Whilst I have reservations about starting what must seem a competitive thread to Laurie's fine Pose2Lux Questions and Answers thread, it's quite obvious from reading the posts in that thread that the questions being presented were asked by individuals who've already done a fair bit of work with this tool, or with its predecessor. Introducing total newb questions into that mix would slow the direction of the thread, which is why I decided to start this one.

Also, this thread is not intended to take the place of the fine User's Guide so close to being published. One could take it as the ramblings of a wannabe who feels the enticement of a new option for rendering a scene, one that will give better detail, better lighting, and so on.

The enticement is offset by the challenge of a new approach to materials. It's a bit like going from procedural to object-orientation: everything suddenly changes, and you can't draw on your experience. Indeed, your experience will actually hold you back (a bit like going from Poser to Daz Studio, or vice-versa).

So, the first thing one looks at is: what do I want to render in Luxrender? Well, sheesh, everything! Should I start by trying to do an entire scene? Probably not.

I'll start tomorrow with a really simple scene... and go from there.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

My suggestion? Set up something simple with a few different kinds of materials: skin, shiny things, dull things, some glass, etc. and see what the Pose2Lux Luxrender mat presets look like. Then, when you have things in Luxrender, play with it's settings and see what they do. You can always start over (and you will, more than once....lol). And it's fun!

ps: I have this weird fascination with turning lights on and off in Luxrender as it's rendering...lol. Simple amusement for a simple mind ;).

Laurie

Thanks Laurie... will do as you suggest, and will be posting my experiences here.

Turning lights on and off? during a render? This is a whole new renderer, isn't it... sheesh! Firefly has a bit of catching up to do, I reckon... being left in the dust. :blink:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Yep, you can turn the lights on and off while it's rendering...lolol. It's quite - mesmerizing...lmao.

Laurie

and you can pause and resume renders, even save them, exit lux, do something else, then reload lux and then the render and carry on :D

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

To save a render in Luxrender:

Go to File/Save FLM

Give your file a name and save it.

To resume a render in Luxrender:

Open Luxrender and go to File/Resume FLM. First, it will ask you to load the .lxs file and then once that's chosen, the .flm file for it. After loading, the render will resume where you left off.

When exiting Luxrender, always choose File/Save and Exit. Note that with some very complicated scenes with a lot of geometry, it may take awhile for Luxrender to write the .flm.

Laurie

Thank you for all those pointers, Laurie and Magnus.

So, I pretty much set up my scene by pretty much removing all shaders and leaving only colourMaps and bumpMaps. No connections anywhere to Alt_anything. Took out the building, simplified to BB water shader to just a colour, and had the poor girl stand nude in the water wondering what had become of her dress. So: Charlotte / Koz's bob, clothPlane with colour and skyDome. 3 lights: IBL, pointlight (sun) and specular light.

In Pose2Lux, went with 'analyse scene', and assigned default materials. The sun was the pointlight, the sky was IBL. Left other values to whatever the default was.

Brought up LuxRender, which, to my surprise, started rendering immediately after I chose the scene. The output was rubbish. So, no makeArt button here either. As in good-ol' time-honoured tradition, tried to go with defaults and created rubbish.

Time to hit the books.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Okay, second go ... I noticed that the cornea and eye surface had been assigned an emitter property by default. Not sure why that is or how to get rid of it.

I've done as Laurie has suggested and changed the pointlight to a infinite, and restored the IBL (intensity 25%) and got rid of the specular light.

Oh! I think I know what is giving the cornea emitter status: ambient_value in my original shader. Changed that real quick to 0. No render yet, kids... at least, nothing to look at, really.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Yeah, the exporter will try and pick materials for you, but you're much better off chosing them yourself ;)

Hopefully, you didn't detach your image map nodes?

Oh, and you can't use a skydome....yet. It'll block the light from your sun ;)

Laurie

There is an emitters panel in the exporter. Go there after you've assigned your materials and make sure that NO skin is in the window on the left. If it is, highlight all the skin material zones and transfer them to the window on the right. If you don't have any mesh-based emitters in your scene, push the red button and disable emitters altogether. There's an example of what I'm talking about in the user guide.

Laurie

Hmmmm, noticing some odd behaviour... if I am editing my scene whilst Pose2Lux is open, certain things don't seem to work. Like, I added a light by mistake. So, it was selected, right? But the little rubbish bin in the light widget didn't show until I closed Pose2Lux. Also, in the mat room, when copying and pasting a shader (on I fixed), the new shader didn't display (values or colour or anything) until I clicked on the value or colour.

Not sure what's up with that.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Oh! Okay - deleting the skyDome... sheesh, I'll miss that... it provides the piccie for my backdrop. As in clouds -n- stuff.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

ah. poser limitation : you get unpredictable results trying to edit the scene in poser while it's running a Python file. 

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

You need to close Pose2Lux if you change something in the scene. If you don't want to lose your material choices, save your scene materials (File/Save scene materials) before you close it. Then, make your change, restart P2L and analyze the scene. Then load the saved materials. Don't forget to change/assign materials from anything new in the scene.

Laurie

Quote - Oh! Okay - deleting the skyDome... sheesh, I'll miss that... it provides the piccie for my backdrop. As in clouds -n- stuff.

Snarly's workin' on it...lol.

Laurie

Okay, approaching all this a bit more thoughtfully. Have set Inf(85%) and IBL(25%) as sun and sky. Figured out how to save stuff, so I'm not reinventing the wheel each time (I'm a slow learner, hence the "challenged" in the topic title :blink: ). The render is looking a bit better, except for the shadow areas, like under her chin. So, in LuxRender, the settings are: Linear kernel, Sens: 100, Exp: 1/500, FStop: 16 (set that to 8 - weirds me out how Lux just keeps on chugging away despite what you do...) gamma 2.2.

So far?

So, I guess the stuff under her chin disappears, eventually? Or maybe I need to play with shadows... for the lights.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

set reduce fireflys to 2 on the export panel ;)

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

Thanks, Magnus... will do.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

The bright spots are called fireflies; they are the inevitable artifact of unbiased renderers and, unless there are bugs, they slooooooooooooo.........oooooly disappear. Creating less of them and killing them faster is an ongoing research subject in the field of unbiased rendering.

I have seen some suggestions about killing them with postprocessing; I will do some experiments in the weekend and will report the results.

Dear RobynsVeil, more than learning you will have to un-learn dastardly tricks required by scanline renderers or half-baked raytracers like Firefly. Unbiased renderes strive to simulate the real life process of image formation. Just as an example, some time ago I was reading a document about Maxwell renderer (one of the big boys of the field) and it stated that, in the model of the "camera" you are using to "shoot" the "picture", you can select the shape of the shutter...

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

erm Alex?

in Luxrender .8 a setting known as "Reduce Firefly's" was introduced and on 2 or 3 removes them completely. (you can set it to 10, but I've never had to do that

 

EDIT http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/New_User_Tips_and_Tricks#Fireflies the relevant setting. P2L has a setting for this on the export page)

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

Actually, it hasn't, yet. This is with Reduce Fireflys set to 5:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

ah on her skin there?

how long has that been baking?

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

Does anybody know where i can get BBwater shader?. All I can find is a pic of the material room of the shader. Im afraid to duplicate it myself because it looks a little confusing. Is there a material file anywhere?

My Renderosity Store

Almost two hours, and no improvement.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Hmmmm, noticing some odd behaviour... if I am editing my scene whilst Pose2Lux is open, certain things don't seem to work. Like, I added a light by mistake. So, it was selected, right? But the little rubbish bin in the light widget didn't show until I closed Pose2Lux. Also, in the mat room, when copying and pasting a shader (on I fixed), the new shader didn't display (values or colour or anything) until I clicked on the value or colour.

Not sure what's up with that.

 

Hi Robyn, welcome aboard!

Pose2Lux is intended to be used similarly to the Poser render screen - while you're using it you can't make any changes to the Poser scene. When Pose2Lux is run most ordinary Poser 'events' don't get processed until Pose2Lux closes, when they all get processed at once! Best to treat Pose2Lux as 'modal' even though it hasn't been programmed that way.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

> Quote - > Quote - Oh! Okay - deleting the skyDome... sheesh, I'll miss that... it provides the piccie for my backdrop. As in clouds -n- stuff. > > Snarly's workin' on it...lol. > > Laurie

Skydomes are tricky ... very tricky. It doesn't help that there are a gadzillion of them out there, all with different UV mappings'n'stuff. Some have changed the internal name of the rotation dials too, which means Pose2Lux can't find out which bit of the sky to show.

I have it working with BB's free hemisphere. That works just grand. I think I might have to limit Pose2Lux's support to just BB's hemisphere or dome, or any other skydome with matching UV implementation.

Here is a test render from version 0.8.6 (not uploaded yet) showing the output from a scene using BB's hemi. The lighting isn't great because the sky map is a JPG, but you get the idea. Pose2Lux will work better with an HDR image attached to the hemi, of course.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Quote - Almost two hours, and no improvement.

This doesn't look like fireflies to me, just a shadowed area that hasn't yet received enough samples per pixel to remove the noise.

The length of time for the render isn't the key data - more relevant is the samples per pixel (S/p) value, shown in the statistics bar at the bottom of the Luxrender screen.

Your scene has a lot of water in it which may be taking a lot of computation, thereby reducing the rate at which S/p increases. If you've used the water from the Pose2Lux libraries then this will certainly be what's happening because it is 'real' water, not just a water-coloured surface. Luxrender water needs to be bounded, i.e. have a river/sea bed, shore, banks or whatever or (a) it won't look right at all and (b) will take ages to calculate because it is effectively infinitely deep :-)

I wouldn't expect those shadow areas to clear up much until you get to around 400 S/p or so.

Ironically, if I'm right then setting 'Reduce fireflies' to 5 will only make matters worse because that involves additional calculations which slow down the render, and slow down the reate at which S/p increases.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Quote - Does anybody know where i can get BBwater shader?. All I can find is a pic of the material room of the shader. Im afraid to duplicate it myself because it looks a little confusing. Is there a material file anywhere?

Is this for use in Luxrender or firefly?

As great as BB's water shader is for use in Firefly, it won't give good results in Luxrender.

I can make more Luxrender water materials which are suitable for water which is not clear, like lake or pond water. They are not distributed with Pose2Lux because they require the use of tabbed data files and I didn't want to confuse people!

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

If you want to try Pose2Lux with BB's hemisphere, here's a zip file with Pose2Lux 0.8.6 in. It's just the .pyc file, not the whole shebang. Obviously, remove the '.txt' extension, put there just to keep Rendo happy.

You'll need a Skydome material in XML format to make use of the feature. Here'a simple one:

   
       
       
   

I'll build this material into Pose2Lux for the next proper update.

So, make a scene with BB's EnvHemisphere (NOT EnvDome), make an XML file with the above material in it and load it into Pose2Lux, apply the 'Skydome' material to the Skydome in the Materials screen and it will all work very nicely.

It might work on other skydomes too, but only if they are compatible with the EnvHemisphere.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Actually, I've just packaged up 0.8.6 with the Skydome material built in, just to make it easier for ya. See main Pose2Lux thread for download details.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

i'd like to make a clarification about my posts.

I own Vue 9 Infinite so I already have a pretty professional rendering solution for Poser content; my personal quest is to check whether, using LuxRender, I can get a better Quality/Render Time trade off w.r.t. to Vue.

On the other hand, I assume that most of the readers of this thread do not own Vue 9: for you, Pose2Lux/LuxRender is nothing short of a dream; you just have to learn patience.

Your only free (as beer) alternatives are the PoseRay/POV-Ray path (not trivial and POV-Ray is starting to lag behind w.r.t. to render quality) or the convoluted export-to-OBJ/Blender/LuxBlend/LuxRender path (typical of open source advocates let's-flail-ourselves "workflow").

The Vue way requires at least the 3D Import module (129$) and the Render Up module (69$) so it is a 198$ thing (or something similar using other versions, there are as many Vue bundles as stars in the sky!).

Other stuff means Lightwave/Modo/Maxwell Render/V-Ray (and 4 digit price tags).

The thing I read about fireflies elimitation is based upon the idea that fireflies are apparently always brighter than what they should and appear in different places in different render runs so, instead of creating e.g. one 500S/p render, you create 2 250S/p ones, with all parameters equal and then blend the two images in a program like GIMP using the Darken Only overlay mode: this way, you select, pixel per pixel, the darker of the two. Fireflies should go away. As I wrote, I will experiment and report.

P.S.: dear Snarlygribbly, your release speed makes Blender development look like a snail!

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

Okay, wee update. I'm finally getting my pea-brain around the idea that I have to sort-of wait a bit for things to happen. Like the shadows which I thought were noisy (fireflies??), but no... they just hadn't had time to be fully processed. Thanks for your notes on this.

So, an hour into the render, we're at this:

So, a lot of playing yet to do... and sheesh, the lights / materials / options! You could get a Uni degree on this.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

So far, I've "exported" 3 scenes created in PoserPro 2010 to LuxRender via Pose2Lux. This programme promises great things, the most important being opening Poser user's views to consider alternative render options to Firefly: they are out there! LuxRender is but one of many.

My workflow has been typically this (no different, really, to what I already do): go first into the material room after everything's been set up and posed before invoking Pose2Lux. You will find that most of your materials need simplifying. About the only node that seem to have much use at this point (and I'm happy to be corrected on this by ThoseThatKnow) is the ImageMap, preferentially connected to the Diffuse_Color channel on PoserSurface or the Bump channel. Those two give the most consistent results. Actually, no idea where bump really plays much of a role, since the Pose2Lux material presets may affect that... don't know. There are still several unknowns about what actually comes across and what doesn't. Safest bet seems to be: get the ImageMap right, and chose your materials from what Pose2Lux has to offer.

So, now to have a closer look at the current list of materials in Pose2Lux.

Oh, and current render (5 hours in):

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Gorgeous lighting on the architecture. Someday you might give PoseRay+Kerkythea a try. You have a choice of several biased  & unbiased render modes - might be faster as well. Be interesting to see how the quality compares. Looking good, Keep it up!

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Thanks, LMckensie. I actually have had a play with Kerkythea quite some time ago (before the fork) but it had issues with transmapped hair which were never fully resolved. I was as much a nuisance on their forum as I am here :lol:

I'd be happy to give PoseRay/POVRay another go... it's been a while.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Ah, that was you :-) The Poseray->Kerkythea exporter does the basics pretty well. Haven't messed too much with Poser figures though - I prefer Vue but since I got network rendering working with Kerky, I'm playing with it a bit more on occasion. POVRay is long in the tooth but it's still a solid render engine depending on your needs. I can 'happily' spend hours figuring out why an API call isn't working or tweaking a multi-table SQL join, but I'll leave the serious Island of Dr. Moreau Poser interbreeding to you - you're good at it!

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

If anybody tries POV-Ray I advise to get 3.7; though it is marked as Release Candidate is OK and quite faster then 3.6.

Quality wise, Lux (obviously) blasts POV-Ray but POV-Ray might still have its place if you plan to add POV-specific code to the scene in addition to Poser exports (a naked Vicky surrounded by isocacti?)

Personally, being by now comfortable with tools like Vue, Blender, Wings3D and SketchUp, have shelved POV-Ray under the fond-memories category.

As far as I know Kerkythea development is, using a DAZ-ism, "on hold" as (understandably) its developers are focused on the commercial Thea engine.

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

Attached Link: http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=84944

*cough*

they announced an update to Kerkythea - Echo Boost - Yesterday.

*"Dear friends,

it has been a (very) long time since Kerkythea 2008 (3 whole years). You know that we are not going to abandon Kerkythea; it was and is a work made with a lot of love. Even more, we have high respect towards the KT community that made KT the way it is; a powerful, easy to use, standalone, free renderer. I still remember the first days, when the software had only a small window with a few buttons and one render mode. These were really days of great significance that changed the future.

And so, here we are! We have good news for next KT update! There is a new version being under testing right now. The new version does not come with any changes (with respect to the user interface or render engines) but it comes with 2 significant improvements: 64-bit builds and speed increase of 50% or more! This is why, we decided to call the new build "Echo Boost".

We are very happy about the new version and we will make this available as soon as possible.

best wishes"*

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

That's good news. I like Kerky too ;).

Laurie

Oh cool! Thanks for the heads-up, Magnus!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Thanks Magnus - I won't even mention Dextromethorphan :-) The SketchUp->Kerkythea plugin seems to work pretty well so a new version of K will be an excuse for more google warehouse rummaging.

Thanks alexcoppo. I'll probably stick with 3.6 for now since I don't use it that much, but I did see HTTPov which I hadn't noticed before. I may give it a try since I never could get SMPov to work.

 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Sick in bed, which is giving me an excellent opportunity to re-read all those 'old' LuxPose posts again. Yeah, the code is still above my head, but there's a lot of ideas on how to get Pose2Lux really working beautifully.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - they announced an update to Kerkythea - Echo Boost - Yesterday.

...somebody keeping his promises... a cold spell is coming in hell. Anyway, thanks a lot for having corrected me.

Bye!!!

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

Back to Pose2Lux... a few discoveries and more questions.

I'm finding scene prep is a big time-sink in this. Since I don't really know which nodes are supported at this point, I'm pretty much staying with ImageMaps and a few anisotropic and Blinn nodes... that's it.

Until I can reliably use OpenCL, CPU rendering with an i3 is slow. Very slow. 2hours and 30 minutes for only 56 S/p (samples/pixel). Which is fine, but keep that in mind when deciding you want to try this.

This scene is probably a bit complex: it's Stonemason's "Streets of the Mediterranean" - one huge prop I decided to leave intact, V4, Nerd 3D's Joan dress, forget-who's Isabel hair and earrings and Idler268's candy sandals. Wouldn't you know it: the Mediterranean set had a LOT of displacement stuff throughout. Yeah, I know I could have just ticked a box in Pose2Lux, but that wouldn't have satisfied my OCD, so I went through the process of modifying each and every material zone. Yep, labour of love. Heaps of material zone in this prop.

V4 has already been done, the Joan dress took only a moment, same for the hair and the shoes, but here questions arose. Is the reflective channel input supported? I would think that the sphereMap node wouldn't be, so what to plug in there if it is, I wonder. Here is where getting a better feel for what those lovely xml files create in terms of Lux materials would be quite beneficial.

Need to have a read, I suppose.

So, still only 61 samples/pixel after 3 hours, 40 minutes:

If you wish to appreciate that resolution, click on the image.

Going to see what's out there on creating those materials.... any pointers are welcome!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

While it is still only at 60-odd s/p, that is shaping up to be lovely, I couldn't imagine doing all those materials.  Well I can as I am trying to strip down the materials on some fairly large scenery at the moment myself, another Stonemason set.  I am questioning my sanity after reading your description Robynsveil.

The reflection question is a good one, or which lux materials handle reflection in them already to be picked apart and pawed through.  Maybe I can even wrap my numb brain around some of it. Okay, may be over rating my ability here with numberish things, but I can try and bang my head on my desk with the best of 'em.

Also, here would be another question, is there anyway that anyone may know to desaturate the colours in a texture in Lux?  (I usually us Bagginsbill's albino shader on a character I would love to do a picture of in Lux, but obviously that isn't going to work).  I know, I want to run before I crawl.  LOL.

You and I are singing off the same page, Rhionon.

Workflow for working those Stonemason shaders in Poser (and the mat room) was this:

set Diffuse_Color to white (if not already so)
Set Diffuse_Value to .8

... which of course brought up questions, because very often, the diffuse_color was like IColor(91,91,91) or a shade of grey with diffuse_value at 1. So, if you figure that grey is some percentage of white, and then I did a 91/255 * 100 = 35 (or .35) to give me a number diffuse_value might need to be... well, that didn't work right, for some reason. So, I'm lost, I just went and set color to white and value to .8, in the end. More than willing to be told off on this point by those-that-know - it seems we covered this somewhere in the distant past, but memory fails.

Then I plug the colourMap (ImageMap) into that diffuse_color channel. For all textures except those involving transmaps, I set filtering to None. No idea if that has any bearing on LuxRender or not. I know it's important to do for the Firefly renderer.
When I have a material the way I want it - and there's actually a few other things I do - I save the shader as an mt5 in a folder in my Materials library. That way, you'll see a picture of it to so you can use it later... which you will. Turns out there's only a dozen or so textures for like this whole scene. He's pretty clever, that Stonemason. Bump is left there, displacement is disconnected.

For desaturating a Poser colour, I'd be using the hsv node. However, testing in Lux has shown it isn't translated/recognised... only the fewest nodes are. I'm scrounging around to get some idea of how to build a shader in xml... going to start by finishing that LuxPose thread first.

Oh, up to 71 samples/pixel... and thank you for the kind words, Rhionon!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Okay, just messing around in the LuxRender forum and saw the "material" for jade, in lxm format? Which would be like xml? Sort-of? Am I on to something here? I feel like I do need to read the rest of that LuxPose thread, but I'm way too excited! What a goldmine!!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Right. Digging right into this: they had some neat piccies of the different materials on the wiki so you'd have an idea what they looked like, but no description or clue how to make these work for what we're doing.

Good beginning. Looked all over the wiki, and finally, under the developer's section, found something that looked a bit more promising: the definition of the .lxs scene files:

An .lxs file is an ASCII text file with a full description of the scene to be rendered. As scene descriptions can get quite large, there is a mechanism to break the scene description down into more manageable pieces: the description can be spread over several text files.

The ones I'm interested in are these:

A main scene file with extension '.lxs'. For example: 'scene.lxs'
*An included Material file with suffif '-mat' and extension '.lxm'. For example: 'scene-mat.lxm'*particularly the latter. HUGE question: when we get those xml files, how are they related to these lxm??

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Looking at the wiki now where LaurieA explains some of the tricks of the trade with regards to editing/making materials. Clever lass, that LaurieA. I'm envious!

Curious about those paint parameters:

"float uroughness" [-0.258086156304]

"float vroughness" [0.258086156304]

How the heck did they come up (you come up with??) those numbers? trial and error?

Oh, and under Mixes, I see leather, and reference to some Blender procedurals, which I'm sort-of familiar with. Now it starts to sort-of tie together a bit. A wee bit. :biggrin:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Jeez, this programme is fun! We're up to 8 hrs, 35 min and I've messed with the lights and exposure settings and f-stop, and now things don't look so flat. Just shy of 80 samples/pixels --still:

Please be aware: the linked file is big. But you can't really appreciate the low sample/pixel issue without it.

Some time ago, someone asked if one could display images that looked like they weren't done in Poser. I've rendered this in Poser first - hardly took any time at all, even with IDL and everything, but yeah... it looked like it. This still has the characteristics - V4 is a dead give-away - but I dunno... something about the lighting: Bagginsbill's skydome never looked so good. And you can't even see it! It's just there, painted with that last piccie of yours, Laurie... the sunset one? Really has that evening feeling. Current LuxRender settings are:

Lamp Gain 30
Default Gain .85
Sensitivity 100
Exposure 1/60 (was 1/500)
FStop 8
Gamma 2.2

Don't know enough to fiddle with the other stuff, so I won't. Yet.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Curious about those paint parameters: "float uroughness" [-0.258086156304]

"float vroughness" [0.258086156304]

How the heck did they come up (you come up with??) those numbers? trial and error?

Found it, I think:

Something ya'll may not know and I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before or if it's even come up yet:

A friend and I found out something about tiling textures from Poser and how Luxrender interprets them. Poser divides a map in order to tile it. Luxrender multiplies it. So, in Luxrender - from a direct export from Poser where the tiling is 10x10 - you'd get "float vscale" [-0.10000000] and "float uscale" [0.1000000]. If you leave it like this, you'll get a white texture in Luxrender. If, however, you change that to "float vscale" [-10.0] and "float uscale" [10.0] you'll get your proper tiling.

Some examples:

If your tiling from Poser is listed as .05, change it to 20.0
If your tiling from Poser is listed as .2, change it to 5.0
If your tiling from Poser is listed as .5, change it to 2.0

and so on ;o).

Laurie

So, I'll just finish reading and shut up for now...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

noooo

thats been fixed and is not needed in P2l. (that was needed for luxpose)

 

I can help more later... having a new furnace fitted right now...

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

No rush on anything, Magnus... see to your furnace... going to bed in a minute (in Oz)... and thanks for the offer!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

LOL Robyn - if anything I can see how interested you are in the script and that's nice. Seems there's been a sort of lukewarm reception this time, but I guess these things do tend to start slow ;).

As for the tiling thing, Snarly's already thought of it. He actually went out and read everything about Luxrender and LuxPose and LuxBlend even before and during his making of the script. So, chances are, Snarly's already covered things like that or we've found it and he's fixed it already.

Truth be told there really haven't been that may bugs in the script so far, which rather amazes me ;). The one that was the most fun was the bug where my figure's clothes would fly off after the script ran. Snarly kept insisting that was not a bug, but a feature, but he fixed it nonetheless...lol.

And for Luxrender material parameters, I refer to the wiki. I use a combo of these two wiki pages/section:

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Scene_file_format_0.8#Common_Material_Parameters

This page gives most of the materials actual parameters and values.

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxRender_Materials

That one is the one with the small image previews. However, if you click on the name of the material above the image, it will take you to a page that at least explains what each parameter is a little bit. So, between the two pages, you might start to get a better understanding :).

I know all this is a lot to swallow, but there's a learning curve with everything and this one is a smaller curve than most, honest ;).

Laurie

Quote - I know all this is a lot to swallow, but there's a learning curve with everything and this one is a smaller curve than most, honest ;). Laurie

Hi Laurie... actually, I'm in this tooth and nail, gonna claw my way through. Poser as a renderer is pretty much done AFAIC. So, I'll really study all this how-to-make materials as best I can and when i get stuck, as I invariably will, I'll be glad to know I can kind-of give you my issues to ponder... gratefully, of course. Thanks for the links: I will carefully study them first, though!

Oh, and the script is really clean - been doing very little else for the past few days, without any dramas.

Robyn

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote -

...Some time ago, someone asked if one could display images that looked like they weren't done in Poser. I've rendered this in Poser first - hardly took any time at all, even with IDL and everything, but yeah... it looked like it. This still has the characteristics - V4 is a dead give-away - but I dunno... something about the lighting: Bagginsbill's skydome never looked so good. And you can't even see it! It's just there, painted with that last piccie of yours, Laurie... the sunset one? Really has that evening feeling. Current LuxRender settings are: Lamp Gain 30
Default Gain .85
Sensitivity 100
Exposure 1/60 (was 1/500)
FStop 8
Gamma 2.2

Don't know enough to fiddle with the other stuff, so I won't. Yet.

 

That image looks really, really nice Robyn...I like it ;).

I know what you mean about the lighting too. There's just that extra "sumthin'-sumthin'" about Luxrender renders compared to Poser. I think softness is one. Shadows most definitely. Firefly, IMVHO, gives a very vivid, stark render. There's nothing much of depth to it, although it could just be my use of it (or lack thereof) that causes that. Some folks definitely have a way with it that I don't.

I think overall, Luxrender just LOOKS better and if that means I need to render a little longer, than so be it...hehe. I probably won't use Firefly anymore.

Oh, and bb's skydome? It's not there, not really. Not in Luxrender anyway. More of Snarly's crafty trickery ;). Somehow, he uses the mapping of the dome as a starting point and then during export it gets transformed somehow into a Luxrender IBL light. No geometry gets transferred - at least, not the way I understand it as he explained it to me ;). Only the image on the dome gets sent to the .lxs file. For someone that claims he doesn't program all that well, he's done a very good job so far. I just can't be happier :).

Laurie

You might have clicked on the image and seen just how grainy things are, even after 12 hours of render. Mind you, resize the image and it's fine... photographs are grainy too, so it's not a drama. I guess my question is this: what can you guess might account for the relatively low sample-per-pixel count (82 S/p in 12 hrs) after such a long time rendering? Not the fastest horse in the west:

i3
4 gig RAM
Win 7 64-bit
CPU rendering only - have not tried the GPU version

Oh, and I do notice if I just leave the thing to render and say I want to to anything with the machine after an hour or so, the thing takes forever to respond. Menus drop down eventually, dialogues open in their own sweet time. Why is this? Do you guys get this?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

The grain of the image has a photographic look, it does not look like the usual GC noise. It might work very well as it is (make the whole thing black and white and then sepia/bluish silver color it and you have a 40's or 50's photograph) or it might be manageable with programs like NeatImage.

About rendering: a mad proposal for geekiest among us. Lux is available also on Linux and does not require a graphical UI. I have seen reports of people making personal supercomputers out of clusters of cut-to-the-bone motherboards with Linux installed with price tags less than 2500$...

Another alternative, when Lux will have a good support for CUDA, is the option of making a dedicated PC with 3/4 nVidia graphic cards with high-end processors; it is not a demented proposal, I have described nothing more than a high-end gaming box.

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

Quote - The grain of the image has a photographic look, it does not look like the usual GC noise. It might work very well as it is (make the whole thing black and white and then sepia/bluish silver color it and you have a 40's or 50's photograph) or it might be manageable with programs like NeatImage. About rendering: a mad proposal for geekiest among us. Lux is available also on Linux and does not require a graphical UI. I have seen reports of people making personal supercomputers out of clusters of cut-to-the-bone motherboards with Linux installed with price tags less than 2500$...

Another alternative, when Lux will have a good support for CUDA, is the option of making a dedicated PC with 3/4 nVidia graphic cards with high-end processors; it is not a demented proposal, I have described nothing more than a high-end gaming box.

Good points, Alex. My old box was dual-boot XP-Pro/Ubuntu 10.04 so using that slick OS is a consideration, absolutely.I'm a happy user of Ubuntu, and staunch supporter.

Also, I forgot to mention the one thing that is reasonably good about my system: NVidia 460-series card that supports OpenCL. No idea how to get all that working, though. Is there somewhere one can flip a switch or download a driver to make it work in Lux? Or is that technology still a bit rough around the edges and needs a bit of refinement before it will behave predictably?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Attached Link: http://developer.amd.com/GPU/AMDAPPSDK/DOWNLOADS/Pages/default.aspx

i downloaded the sdk from AMD to get opencl lux working on my box. & yes mine slows to a crawl/coma too.

lost in the wilderness

Poser 13, Poser11,  Win7Pro 64, now with 24GB ram

ooh! i guess i can add my new render(only) machine!  Win11, I7, RTX 3060 12GB

 My Freebies

Quote - i downloaded the sdk from AMD to get opencl lux working on my box. & yes mine slows to a crawl/coma too.

Sorry - should have mentioned I have an Intel i3, Jan... not sure if the sdk will work for that. Thanks for the link, tho.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Robyn - if your proc is a quad core (I think so), then your specs and mine are about the same. I really don't have many problems with my renders because 1: I guess I just have loads of patience..lol. If I wanna do something on my computer, I just pause the render (cause I CAN...lol). If I want to do something rather intensive, I just save the .flm, save and exit and then when I want to continue the render I just resume the .flm :). 2: I use the random sampler. I find that I get more fireflies with Mitchell, so I stopped using it. When I use choose random in the exporter, I bump up the samples. That'll increase your render times tho ;). I also use gaussian for the filter.

As for the OpenCL, well, that depends on the kind of graphics card you have. I have an Nvidia 9500GT 1 gig card and it does support it. All I had to do was use the most recent drivers. Having said that, Luxrender itself doesn't do so well with GPU rendering just yet, so you might not want to use that anyway.

If you have a second machine that's networked you can also use that to help you render your image. It might go a little faster for you. I use my dual core to help with my renders all the time :).

Laurie

Ooooo I actually have 3 other machines atm that I could use, Laurie. I'll have a look on the LuxRender site and see how that's done.

Oh, I'm plenty patient... last night I stopped it (nervous Nellie that I am, didn't want a render chugging all night and potentially overheating the machine... like it won't happen during the day :lol:) and restarted it today, so it's been going cumulatively for 14 1/2 hours, now. I'll just let it keep chugging.

I'll need to check and see what sampler I'm using and which filter: I just sort-of went with the default. So you don't think the amount of objs and textures and transmaps (ivy leaves) and that might be slowing it down a bit? Also, the render size is 2000 x 1800... doesn't have anything to do with it? Oh, the S/p are now up to 104... BB said something about 400 gives a nice clear piccie? I might get away with less, tho, given the subject matter.

Oh, and I'm using your gems shaders in her earrings. Laurie, this is like I found a new Poser/matroom to play in! Only better!! YAY!!!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

The size of your image is definitely gonna slow it down...lol. The other stuff might be contributing as well. It's kinda of the same general rule as Poser in that area - the more stuff, the bigger the image, the longer the render ;).

If you have any trouble setting up luxrender on your other machines so that they can help with the render just let me know.

All you really need to do is install Luxrender on the machines you want to network. Go into the Luxrender folder and make a shortcut of luxconsole.exe and place the shortcut on your desktop or somewhere you can get at it easily. Right click on the shortcut and choose properties. In the Target line, put this:

C:LuxrenderLuxRender_32_SSE2_NoOpenCLluxconsole.exe -s

and save that. Then, when you double click the luxconsole shortcut, the panel will open and that machine is ready for a command from your main machine.

You'll only need the IP of that networked machine now and when you open your render in Luxrender, go to the network tab and put that IP in the field and hit the plus sign. Depending on how many textures are in your scene, it may take awhile to send them all over to the other machine, but in a few minutes it should be starting to send you some samples ;).

Laurie

Attached Link: Lux Renderfarm

$.30/Core/Hour

How fast do you want to go - or rather how much do you want to pay & would it be legal (i.e. r.e. texture files which I assume have to be uploaded to their servers)?

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Oh! So, here's that render, 20 hours 45 minutes in:

Now, I'm re-doing the render, but with an IBL and taking out the skydome. After only 20 minutes, the clarity and detail is remarkably different! Seriously, the graininess is already less than the 20 hr render... I really think that it might have been the skydome. Well, lemme show ya... 20 minutes, mind you:

Interesting.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

I don't think it's so much the skydome as it is the amount of light. Brightly lit is faster, remember? ;). If you use the skydome and you want nice, bright sunlight, you can crank the gain on the sun up to as much as 20 :).

Laurie

Ignoring the fear of showing my abysmal ignorance, why are there no shadows (that I can see) on the 20 hr. version?

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Most likely because she didn't add enough gain to the sunlight inside Luxrender. I'm not blaming her - most of us are learning this as we go ;).

The attached image was done with the skydome in place, but I changed the gain on the sunlight from 1.0 to 20.0. As you can see, there's plenty of bright light and shadow.

And yes, I spelled reclamation wrong...lol.

Laurie

Oh, and the above image didn't even take close to 20 hours. It only took about 6 1/2 (two computers, 6 cores and 6 gigs of ram total).

Laurie

Quote - Most likely because she didn't add enough gain to the sunlight inside Luxrender. I'm not blaming her - most of us are learning this as we go ;).

The attached image was done with the skydome in place, but I changed the gain on the sunlight from 1.0 to 20.0. As you can see, there's plenty of bright light and shadow.

And yes, I spelled reclamation wrong...lol.

Laurie

Oh good, I'm not the only one who re-does images. You are absolutely right, Laurie... this whole Lux thing is a massive learning curve... pretty steep atm. I did a second render on that image with reasonably strong light, and the shadows showed up pretty much tout-suite. Now, in this 3rd go, I've set lights to IBL and shadows are pretty much non-existent. But, at dusk, when the sun's gone down and everything has that eery evening glow from the walls and everything, shadows tend to drop off. So, the effect is accurate, the lighting: too bright. If you look closely, there is a shadow directly under her shoes, and up the staircase.

The render now: very desaturated colours, hardly any shadows... just the way I want it. Gotta love this renderer:

Oh, and I know the shoes are wrong - I'm having a play with that leather material. going to make a black version, in a bit.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Oh, and the above image didn't even take close to 20 hours. It only took about 6 1/2 (two computers, 6 cores and 6 gigs of ram total).

Laurie

<<>> gotta get that networking fixed, somehow. It's probably something really stupid, too... which is par for me, anyway.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

So you had the skydome AND an infinite in that image then Robyn? Normally, the skydome is not enough. Even if the sky map was a bright blue sunny day, you'd need an infinite with it. Just mostly ambient light coming from the sky isn't enough by itself because the resulting shadows just aren't dark enough.

Maybe someday soon I'll be bothered to do some tutorials ;). I'll at least wait until Snarly takes it out of beta and declares it fit for human consumption...lol.

Laurie

Actually, all i had was that pointlight (up the stairs) and an IBL, which I remember from that LuxPose discussion BB used to reasonably good effect. The intended effect is that just-before-dusk scene in the Mediterranean region, where light comes more from reflection off the buildings around you because the sun isn't anywhere where you can actually see it, so shadows are going to be quite hazy, if at all. I mean, up the stairs and  under her shoes is about the only shadow you can see and even there, it's more like an ambient occlusion than a shadow.

To quote PeeWee Herman: "I meant to do that!" :biggrin:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

This is one of the things I actually find so compelling about this renderer. In this sense, it truly is photo-realistic... it's like I went out in the evening with my SLR and shot people in their natural surroundings. Lighting is sub-optimal, but I crank up the sensitivity (400) and drop the FStop to 8 and hold the camera really still because I'm shooting at 1/60 of a second (kind-of slow for hand-held) and voila: girl on her way home after a long absence, trying to negotiate 17th century stairs in 20th century heels (borrowed).

Can't see it, hey? ::blink: ... oh well. :biggrin:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

I cant seem to get the exported files to work in LuxRender I get a sytax error on line 18?  I had a naked vicki no hair skin only, bare minimum on the textures.  Exported and it wont work.  I can render the sample that they provide in lux though....

are you using Luxrender 0.7 or Luxrender 0.8? The script works with Luxrender 0.8x because it uses material parameters that weren't supported in Luxrender 0.7x like velvet, glossy translucent, SSS, etc.

You can get the most current release of Luxrender here. What you want is LuxRender (v0.8RC1).

pssst...this info is in the Pose2Lux manual ;).

If this is not your problem, then it's a problem with the script, but I think it may be Luxrender due to the fact that it's exporting without error but Luxrender is having a hard time reading it. You really need to keep current with Luxrender versions because the programmer of Pose2Lux is ;).

Laurie

Quote - I cant seem to get the exported files to work in LuxRender I get a sytax error on line 18?  I had a naked vicki no hair skin only, bare minimum on the textures.  Exported and it wont work.  I can render the sample that they provide in lux though....

This is a known issue, identified by someone else in a PM to me.

It is indeed because Line 18 references a parameter known only to v0.8 of Luxrender.  I will, however, be adding limited 0.7 compatibilty soon, which will overcome this specific issue,  because certain operating systems cannot run v0.8 yet.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Quote - Now, I'm re-doing the render, but with an IBL and taking out the skydome.

Hi Robyn - I know you enjoy the techie details so you might like to know that there's no practical difference betweeen a Skydome and an IBL as far as Pose2Lux is concerned.

Skydomes themselves don't work in Luxrender, so what I do is this:

If the Skydome material is applied to an object (hopefully an actual skydome :-) then I throw away all the geometry of the object (it doesn't get rendered at all) but I do grab the image that was attached to it and make an IBL out of it. Then I rotate the IBL so that it matches what you could see on the skydome.

So in the end you only end up with an IBL regardless of whether you start with a skydome or an IBl attached to a light!

It's all smoke and mirrors :-)

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Hooray for smoke and mirrors! ;)

I'm lovin' the skydome myself....lol.

Laurie

Just for the sake of the fun of it (it IS fun playing with LuxRender, isn't it?), here's some info some of you might like.

First we have some addons for LuxRender which will allow you to export your image to .jpg or .tif directly from the Luxrender GUI. Second, and a few posts down, we have something called CRF's or Camera Response Files. I'll show an example of the usage of those in a bit.

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=4869

Laurie

Here's an example with an image I currently have rendering. Please ignore the obvious status of the render - it's not finished cooking just yet ;).

Anyway, here we have an example of my image before I've applied a CRF...still better than Poser in some ways, but a little flat ;).

And here's the same render after I've applied one of the CRF's. Makes a huge difference. Adds depth and makes the entire image seem more lifelike. If you look on the left side of the screen capture you can see which CRF I've used for this image. There are a few to choose from. Try em out and see what you think :).

The only difference between the first image and the second is the application of the CRF. I didn't change lighting or any other setting.

The figure is V4 with GND4's texture map and I used Snarly Skin in the exporter.

Laurie

Quote - Skydomes themselves don't work in Luxrender, so what I do is this:

Hi! I'm too busy to play along, but I'm avidly reading everything. Just wanted to post you a little correction - I had sky domes working just fine in Luxrender. In fact I found it possible to do interesting mixes between multiple domes and the built-in Sun-Sky. It allowed me to overlay clouds.

Everybody should use phrases like "I'm not sure how to do that" in (Lux, Poser, Daz Studio, fill-in-the blank etc.). It really annoys me to see folks being told "this is impossible", "that won't work", "can't be done", etc. when the correct statement is "I, the person speaking, am doing so with incomplete knowledge."

Otherwise, keep up the good work.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

From my own experience, and quite frankly it's because "I, the person speaking, am doing so with incomplete knowledge...": the render with the skydome appeared to use more of the CPU or whatever than the IDL. No idea why. What I'm basing that on is this: when I was rendering the first time using the skydome, the GUI response was incredibly delayed: menus would drop down (or even appear) after 15 - 30 seconds, dialogues after a minute, and Lux would take forever to minimise to taskbar. This was 1 .. 2 .. 5 .. 8 hours into the render: no difference.

With just the IBL (replacing the skydome) as main lightsource, the GUI response time stayed reasonably normal whilst rendering, regardless of how far along the render was in terms of time.

Oh, there is so much to learn! And materials? I'm totally flying blind, looking at Blender materials and what's been done so far at the Lux site for ideas.

BB, I'm not saying "can't" or "shouldn't", but given that so many shaders for Poser are either gibberish workflow (well, almost all are) or workaround stuff to compensate for Poser's (Firefly's) shortcomings, is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."... I know, opening a can of worms. Just thinking outloud.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - And here's the same render after I've applied one of the CRF's. Makes a huge difference. Adds depth and makes the entire image seem more lifelike. If you look on the left side of the screen capture you can see which CRF I've used for this image. There are a few to choose from. Try em out and see what you think :). The only difference between the first image and the second is the application of the CRF. I didn't change lighting or any other setting.

The figure is V4 with GND4's texture map and I used Snarly Skin in the exporter.

Laurie

I'm ever so keen to try all this, Laurie! And thank you for finding all this out and calling our attention to it. Lux is a blast to play with: what a HUGE difference from: "okay, start rendering and keep your fingers crossed". The fact that we can change things during the render: no way can I go back to "invoke and pray" rendering.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

It IS nice to be able to change render settings during the render, isn't it? LOL

Laurie

Quote - ...is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."

IMVHO, I'd rather do the latter and give the best Lux representation of that material if only because most Poser shaders are a hack or trickery in order to fake something. It makes sense to go with the superior shader system ;).

Just my two cents...lol.

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - ...is there really much point to converting the actual shader? Or would it more be a case of: "okay, this is the intended effect, so for Lux, this would be the best representation of that material..."

IMVHO, I'd rather do the latter and give the best Lux representation of that material if only because most Poser shaders are a hack or trickery in order to fake something. It makes sense to go with the superior shader system ;).

Just my two cents...lol.

Laurie

I forgot to say: not to undermine what BB has already done on shader conversion. I mean, if the shader was developed with some sort of idea about the material it was supposed to represent (iow, an at least somewhat scientific approach), then converting shaders makes sense. But they were created with a "hmm, let's plug this into that and see what happens: WHOA, we've got Formica!" then I kind-of wonder whether the effort is worth it.

I for one would love to see BB tackle converting his water shader. I so miss his water!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

For those who may want to understand light color temperature a little better:

http://www.ledwaves.com/About-Color-Temperature-sp-24.html

Short, but informative ;).

Laurie

Quote - For those who may want to understand light color temperature a little better:

http://www.ledwaves.com/About-Color-Temperature-sp-24.html

Short, but informative ;).

Laurie

I am having flashbacks to my senior art classes in high school...  It is something that is good to know though, especially if you are doing interiors.

An easy and amusing experiment about color temperature for the owners of photo cameras: get out in a brightly lit sunny day, set color temperature to tungsten and reduce by 1 or 2 stops the exposure and shoot. The result? Hollywood night, dark and blueish (I say Hollywood night because in real near darkness you don't see things blue, you see them grey, check this evening with your eyes).

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

I will have to try that once I get my camera back.

Actually trying to create a realistic night scene is something of an ongoing challenge, I have been trying to find some actual night panos for the skydome.  They seem to be a rare and elusive thing.  Especially ones that aren't taken in the middle of a city where you wind up with the glow of street lights effecting the whole thing.  If anyone knows of any, would be appreciated as I am trying to avoid the whole 'Hollywood night' look as mentioned above.

Here maybe?

http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/7928/free-hdri-cd-collection-from-evermotion

Laurie

Brilliant.  I had lost the link there.  Thanks Laurie

I aims to please...lol. y/w :)

Hopefully when Pose2Lux gets it's own website we can have a resources page with links like this. Would be nice anyway ;). Sky maps, IES data files for emitters (coming), etc.

Laurie

If that is the case... I also need another computer so I can set up network rendering (j/k) and a muse who doesn't pack her bags for Maui every few weeks for kicks.  I swear she is sitting sipping umbrella drinks while I bang my head off my desk in frustration.  LOL!

Oh now all that would be nice, always nice to have resources readily available in one place.  Material files, maps... yeah all that good stuff.  I know that is one of those things that can make getting into something easier.

Small thought, what about a 'tutorial scene' for Poser (Using primitives so anyone could use it) with a walkthrough step by step on how to export it to Lux and render it so people can get a feel for it without leaping in with Vickie and a full nightmare of materials and options to wrestle with.  Getting the skydome dealt with etc.  Random wandering thought, ignore me as needed, I am still trying to set up a big scene in Poser to move over and I think it is driving me slowly insane. 

Quote - I aims to please...lol. y/w :) Hopefully when Pose2Lux gets it's own website we can have a resources page with links like this. Would be nice anyway ;). Sky maps, IES data files for emitters (coming), etc.

Laurie

If no one has put their hand up to host that site (and develop it as well), I wouldn't mind offering my help. I'm planning to migrate my personal website to BlueHost in the near future, as it supports Drupal, and with GoDaddy it's at additional cost, so not keen to stay on. If someone's already got things in the works, then that's okay...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Yay! Thanks Robyn!

You got the job :-)

Now, just let me know what you want from me and I'll help in whatever way I can ...

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Quote - Now, just let me know what you want from me and I'll help in whatever way I can ...

Ditto ;)

Laurie

glub!

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

Okay - I'm sort of thinking either like a wordpress or drupal dialogue thing, with updates and comments as an option, then also a downloads section and gallery. Based on what KobaltKween has done with drupal, I'm guessing it'll be a lot more conducive to what we need in terms of format (and more flexible) than WP. I'm going to get hold of her, but also go ahead and set it up with the name Pose2Lux as domain name.

Okay with you?

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Sounds good to me :-)

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Will the format you're proposing accommodate tutorials easily too?

Both Laurie and I are thinking of doing some. Others might too.

Otherwise I guess we could do the tutorials here at Rendo and provide PDF versions for download at your site?

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Okay, we have a domain name registered with BlueHost called Pose2Lux.com ... when I get home tonight from work, I'll set up Drupal as well. I went with inexpensive: $4.95/month, paid in advance. All done.

I'll keep you posted and give the three of you (if you are so inclined) admin access once I've got things set up a bit more.

Sound alright? Yay! I'm contributing! :biggrin:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Will the format you're proposing accommodate tutorials easily too? Both Laurie and I are thinking of doing some. Others might too.

Otherwise I guess we could do the tutorials here at Rendo and provide PDF versions for download at your site?

It should do, yeah, but let me check with my Drupal guru how best to approach it.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quick update: the site is roughed in. I'm not totally set on colour scheme - I tend to agree with LaurieA about darker backgrounds to make images stand out better, but for the most part it seems to be working.

Now comes the fun part: bringing over the most pertinent information from these threads that I can. Oh, and I still need to set up the gallery, and then decide what we want to do about a forum, if anything. Laurie's already got one, plus people tend to want to hang out here, so it might be a moot point.

Please give me feedback about what you like and don't like and what you think isn't working, and I'll try to get on it as quickly as I can.

So: http://www.pose2lux.com

Thanks, all

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

That looks pretty fine to me Robyn - you've done a great job there!

I'll send you some entries for the FAQ in a bit because there are a few questions I've been asked quite often.

On the downloads page I think it'd be good if people could just download the bits they want. The zip file contains all sorts of things which don't need to be redownloaded every time there's an update to the script.

I'd suggest the manual is a separate download, and the example XML libraries could be too. Most people will also want just the P6 version or the regular version, not both. The only thing that really needs to be bundled with the actual scripts is the MIT licence. Of course, there's no reason not to have the complete zip file available as a download for first timers who need the whole shebang.

I'd also like to see a place where we can post useful links. Obvious links are to the Luxrender site (Home page, Wiki, Scene file fomat and forum are the obvious ones)

Oh, and perhaps a glossary of terms. These things can be a bit daunting to the newcomer who isn't familiar with all the jargon we take for granted!

This is starting to get quite exciting - we have a script, a manual and a website! It's almost like it's a proper program :-)

Anyway, if there's anything else besides the FAQ that you'd like from me, just holler!

As for the forum, I guess it needs a bit of thought. I'll continue to post to and monitor the Rendo threads here, but it would be nice for Pose2Lux to have its very own forum too. I don't mind whether it's on the Pose2Lux website (which does seem the obvious place) or the Peanut Gallery (where Pose2Lux grew up in the nurturing environment provided so generously by Laurie), but it's probably best to have it in just one place to avoid confusion.

Thank you so much!

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Oh, I definitely think Pose2Lux forums should be on the Pose2Lux website. Seems silly to have them visit the site for everything else and then leave it to go to a forum ;). I like the idea of breaking the downloads up too.

And thanks everyone for the nice words, but truthfully, if it hadn't been for MagnusGreel this would have gotten off to a much slower start - he did all of the inital testing while I nursed the flu..lol.

Laurie

Bookmarked.

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2

Looking really good Robyn, I am guessing that you are slowly beating Drupal into submission.

Everyone who has worked on this deserves a cookie (okay depending on personal preferences a drink), I doubt anyone thought the  exporter would have gone from the alpha to v 1 in less than two months. 

Now, back to playing with materials, trying for something suede-ish today.

 

Quote - That looks pretty fine to me Robyn - you've done a great job there!

Thank you! Couldn't have done it without KobaltKween's guidance: Drupal - the cms the site is based on - is not WP: this is a very full-on system with lots of possibilities...complexities...stuff/concepts to learn.

Quote - I'll send you some entries for the FAQ in a bit because there are a few questions I've been asked quite often.

That would be excellent: the more qualified content, the better, and the less I have to scrounge through these threads, much as I enjoy that (time constraints :blink: )

Quote - On the downloads page I think it'd be good if people could just download the bits they want. The zip file contains all sorts of things which don't need to be redownloaded every time there's an update to the script. I'd suggest the manual is a separate download, and the example XML libraries could be too. Most people will also want just the P6 version or the regular version, not both. The only thing that really needs to be bundled with the actual scripts is the MIT licence. Of course, there's no reason not to have the complete zip file available as a download for first timers who need the whole shebang.

No dramas... I'll go ahead and split it all up as you suggest and have separate sections.

Quote - I'd also like to see a place where we can post useful links. Obvious links are to the Luxrender site (Home page, Wiki, Scene file fomat and forum are the obvious ones)

Yes, links was going to be my next project. In Drupal, all of this sort of thing is sort-of like its own little entity of sorts, so it's not just a matter of putting a URL up: it's much cleaner and more manageable than that.

Quote - Oh, and perhaps a glossary of terms. These things can be a bit daunting to the newcomer who isn't familiar with all the jargon we take for granted!

I will definitely need help with that... in terms of the actual... err... terms. All a bit grey area for me, and since you all are the experts...

This is starting to get quite exciting - we have a script, a manual and a website! It's almost like it's a proper program :-)

Quote - Anyway, if there's anything else besides the FAQ that you'd like from me, just holler!

So, yeah, the glossary and perhaps the manual in .doc or text format so I can put it on the site as a Book. That would save me having to find something to extract pdf stuff...

Quote - As for the forum, I guess it needs a bit of thought. I'll continue to post to and monitor the Rendo threads here, but it would be nice for Pose2Lux to have its very own forum too. I don't mind whether it's on the Pose2Lux website (which does seem the obvious place) or the Peanut Gallery (where Pose2Lux grew up in the nurturing environment provided so generously by Laurie), but it's probably best to have it in just one place to avoid confusion.

Well, (just read Laurie's addendum to this) and whilst I'm happy to do the forum on the site, it will probably be a bit: it's not trivial to set up and during the week my time on here is fairly minimal. So, if it's okay with everyone, I'll focus on getting the site right first, and then have a play with the forum.

Is that good with everyone?

@Rhionon: yeah, finally - was really stuck there for quite a while, as in near-tears stuck, but KobaltKween rescued me so I'm all good now... things basically work and stay working, which is nice. :biggrin:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

 

Here is a FAQ to get things going. No doubt we'll need to expand on it over time.

As for the manual source files, you'll need to liaise with Laurie to get those.

I'm very happy for you to prioritise the development of the new site as you see fit. You clearly have a good idea of what needs to be done and the best way to go about it, so I'm quite happy that it's all in safe hands!

And there's certainly no rush for anything so just take it at whatever pace suits you!

I'm pretty impressed that you managed to get a site together so quickly, let alone one based on CMS!

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Robyn, no tears over a website lovey!  When in doubt walk away and ignore it for a few hours, it won't kill anyone to wait that bit longer.

Forum is not a high priority as it seems the discussion and technical help end of things are running smoothly here for now.  It would be good to get it set up and the basics laid in though when time allows.

If you need help with the forum end of it, I am available, heck I can even be around for 'Aussie time' since I am a chronic insomniac.  Sometimes sleep deprivation has its merits.  LOL.

Sidebar, has anyone put anything up over at Daz yet about P2L?  Or is it 'competition' for Reality?  Just curious.

grin I signed up today!

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8

 

 

Well the Great White North is accounted for then.  I signed up this morning when I saw it was there.  LOL

smirk I'm a transplant to the Great White North. Originally from the Lone Star State of Texas!

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8

 

 

Shhhh!  I won't tell.  Anyway you are in a place that has an awesome dessert named after it, can't go wrong there. :p

What do we have here?  Ummm ummm... The CFL's worst football team, who we still support?  Yay for being from Hamilton!

Quote - Sidebar, has anyone put anything up over at Daz yet about P2L?  Or is it 'competition' for Reality?  Just curious.

I'd thought of it, but wasn't in the mood to cause a possible commotion...lol. I figured I'd just post an image to the PC gallery "made with...." sort of thing ;). I guess it can be construed as competition to Reality, except that Reality will only work in DS. The only competition I can see is that some DS users also have Poser ;).

All this of course would be assuming any image of this nature that I post would even be chosen...lol.

Laurie

Not to start a furor - oh, okay, I'll start a wee one :tt2: - but the competition seems to me at least to be on price, really... similar products AFAIK, essentially, so:

Daz Studio: free ... Reality: $80.

Poser 7: $39.99 ... Pose2Lux: free

<>

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Robyn you bad, bad girl....lol.

The way I see it, there are enough Daz forum regulars that also hang out here. The word will get around, especially once Snarly's exporter is posted on the Luxrender website as a valid exporter ;).

remind self....notify the Luxrender folks

Laurie

Oooooooo good plan, Laurie! Maybe we might do a LinkShare with LuxRender... I do like the way you think!

Only when you say it's okay to do so, though, Snarly... don't wanna be jumping the gun. Any of that kind-of stuff: like to get your clearance first.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Okay Robyn...here is the manual in .doc format. It's just raw text. Keep that in mind...lol

Laurie

Quote - Here is a FAQ to get things going. No doubt we'll need to expand on it over time. As for the manual source files, you'll need to liaise with Laurie to get those.

I'm very happy for you to prioritise the development of the new site as you see fit. You clearly have a good idea of what needs to be done and the best way to go about it, so I'm quite happy that it's all in safe hands!

And there's certainly no rush for anything so just take it at whatever pace suits you!

I'm pretty impressed that you managed to get a site together so quickly, let alone one based on CMS!

Thanks, SG ... get on it first chance I get! And Laurie's got her stuff to me, so I'd better get cracking!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Okay Robyn...here is the manual in .doc format. It's just raw text. Keep that in mind...lol Laurie

Perfect, Laurie... I'll go ahead and get it all set up in Drupal Book format - need to figure that out next! - and then, we'll maybe look at illustrations.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Well it is competition of a sort.  Not direct but it gives people who really don't like DS an alternative (I am in that category even though I had and used DS first, never could find a darned thing quickly in the library)

Price is really what you want to make of it, if you wanted the closest comparison you would still need to look at DSA not the free DS3. ;)

So with P2L being free and Poser 7 being under $40... hmmm... Heck, Poser 8 only set me back $150.  With P2L being free, I come out ahead.  :p

I do think posting an image done with this exporter and submitting it to the PC gallery is a good idea.  Might also get 'passed over' as it is done with a free competitor for a Daz product. 

Getting word out in other Poser communities couldn't hurt either.  Maybe a P2L group for those who are on dA?  I know there is a Reality group there already.

I'm happy for people to do whatever they want. I'd love to see some more great pics made using Pose2Lux, no matter where they might be posted. I'm sure Robyn will be wanting some contributions soon too :-)

Personally, I have no great aspiration to promote Pose2Lux, but I'm happy if others want to. As it's not a commercial product it makes little difference to me how many people end up using it. So long as those that do use it enjoy doing so, and get to make some cool pics they might otherwise have been unable to, then that's me happy, even if its just a handful of people. Of course, it'd be nice if hundreds of people were having fun with it too, but I'd rather spend my time making Pose2Lux better than trying to 'advertise' it.

But if anybody does feel that Pose2Lux is good enough that it's worth spreading the word then that's fine with me - somebody out there must just be glad you did!

I vote we invite Rhionon to be the official Pose2Lux publicity agent :-)

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

LOL! I make a pretty good cheerleader when I want to.

Aspirations or not, it is a useful, already viable add on to the Poser user's toolbox, which with what has already been said is looking to only become more so.

Do I think everyone will want it?  No.  I know there are those people who simply don't have the patience to wait through a possibly multi-day render (heck my current Lux render is looking to take 5-6 days okay it is 2400x3000. :p )

Do I think there are those who have been waiting for something that will allow them to go that next step in their work who would appreciate it?  Oh heck yeah.   Even with realism not being my forte normally I can see easily how it can be worked into my existing workflow.  A something extra that was what I was pushing for with postwork.

I know also that aside from freebie hunting and content buying here there are a great many who never set foot into other parts of the site.  Like the forums.  So it is possible that an entire group of potentially interested people are missing out.

Once the website is up and the basics are all in place, I am happy to do what I can to 'spread the word' about P2L.  It deserves love just as much as Reality.  And with an active supportive community it can only get better as people contribute their bit, be it art or materials or even some advice when problems do crop up to new users.

Aside time again (blame my sleep deprived brain), is there any plan to incorporate the volumetric stuff I have seen on the Luxrender forums?  Fog and dusty air would be awesome.  Don't ask me to recall the proper name right now, my brain only work so much on two hours sleep.  Hehe.

I was just wishing for fog this very morning...lmao. I don't know enough about materials yet to implement it via .xml though because it depends greatly on depth of an object, which will of course vary from object to object.

Laurie

Quote - I was just wishing for fog this very morning...lmao. I don't know enough about materials yet to implement it via .xml though because it depends greatly on depth of an object, which will of course vary from object to object. Laurie

Just had a look at Blender's use of Lux, and they do have renders/scenes of volumetric lighting, so it should be possible.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Apparently a fog material is also available in Reality, so it is there to be used if the how can be figured out.  Just curiosity, I get the basics of all this, the actual implentation of it to make it readily usable not a clue.  I dared delve into the .xml files, for me, that was scary enough.

I'm sure if it's possible, Snarly will find a way to make it happen when he has time.

Laurie

No rush, I have no issues postworking fog and such as needed.  Just slowly been reading my way through stuff as thoughts occur to me.  Since volumetric fog and such are not really core functionality I figure they will come a ways down the list.  Just a wish listy thing if it can be done.

Now, a quick question.  I found a free HDRI pano of a church with the stained glass and all, any ideas on if it would be possible to get the light to look like it was coming through the windows?  Since there are no window objects to drop a portal in front of it is leaving me scratching my head.  It was sort of what sparked my looking for the volumetric stuff too. 

Fog is coming to Pose2Lux in the next day or so.

You'll have to find someone cleverer than me to answer the church window question though!

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

does a happy dance Yay my undead things will be able to creep around in the foggy dark!

oooh volumetric lighting...

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

Quote - Sidebar, has anyone put anything up over at Daz yet about P2L?  Or is it 'competition' for Reality?  Just curious.

Someone started a thread about Pose2Lux about a month ago in the Commons.

Just out of curiosity, why Pose2Lux instead of Poser2Lux?

I think it's great that Poser users are finally getting a bridge to LuxRender, the images you can get out of it are simply astounding!

 

 

Coldrake

Quote - I think it's great that Poser users are finally getting a bridge to LuxRender, the images you can get out of it are simply astounding!  

 

Coldrake

 

Now, if I could only make one that's astounding! LOL

:)

Laurie

Quote -  

Just out of curiosity, why Pose2Lux instead of Poser2Lux?

Coldrake

 

no reason.. just the first one that came to mind..

Airport security is a burden we must all shoulder. Do your part, and please grope yourself in advance.

It's a lot better than it's original name!

For the first few incarnations of the script it was called 'Plop'

(Poser's Luxrender Output Program)

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/

Which says exactly how often I get over to Daz.  LOL.  I think it was mid-February the last time I was aside from taking a quick look at the March Madness stuff.  Not much yet to wow me.  Keeping my fingers crossed for some M4 stuff that isn't casual wear or armor.

Yeah, I would have a hard time cheering on Plop without giggling everytime I had to type it. 

Glad to hear that fog is forthcoming, it is one of the things holding up a Victorian-esque street scene I am working on, it needs some fog along the ground.

Also has anyone trying to tackle fabrics yet who is building materials?  I might since suede and I are not getting along right now.  Pressed self destruct, will start fresh in the morning.  Would be nice to have a bunch of predone fabric materials that could be loaded onto clothing either with or without the texture maps.

One more thing, does anyone have a copy of the various skin materials included in P2L in .xml so I can have a look at them?  I seem to be having an issue with my undead girls turning pink on me...  Thinking I might need to adjust the material some to keep their deathly pallor :p  I have tried various CRF's to try to compensate, but well, they look alive (and in one case decidedly sunburned).

Just think about when you would have had to announce 'Plop Pro'  :ohmy:

Poser Pro 11, DAZ Studio 4.9

It was rather fun in the beginning ;). All I did all day long was "PLOP" ;).

Laurie