice but like LaurieA I don't use DS, a Poser version somewhere down the road would be an easy sell.

ps LuxRender is available in Linux native version as well will your plugin work with that version (DS can be run with Wine in Linux)?

Sorry, as I mentioned in a previous post, Poser simply lacks the infrastructure to make this possibile. My plugin is for Mac OS and Windows. There is no Linux version of Studio and the plugin is, well, a plugin so it runs inside the host application. You can use the Linux version of Lux on a Linux renderfarm to provide one or more render slaves. I used it several times and it works perfectly.

Sitting here reading the thread I just suddenly thought we can actually have access to this for Poser, it would mean having DS installed & exporting our scenes as pz3 files from Poser & opening them in DS.

It's still worth asking one of our Poser code wizards to see if something like this is possible, cos I WANT for Poser. ;)

Someone in the Luxrender forums says they are working on a Python script to integrate Poser and Luxrender. I don't know who it is or what stage of completion it's in (if any) or even what it will include.

Laurie

Quote - Sitting here reading the thread I just suddenly thought we can actually have access to this for Poser, it would mean having DS installed & exporting our scenes as pz3 files from Poser & opening them in DS.

Well ..yeah  I use DS just for the aniMate+ plugin to Combine motion clips from different sources and then export them to animated PZ2 files for poser.
which are ultimately rendered in C4D.
This Bridge to LUX  will work with the FREE version of D/S with the FREE Lux renderer
so those interested should consider using D/S just a a gate way to that bridge.
As the Plugin creator has no plans to develop a poser version.

Cheers

Is this plugin focused more towards the new enthusiast rather than than the hardcore realist? If I was to purchase this plugin, I would want to first see how this renderer can improve an image like the attached, which already looks extremely realistic for a pure render.  While this has been rendered in poser, I know from first hand experience you can get the same results in D|S (I just prefer poser, im used to it)

again I wasnt trying to be rude or put your plugin down, if the improvement in realism over the standard renderer is substantial I will be buying, because like others said, D|S can be used as a gateway from poser to this. But for me personally, it would need to be quite an improvement

Quote - > Quote - is it just me, or is the two images in the OP not the same scene, the first image has highlights coming from the left and behind the car, while the second image has the light coming from the right and infront of the car.

Also, the materials havent been configured in the non-reality render. which IMO gives a far too unrealistic before-and-after comparison.

you should have 1 render in Reality, then another render in Studio, but the studio render should be configured to attempt to copy the quality/realism of the Reality render. If your renderer is that good, the differences will stand out (prehaps more so) without having to resort to innacurate with/without shots

The DS Render is exactly what you would get without doing any adjustments to the surfaces which is how alot of us start off in DS.  The point of comparing these two was to show that that was as far as I need to go in DS for this scene.  All material adjustment for the Lux render was done via Reality.  I have thought of doing a pwSurface2 version as it is my forte for DS renders and the default DS shader cannot touch pwSurface2 in quality so I didn't even attempt to try and make it mimic LuxRender.  The light is in the same place on both though I dont fully understand how LuxRender does sunlight compared to what I am use to in DS for lighting.  However I do know that the car was sitting almost in front of the lower garage door in the Backstreets.  As a result it has a tall building to the right side of the pic which is shadowed cause of the sun and there is quite a bit of room and a lot of open space between the building off to the left of the car which means there is alot of sky to reflect in the car body and glass.  Also lets not forget that DS does not do IDL by default so it really throws things off in the DS image.

Wolf there's already a plugin for C4D for LuxRender so you can use it now if you wanted.

Quote - Wolf there's already a plugin for C4D for LuxRender so you can use it now if you wanted.

I am well aware of this but as a C4D /Vray/Modo User the uber slow Lux renderer is not Viable for my work and yes I have had  Lux installed for over 4 months and have tested it.

I was Addressing the people who are requesting a poser version.
Lux is a stand alone non bias physically correct  open source render engine
that uses its own material system much like Maxwell .
what pred has done is create a bridge from from D/S to Lux that apparently
converts the D/S Mats for the Lux Material System
 I say Bravo to him!!
For anyone wanting to use his plugin only has pay for his plugin
as D/S is Free as well as Lux.
A wise Market approach IMHO.

Cheers.

I wish it is available soon, looks a great alternative.

Thank you wolf. Regarding availability, we are doing the final testing and should be ready in a few weeks.

Quote -
For anyone wanting to use his plugin only has pay for his plugin
as D/S is Free as well as Lux.
A wise Market approach IMHO.

That's hard to argue against.

Hi all.

Here is a video, just released, that shows you how Reality works:

Introduction to Reality 1.0 (HD)

Enjoy!

Saw the video over on the DAZ forums
quite Impressive!!
very complete plugin and Mac OSX  Support as well.
I posted a link to your Video over at CG society.org
I wish you much success with this plugin.

Cheers

Thanks again wolf359, much appreciated.

I am majorly impressed, I have to say. You did a wonderful job. Makes me almost think about using DS...at least to render with the Reality plugin ;o)....lol. I have DSA, I just never use it because I don't like DS...I'm too Poserized, but I might have to make an exception...

Laurie

Very clear and informative video, great job with that. I am looking forward to the release of Reality, it will be a great asset to have and will help alleviate some of the frustrating aspects of using Daz Studio.

I just watched the video. Very impressive!

Will it be possible to save the Lux scene to a user-defined path, so that it can be rendered on, say, a different machine? I'm running Linux and can currently only use Daz Studio via a virtual Windows machine. But obviously it would be a bit silly to use that virtual machine for rendering instead of the main OS.

Quote - I just watched the video. Very impressive!

Thanks!

Quote -
Will it be possible to save the Lux scene to a user-defined path, so that it can be rendered on, say, a different machine?

That's exactly what Reality does. It exports the scene to an external file and the invokes Lux with that scene file. You can save the scene file, move it another computer, do anything you want :)

Quote -
That's exactly what Reality does. It exports the scene to an external file and the invokes Lux with that scene file. You can save the scene file, move it another computer, do anything you want :)

Excellent!

odf, I'm using Linux as well & I installed DS through Wine1.2 yesterday, I'm no expert but it seems to be working. You have problems with wine?

ps That video introduction is amazing, I see a long & bright future for your plugin & LuxRender. :D

Thank you Lucifer_The_Dark, I'm glad you liked it.

Quote - odf, I'm using Linux as well & I installed DS through Wine1.2 yesterday, I'm no expert but it seems to be working. You have problems with wine?

Let's just say once Reality is available, I will have all the more reason to try and get D|S to work under Wine. Honestly, it hasn't been a big priority so far.

Even when running D|S under Wine, I might still prefer using the Linux version of Lux instead of the Windows version via Wine, though. Or someone else might want to send off the render to a more powerful machine after setting up everything nicely. So it's good to know that there's a scene file that can be copied around.

**templargfx, 

that is an excellent image, one of the best I have ever seen out of Poser.  But stop and think how much time and effort that took to achive and never mind the render time.  If you take the girl out even and just had the scene and car that would still take a long while to make all your adjustments.  But if you did that in Lux through Reality then it would be load set, load car, position car, lauch Reality, make your adjustments there and trust me it doesnt take much once you learn the basics, then hit render button and its off to Lux. 

See this post by Paolo about Lux, times and my 1 hour version of the same car render from lux:  http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=2443046#2443046

I mentioned this over at the Daz forums as well:

**I was setting up a pwS2 version of the car pic and gave up cause of all the work involved in getting it to look good. Before I used Reality/LuxRender I had no issues with sitting there for hours messing with surfaces in pwS2 but now, there is no comparison. Its not worth your time to mess with HSS or pwS2 or any other shader like them.

When you go to use Reality, my best advice is to forget what you know about setting up surfaces in DS. **

****odf,

Are you using VirtualBox for your windows system?  If so you can give the guest OS direct access to any folder on the host machine and move all your scenes there.  Then you can render in Lux thats installed on your Linux OS.****

**

Quote - **
**odf,

Are you using VirtualBox for your windows system?  If so you can give the guest OS direct access to any folder on the host machine and move all your scenes there.  Then you can render in Lux thats installed on your Linux OS.

Yep, that's the general plan. I guess what I was getting at was how well Reality will support that kind of strategy, that is, whether the path and naming scheme for scene files will be configurable.

More character renders, please :)

Quote - More character renders, please :)

Indeed! The materials most Poser and D|S user will be most interested in are skin, hair, fabric and leather. The more realistic the scenes that we render look, the sillier it will seem to have dolls with plastic-looking skin standing around in them.

Yes, I think cars and water are things that many rendering engines are doing a good job at; at least the reflection tends to create a nice look in general. but the integration of characters and the translation of their shaders would be the key feature for me if I had to chose a rendering engine that is connected to DAZ or Poser. no more dolls!

So when will this be on sale? :)

Quote - So when will this be on sale? :)

DAZ has picked up the distribution for Reality. The plugin has been delivered to them and they are working on the final details for the launch.
More details here: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=144452

Thank you for your interest.