Questions I have about Reality 3.0 are as follows.  If anyone has solid answers, please post them.

 

1. Do I need LuxRender installed separately on my system?

2. How do I know if I have OpenCL installed on my system.  Lux has two versions, one with CL and one without.  Is this an issue with Reality?

3. Does my final rendered image revert back to Poser for saving or exporting?  Or does Reality simply send my entire file to Lux for render?

4. And building on the third question, what are the export file formats from Lux?  BMP, JPEG??  Could not find this anywhere on the Lux site.  I need TIFF or Photoshop image saving so that I retain the mask that Poser produces.  If I can't export and have a mask, to separate character from background image, then Reality will be useless.

NOTE: I work in Poser now by importing backgrounds rendered in another program and then render figures over them.  This enables me to have a knock-out mask of my figure along with my final image.  But JPEG and other formats don't support this.  Only TIFF and photoshop formats, which Poser2012 does export in.

Also does anyone have any time-versus-render speed comparisons on Lux?  Poser is slow enough as it is...so if Reality/Lux is slower...well again, may not be worth the effort.  I know settings are everything...but I'm just curious about a literal test render comparison.  Is one faster than the other.

Any info appreciated.  Thanks.

Very valid questions, I was about to ask basically the same ones,plus how does it compare to octane render(stand alone and plug in to poser),I have basically given up on octane because of the extra time it takes to re-edit textures and plus my graphics card runs out of memory.Plus, what is its speed like, i dont want to wait 20 hours for a nice a4 sized shot,about 20 minutes is about where i run out of patience-poser firefly does the trick for me, so can reality/lux do this in a similar time frame?

Here's what I know:

1. Yes

2. OpenCL concerns GPU acceleration. AMD are better than Nvidia in this regard.  You don't need opencl to render with Reality.

3. It sends the entire file to Reality.  You select the render location in the render window.

4. PNG, EXR and Targa.  PNG supports alpha transparency.

For me Reality is much slower than Poser. The point with Reality is not speed but unbiased rendering. I'm no expert on the matter but the lighting is vastly superior to Poser.

 Vestmann's Gallery

Quote - 1. Do I need LuxRender installed separately on my system?

2. How do I know if I have OpenCL installed on my system.  Lux has two versions, one with CL and one without.  Is this an issue with Reality?

3. Does my final rendered image revert back to Poser for saving or exporting?  Or does Reality simply send my entire file to Lux for render?

4. And building on the third question, what are the export file formats from Lux?  BMP, JPEG??  Could not find this anywhere on the Lux site.  I need TIFF or Photoshop image saving so that I retain the mask that Poser produces.  If I can't export and have a mask, to separate character from background image, then Reality will be useless.

1. Reality is the connection between Poser and Lux. So, yes, you need to install Lux, which is free and pretty small.

2. OpenCL is GPU acceleration. You need to check with your card manufacturer if the card has OpenCL drivers. Every Mac bult in the last three years has OpenCL built-in. In general I would not care for OpenCL acceleration at this stage. Things might change in a month or two.

3. No, your image is saved in whatever file you specify in the Render tab. The default format is PNG. You can also sue Targa or OpenEXR.

4. See above.

LuxRender is about accuracy and realism. That is the whole focus. Lights are predictable because they behave like real-life light. You can adjust the exposure of the lights while the scene renders and resume a stopped render, even weeks after you stopped it.

Hope this helps.

 

Paolo

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Thanks for the comments and info.  Would still like to hear from someone who's compared a render in Firefly to same render in Lux to show speed comparison and also some quality comparison.  If anyone has images, please link us so we can see.

I haven't used Reality, but I've used Pose2Lux to get things from Poser to Luxrender. Luxrender takes a much longer time to render than Poser does, Lux being an unbiased renderer and Firefly being biased. You WILL get better lighting and more realisic materials than Poser, but you will sacrifice time to do it. Quite a lot more time. My "The Muse" image took over 9 hours....the same thing would render in Poser Pro 2012 in about 30 minutes. I'm not trying to turn you away, I'm just trying to tell you the "reality" of it so to speak ;). I was not using the gpu, but the cpu for rendering and number crunching.

Laurie

Quote - Thanks for the comments and info.  Would still like to hear from someone who's compared a render in Firefly to same render in Lux to show speed comparison and also some quality comparison.  If anyone has images, please link us so we can see.

People have asked this before (with Reality for DS, with Luxus for DS, with Pose2lux here and now with Reality for Poser).  Its a fair question, but its a different render type, different materials, lighting, etc.  Also, a "great" Poser artist can make awesome stuff with lighting, and the same with Lux.  Ask folks here, and they may be great with Poser, but new to Lux.  Not really a unbiased comparison. (no pun intended)

Some people will be fine with a render being "done" in 30 minutes, some may like to let them "cook" overnight.

You will have as much luck going to sites that have lux renders, and compare them to poser renders.  Both of the great ones are great.   ...but you should get an idea of the overall look that both give.

Not trying to dodge the question, I just don't think its an apples to apples thing.

The other thing is the learning curve, Pose2lux and Reality are vastly different. Pose2lux requires a lot of understanding of what each part of it does, I never got used to it due to there being too many settings to adjust..

Reality on the other hand simplifies the settings a lot and allows you to get your render going faster rather than spending a lot of your time fiddling with too many settings.  

 

 

You know you enjoy 3D Art when you realize that your life is a piece of 3D Art. :)

AMD 7900X3D, 64 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 Ram, Asus Prime X670-P Wifi MB, PNY RTX 4070Ti Super 16GB, 14TB SSD's & HDD, Windows 11, Poser 9 / Pro 2012 / Pro 2014, Daz Studio 4.22.

Quote - I haven't used Reality, but I've used Pose2Lux to get things from Poser to Luxrender. Luxrender takes a much longer time to render than Poser does, Lux being an unbiased renderer and Firefly being biased. You WILL get better lighting and more realisic materials than Poser, but you will sacrifice time to do it. Quite a lot more time. My "The Muse" image took over 9 hours....the same thing would render in Poser Pro 2012 in about 30 minutes. I'm not trying to turn you away, I'm just trying to tell you the "reality" of it so to speak ;). I was not using the gpu, but the cpu for rendering and number crunching.

Laurie

I'm really interested in Reality in combination with LuxRender, but this is really putting me off. Since I've got Vue, I don't use Firefly anymore, Vue gives me much better looking renders, even for my toon work as well as realistic work, but it takes longer to render an image. That is not because Vue is slower, it's my fault, I keep on adding stuff in Vue to enhance my image, but those things take more time to render. If I just bring over the whole poser scene and render it as is, only adding lights in Vue, it will render in about the same time.

I've looked at Octane before, but none of the renders could convince me that it's better then what I can do now in Poser or Vue, far from it, most poser scenes rendered with Octance simply don't look as good as I can do in poser. Yes, it's fast, but only if you sacrifice quality. If you want good quality, Octance suddenly isn't fast anymore, it's just as slow as the rest.

Where Octane images completely failed to impress me, LuxRender images do the opposite, they really do impress me.... quite a lot. But.... even though the advertising for Reality makes it all sound so easily, the reality is different. I do find the advertising very misleading, from what I've learned by now is that you need to do quite some effort to get your poser scene rendered at their best in LuxRender, it's not simply a matter of sending your scene to LuxRender and render it. On top of that comes the render times..... 30 minutes vs 9 hours is simply not encouraging, ok this may be an extreme, but from I've heard before and now, LuxRender delivers great quality at a cost, long long rendering times.

So, adding it all up, I'm going to stick to Vue, that way I'm avoiding having to learn poser all over again in a different way and keep my rendering times within certain limits. But I must say, I'm very impressed by the LuxRenders so far, but it would be more fair to customers to really explain before hand what is needed to get such images and not make it sound like pose, click, render, done.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

All depends what you want from your renders to be fast then you use a biased render engine.  Luxrender on the other hand being unbiased will take longer and anyone going into it should know what to expect..

Every 3D renderer has its pluses and minuses some do things others do not and vice versa it all depends what you want to do and how much time you are willing to put into it.

About one of the better things about LuxRender is being able to adjust the light intensity, and effects while it is still rendering.

The main minus is that if you don't like something about your scene you will have to restart again especially annoying if the rendering has been going a while.  But most renderers tend to do that to a degree..

You know you enjoy 3D Art when you realize that your life is a piece of 3D Art. :)

AMD 7900X3D, 64 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 Ram, Asus Prime X670-P Wifi MB, PNY RTX 4070Ti Super 16GB, 14TB SSD's & HDD, Windows 11, Poser 9 / Pro 2012 / Pro 2014, Daz Studio 4.22.

Only just started playing with Reality and I did expect that the renders would take a lot longer.  On the plus side, you can continue to work in Poser while it is running.  With Luxrender you can pause and restart a render at a later date and you can change the lighting during the render.  I know this is true of other render software but if you are comparing with Firefly I think they are important differences.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

my system gets pretty hot using poser with IDL ... I'm thinking Reality would bring it to its knees? Onboard graphics..AMD ..but

 

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

Quote - my system gets pretty hot using poser with IDL ... I'm thinking Reality would bring it to its knees? Onboard graphics..AMD ..but

 

 

It depends on the system really.  I have had some firefly renders last more than 24 hours.  Once the processor is running at 100% it will find the levels of cooling irrespective of what software is using all it's power.  So I guess Luxrender would be no different to Poser on most scenes

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Here is a comparison. This first one was rendered in Poser.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

This is my first real image done with reality and lux. I'm still working on reading through the manual so the clowing sphere needs some work. Besides that I perfer it to the original. The poser render took an hour or 2, the Lux one was stopped at 5:21 hours.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

The LuxRender sure is nice, I like the reflection of the light from the sphere on the face. I'm really curious what the specs of machine your machine are?

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

The image was done with Poser 8 and Pose2Lux. It took over 9 hours. Now, I could get close to this with Poser 9/PP12 and an emitter. This image took more than 9 hours btw, with the help of two computers - a quad core and a dual core. Poser 9 has closed the gap between the two programs considerably, but of course the Luxrender render is superior. Just know what you're getting yourself in for. If you don't mind having your computer tied up for a whole day (and perhapd multiple computers), than it's for you.

Laurie

I picked up Reality for Poser yesterday and tried rendering a saved Poser image using Lux. It DOES take much longer, and even when I've got the singular light I have in the scene turned down to something ridiculous like 5% intensity, I'm getting hot spots and the image looks way too bright.

So, it's clear that I have some learning to do insofar as managing light is concerned. I read in the documentation that I can adjust light "on the fly," but I've not noticed how that works yet.  More reading and experimentation is in order.

On the positive side, the Reality plug-in works seamlessly inside Poser, and I really LIKE that I can resume a render in Lux whenever it suits me. I may not use Lux for every render because it takes so long, but in instances where I really need the quality, this might be the way to go.

:)

Quote - I picked up Reality for Poser yesterday and tried rendering a saved Poser image using Lux. It DOES take much longer, and even when I've got the singular light I have in the scene turned down to something ridiculous like 5% intensity, I'm getting hot spots and the image looks way too bright.

So, it's clear that I have some learning to do insofar as managing light is concerned. I read in the documentation that I can adjust light "on the fly," but I've not noticed how that works yet.  More reading and experimentation is in order.

On the positive side, the Reality plug-in works seamlessly inside Poser, and I really LIKE that I can resume a render in Lux whenever it suits me. I may not use Lux for every render because it takes so long, but in instances where I really need the quality, this might be the way to go.

:)

 

Just as a test, have you removed all the lights in Poser and then added mesh light from the runtime included with Reality? I tried that last night and the lighting was just about right.  Having read the manual earlier on there is a section on the use of Poser lights which I need to experiment with once work is out of the way once more.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - The image was done with Poser 8 and Pose2Lux. It took over 9 hours. Now, I could get close to this with Poser 9/PP12 and an emitter. This image took more than 9 hours btw, with the help of two computers - a quad core and a dual core. Poser 9 has closed the gap between the two programs considerably, but of course the Luxrender render is superior. Just know what you're getting yourself in for. If you don't mind having your computer tied up for a whole day (and perhapd multiple computers), than it's for you.

Laurie

I love the cloth, but the figure looks a bit like a doll, but that may be the whole idea. I don't see where the 9 hours worth of rendering is though, knowing I could get close to this with Poser 9 and even beyond this with Vue and sure wouldn't have to wait 9 hours using 2 computers at all. But, to each his own I guess and as long you think it's worth 9 hours waiting with 2 computers dedicated to rendering, go for it.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Quote - I love the cloth, but the figure looks a bit like a doll, but that may be the whole idea. I don't see where the 9 hours worth of rendering is though, knowing I could get close to this with Poser 9 and even beyond this with Vue ...

That was sort of my point ;). I did that in Poser 8 and Poser 9 is starting to converge with the quality of Luxrender. Not there yet, but it's closer. FWIW, that image was also done before Rhionon and I worked on a really nice SSS skin recipe. LOL

Laurie

Reading the manual part of the idea of Reality 3 is to make textures easier such as working with a types called glass or metals rather than dealing with nodes.  It might be that some talented people could get very close to a Luxrender using Firefly if they are good at creating materials while others, who are less skillful, could get a much better result because the materials are easier.  I am not saying that is the case (just floating an idea) and I need to work with Reality a lot more to understand it's advantages and disadvantages.  It does however seem to try and simplify Luxrender for Poser users.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Its only release day and there are bugs and missing features, as one would expect.

I bought R3 so I can learn how to drive it. The bugs will shake out and I really hope the performance will get addressed with a new version of Lux.

I am having fun and I'll save up the bugs I find until I am sure they are not of the RTFM type.

Quote -  

Just as a test, have you removed all the lights in Poser and then added mesh light from the runtime included with Reality? I tried that last night and the lighting was just about right.  Having read the manual earlier on there is a section on the use of Poser lights which I need to experiment with once work is out of the way once more.

 

Yes, that was the first thing I tried. The mesh light created very even illumination, but what I wanted were deep shadows that derive from a single point light. I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.

 

[quote

 

Thats the first thing I tried. The mesh light created very even illumination, but what I wanted were deep shadows that derive from a single point light. I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.

 

 

Now I understand what you are trying to do and yes the mesh light does gove even lighting.  TYhe section on lights in the manual is very good and cover the differences in the way Luxrender uses lights to Firefly.  Certainly the there are differences and shadows is one aspect that appears to be very different.  Anyway I am off home to play and see if I can get my head around this. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Another option for more dramatic shadows with a mesh light is to reduce it's size/scale. As you reduce the size, the light behaves more like a point light source. The key with Lux is to think how light behaves in the real world. A very large soft box (large mesh light) will give very soft shadows, where a smaller light source, say a soft spot light (small mesh light) will give more defined shadows.

Hope this all makes sense and helps a bit.

__________________________________________________________

My Rendo Gallery ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......

Quote - I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.  

In the "Lights" tab you can set the colour temperature of your lights. A lower temperature makes a warmer, yellowish light.

Wow!  Thank you, Dustrider and Xen for the tips.  I'll try them out.

 

:)

Just my two cent. I have worked with the free Poser to Luxrender plugin before and although it needs a bit more tweaking it can easily be tested to give you a feel of how Luxrender works. Reality, which I tried today is much simpler in use as it needs less tweaking, it already knows what is skin, cloth, etc, but I sadly already had issues that it did not understand all node information and the clothing textures came out dull. The metals and glass materials Reality come with are much superior to Poser versions and they do truly reflect lights, etc...Luxrender renders are more true to what we see around us and the lights Reality ships with are easy to use and achieve good natural looking renders. In my case I am sadly very limited as to the size of renders. Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

If natural is what you aiming for Reality will do it, but you might not be able to add much stuff to your scene or render big. It is all system dependant. A basic render in Lux took 52 minutes for me to find it OK (1000x1000). It thus also might depend upon how much time you are willing to give it....

RDNA has the official forum and many people have posted there. Maybe it is worth having a look?  

 

just some additional food for thought - I rendered this in pp2012 only - cranked the settings a bit too high - render time was 3hrs on a dual core. probably could have achieved similar results with lower settings and a render time under an hour.

  edit - click for full size

 

 

I'm a noob, with tons of ignorance and desire. :)

I bought Reality 3d, installed, followed manual for a QuickStart. nothing.  Says it's rendering.  Let it go all night.

It works, but no idea as yet what I'm doing wrong.  Nice dots on black background though.

Printed out manual, to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I was under the misconeption it would be fast.  IT IS NOT.  It would still be worth it if the results were jaw dropping, but I'll have to wait and see.

For me personally, Firefly is slow.  I know I should be patient, really I do, but I'm not. Too much to do. 

My guess is that if I ever get a render to work, I'll rarely use it, simply because it takes so long.  Maybe they will address that with fixes.  Hope so.

Until then, back to Firefly.

Here is a quick n dirty pic I just did, as it is still cooking and still pixelated this was saved at 45 minutes into the render and it does look good though.  The pretty much a work in progress but the thing I like about Lux Render is the ability to adjust the lighting and other effects on the fly and not having to stop and start a render if something goes wrong though if you want to change a lights position or add something then you have to go no choice there.

 

Quote - I'm a noob, with tons of ignorance and desire. :)

I bought Reality 3d, installed, followed manual for a QuickStart. nothing.  Says it's rendering.  Let it go all night.

It works, but no idea as yet what I'm doing wrong.  Nice dots on black background though.

Printed out manual, to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I was under the misconeption it would be fast.  IT IS NOT.  It would still be worth it if the results were jaw dropping, but I'll have to wait and see.

For me personally, Firefly is slow.  I know I should be patient, really I do, but I'm not. Too much to do. 

My guess is that if I ever get a render to work, I'll rarely use it, simply because it takes so long.  Maybe they will address that with fixes.  Hope so.

Until then, back to Firefly.

 

Did you adjust the settings under the Tone Mapping section in Lux Render? If say you select linear mode you will get settings like Film ISO, Shutter, f-stop and Gamma just like you would a camera.  If those settings were set wrong in Reality they will come out dark in Lux adjusting the Tone Mapping settings will make a big difference.

And well as for fast no it isn't due to Lux being an unbiased renderer it takes a lot longer to get really good results compared to programs like Poser, Daz Studio, Carrara, Vue and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

You know you enjoy 3D Art when you realize that your life is a piece of 3D Art. :)

AMD 7900X3D, 64 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 Ram, Asus Prime X670-P Wifi MB, PNY RTX 4070Ti Super 16GB, 14TB SSD's & HDD, Windows 11, Poser 9 / Pro 2012 / Pro 2014, Daz Studio 4.22.

Some of my Firefly renders can take a day or two, already... he he ;)

Just downloaded my copy of Reality for Poser. Looking forward to trying it out on a render or two. The UI seems nice and snappy certainly.

I'm used to renders in Vue taking days. I've had a Vue render take over a week before.

Guess I'm patient.

Also, my Poser time can be limited, so there are often big gaps between times, when I can leave a render running...

Quote - In my case I am sadly very limited as to the size of renders. Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

That's disappointing.  I usually render larger than that. 

What kind of system resources do you have, if you don't mind my asking?

 

 

 

> Quote - The LuxRender sure is nice, I like the reflection of the light from the sphere on the face. I'm really curious what the specs of machine your machine are?

Here's my settings

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

Quote - Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

Hmmm... that's bad news. I render 3000x3000 usually and can't go much smaller than that and still have a usable image. Oh well.... have to see how it goes! :ohmy:

Quote - > Quote - The LuxRender sure is nice, I like the reflection of the light from the sphere on the face. I'm really curious what the specs of machine your machine are?

Here's my settings

Thanks for those, my pc is a bit faster, but not that much at all. I don't think I want to wait over 5 hours for a single figure render. Besides rendering at 1000x1000 or 1200x700 is bad news for me, since I render for print and need much larger sizes.

Having said that, I'm still looking forward to seeing more images rendered with the help of reality3.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

I don't mind the time it takes so much, a big Vue render can take a couple of days. But like aeilkema I render for print so they have to be big.

Attached Link: sample

I haven't yet seen a character render in lux that is that much better than I can get in poser alone with much shorter render times. ex - this was 3 years ago and rendered in (poser only) 30 mins.

ok, I'm done after this. I re-rendered my portrait close up with lower settings - here's the final result. again pp 2012 only total render time 42 mins. not gonna see me forking out cash for another render system.

I think I have to agree with those saying Poser retains the best engine.  Quality is surely an important factor, but like everyone else, I don't have time or resources to await hours for a single image.  I am more of a professional than hobbiest, so I have to be able to turn my work out with reasonable speed.  So for now, I think I will pass on the REALITY software.

 

Thank you all for your comments, insights, and links and samples.  I was not expecting such an awesome and informative response.  Thanks so very much!

yeah, the response was good and left me of the same opinion as you, I stick with poser pro2012 for now and when i have time experiment further with octane as i have already purchased it.

thanks everyone for your time and advice

cheers

I'm interested in Reality for the way it renders props - glass and the like with realistic lighting. That looks good. I can see it (hopefully!) being useful for me where I've got a fairly close-up scene with a character that looks much better with Poser smoothing than it looks in Vue, but needs realistic lighting effects for the scene. We'll see. If I ever get round to trying it! ;)

I'm having buyer's remorse right now . . .  I've been playing around with Reality for two days and I've yet to render a Lux image that I'm satisfied to see.

I'm going to agree with many people here, and say that, I'm not seeing much of a difference between the quality of a Firefly render and that of a Luxrender...which is no great surprise. I've used Luxrender a great deal with Blender, and it is a great engine, but like all unbiased engines, it's slow.

We have to remember that unbiased engines were originally created for arch-vis and product rendering.

Since getting Poser Pro 2012, I've been quite impressed with Firefly-yes some things are still frustrating, but I actually believe that with SSS, Poser can finally render a character better then any 3rd party solution. I was one of many, that never used Poser for rendering and always exported to a 3rd party renderer...in my case Vue Infinite.

I'm actually rendering an image now in Poser, the first time since Poser 4! Yes, I've banged my head against the desk a few times in setting up the scene, but I'm liking what I'm seeing, and for studio type character renders, I belive Firefly is very capable and more than a match for Luxrender. Yes, you won't get physically acurate IES lighting etc with Poser, but really, outside Arch-vis and product rendering, who will notice or care.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new tools, and if somebody has a need for it, be it Reality 3 or anything else, then great...and in all honesty Reality 3, for what it is, is a very fair price.

I just have to say LAJ1's portrait is a case in point - fantastic rendering!

 

Website: The 3D Scene - Returning Soon!

Twitter: Follow @the3dscene

YouTube Channel

--------------- A life?! Cool!! Where do I download one of those?---------------

An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

Quote - An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

By your description, it sounds like a review written by someone who has never purchased, and therefore cannot have used or reviewed the software.

Yup - you need to purchase a product to review it, I believe.

Are you thinking of a Facebook comment perhaps?

Quote - I haven't yet seen a character render in lux that is that much better than I can get in poser alone with much shorter render times. ex - this was 3 years ago and rendered in (poser only) 30 mins.

WOW, now if I could render like that in Poser I would not use Reality for Characters either. Care to share your secret.

In truth I expected to use Luxrender on a limited basis and mainlty for scenes withotu charaters but as most my renders have a human element I just had to try characters first.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

"Are you thinking of a Facebook comment perhaps?"

Nup, it was there yesterday, and now it's gone.

Do we assume the right to review is conditional on proof of purchase and usage? The comment was based on the reviewer's use of Lux, which remains pertinent regardless of the Reality bridge.

I suppose the review was removed because it pertained more to Lux than Reality, and therefore not really a "product review". Splitting hairs concidering Reality is entirely 3rd party dependent on Lux. Don't like it when pertinent opinions are arbitrarily disapeared.

Quote - An observation - there are currently no comments in the Review section on the Reality for Poser product page. But yesterday there was one comment, which basically stated that lengthy render times meant the reviewer wouldn't be buying it. Where did that review go?

The review wasn't inflamitory or unreasonable or trolling IMO. A suspicious person might conclude that a bad review was removed for "marketing reasons". Surely to God Rendo wouldn't be doing something like this?

 

I think anyone doing any sort of research would not be buying this for speed of render. It is not cheap product so I would expect most to do some research before buying.  I purchased it on sale and used my Render rewards so it was not a massive outlay but I also did research and went into it with my eyes open.

I did not expect it to totally replace Firefly before I purchased it and, with my limited use, I would say this will be the case.  I do however think it is a good tool to have in the box and I can see me using it for certain renders.  All in all I am happy with my purchase.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - > Quote - In my case I am sadly very limited as to the size of renders. Paolo suggests renders at 1200x700 which for me are too small, but the sizes I am used to render as in 3000 and up, hog my system and ended up crashing Poser and called for a reboot....

That's disappointing.  I usually render larger than that. 

What kind of system resources do you have, if you don't mind my asking?

 No problem:

Specifications are I7-2600, 3.4 GHZ, 8 GB, Win 7 64, GTX 560 Ti      PP2012

With Poser I can render big and I generally don't go below 3000 and the same image in Poser with 4000x4000 kept the system running and I could do other things, whilst with Lux all was stuck....  

 

 

 

Re reviews  

 

Basically Reality is just a bridge and it does what is says in the packet, converts Poser files for use in Lux. It doesn't convert everything 100 percent as I already ran into issues there, but the main issues I encounter are with Luxrender and not so much Reality and reviews from people should only speak about what Reality does and not Luxrender, which is a free program after all. In how far the file conversion plays a role in how fast or good Lux performs is a hard one to answer. 

The free bridge does as good a job but needs more tweaking whilst Reality does most for you. Generally metals and glass need adjusting...The lights it ships with a really good and give a true natural feel...but there sadly remains the fact that Luxrender will take time, resources and might not work well on your system.

Maybe it is worth experimenting with the free one, render as you like and then consider whether you want to pay for another bridge which simplifies a few steps or not. It is on sale until May 5th which gives plenty of time, and then keeping an eye on RDNA's official forum should help you making a decision as if to buy, ask a refund, etc....especially since peeps ran into all sorts of other issues linked to Reality in combination with other installed content like Octane...just my two cents...off to work  

 

One reason I got Reality is because I wanted to render scenes in Lux which outran the limitations of the Octane render engine. In simple scenes Reality/Lux works fine - although the conversion which Reality does, is not as good as what the Octane plugin does - but larger scenes cause problems.

There are two type of problems I have encountered: Some objects do not convert properly (errors in Lux log) and Reality seems to become unstable when a lot of materials are present - such as a crash when I make a figure invisible. If I make the scene smaller by removing items, Reality behaves better.

I have no doubt that Paolo will fix the bugs in Reality, but for now I cannot use it for the purpose I wanted to use it for.

 

An unbiased renderer without the power of GPU only acceleration is a no sense today.

I have both Reality and Octane plugins for Poser and I have better results with just 30 seconds with octane than 30 minutes with Lux (despite CPU 12 threads).

So we will have to wait the next Lux version with GPU only acceleration for better comparisons knowing already that a NVIDIA cards will be useless until NVIDIA decides to improve OpenCL support in their drivers.

How about ATI? Don't they offer good OpenCL support?

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

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Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Quote - Specifications are I7-2600, 3.4 GHZ, 8 GB, Win 7 64, GTX 560 Ti      PP2012

With Poser I can render big and I generally don't go below 3000 and the same image in Poser with 4000x4000 kept the system running and I could do other things, whilst with Lux all was stuck....

Thanks!  I have more RAM than you, but your processor is faster.  I'm guessing this means I won't be able to render at large sizes, either.

I think I'll wait a bit.  Let them work out the bugs.  And maybe see if it's included in RDNA's annual 50% off sale.  I'd like to play with it, but I'm guessing I won't use it enough to justify the full price.

 

 

I have the OpenCL version of Luxrender installed and set it to use OpenCL in R3.  According to the stats during a render I have 8 threads on the CPU and one on the GPU.  I assume this means that it is working with OpenCL but I am not sure and don't know how to check.  Also not sure what impact it will have but I am just at the bottom looking up at this steep learning curve at the moment, but having fun.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

A simple render- non OCL, around 1500 samples/pxl, a little too much DOF and several sketchy things going on- but I'm learning.

I'd used Lux before, so I knew full well about the render times before purchasing Reality.
Worth the purchase price for the Poser bridge and shader setup features.

IMO, this is a product that would be used for that long term, detail oriented project. Not so much for getting five or more renders out in a day.

Would anyone hate me if I said most of the ones I've seen look like Poser9/2012 renders? I'm not being a bitch either. LOL. I think they do. Maybe that's a testament to how much better the newest version of Poser is compared to the former versions as applies to rendering anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I thought Hellboy's Luxrender images were flippin fabulous and he used DS with Reality as the bridge ;).

Laurie

Quote - Would anyone hate me if I said most of the ones I've seen look like Poser9/2012 renders? I'm not being a bitch either. LOL. I think they do. Maybe that's a testament to how much better the newest version of Poser is compared to the former versions as applies to rendering anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I thought Hellboy's Luxrender images were flippin fabulous and he used DS with Reality as the bridge ;).

Laurie

 

Gee could we hate you...never. Anyway I think you are right but it is early days yet and I expect the examples to improve.  Also Poser 9/2012 is capable of some stunning renders if you know what you are doing.  I remains to be seen if it is easier with those without the skills to do high quality renders easier in Poser or Luxrender.  - Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

> Quote - Would anyone hate me if I said most of the ones I've seen look like Poser9/2012 renders? I'm not being a bitch either. LOL. I think they do. Maybe that's a testament to how much better the newest version of Poser is compared to the former versions as applies to rendering anyway.

This is what I'm finding, Laurie. I know that to a point, my experience with Poser Pro 2012 leads me to agree with you, and I've only used the Reality plug-in for a couple of days. However, I've got a very simple Lux render going on right now. (One figure and a mesh light. I gave up on the one I'd been working on previously.) After more than two hours of rendering, this is how it looks.

Yawn . . .

The eyelashes, in particular, look horrid!

Aww :(. I'm sorry to hear that. Seriously. Hmm...maybe it's because you have to throw out what you know about Poser and start over with Luxrender :). I can't imagine what's up with the lashes tho. I'd have to see the materials files..hehe. Not asking for em or anything...I don't need to know ;).

Laurie

> Quote - Aww :(. I'm sorry to hear that. Seriously. Hmm...maybe it's because you have to throw out what you know about Poser and start over with Luxrender :)

To be fair, the Reality 3 plug-in does EXACTLY what it's advertised to do. There has to be, by virtue of my long experience with Poser, a rather steep learning curve to ascend in order to make my Lux renders look as good as they do in Poser Pro. But with me, these things tend to be incremental and evolutionary. Looking back at renders from two or three years ago, the lighting looks all wrong now.

So, why wouldn't the same be true of my renders with Lux?

It's just frustrating that the process takes so long without yielding results that inspire me to continue . . .

 

Quote - I can't imagine what's up with the lashes tho. I'd have to see the materials files..hehe. Not asking for em or anything...I don't need to know ;). Laurie

Those lashes render nicely in Poser. I don't know what the deal is in Lux. The attached image is the same character, rendered in Poser more than two years ago. Her lashes look normal in this image . . .

It could be that the mask which is used in the lux material conversion is not working properly. It is supposed to exclude lashes and eyebrows from having SSS. Maybe it does not work for the eye lashes you use

 

Quote - It could be that the mask which is used in the lux material conversion is not working properly. It is supposed to exclude lashes and eyebrows from having SSS. Maybe it does not work for the eye lashes you use

I saw the same thing on the render from yesterday, and I'm pretty sure the lashes are different. Would you have a clue about how I might address that issue?

Quote - Would anyone hate me if I said most of the ones I've seen look like Poser9/2012 renders? I'm not being a bitch either. LOL. I think they do. Maybe that's a testament to how much better the newest version of Poser is compared to the former versions as applies to rendering anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I thought Hellboy's Luxrender images were flippin fabulous and he used DS with Reality as the bridge ;).

Laurie

You're right Laurie. PP 2012 does a great job with the right lights and good quality texturing combined with some maths. It is also faster for sure...I am still not sure whether I will ask for a refund. I will do more testing tomorrow with some old files....I don't tend to ask for refunds as I feel sorry for the merchant's work involved within a product, especially if it is their only income...ah well....  

Is it reasonable to ask for a refund when the product works EXACTLY as advertised?

Good luck with the refund, from what I understand all sales are final and no refund is given.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

I was happy to pay for Reality. It will provide me a viable, time-saving route to using the free Lux render engine, relative to using the Pose2Lux method, which was going to involve more work on my part...

...and I'm interested to play around with other render engines.

No way I'd fork out for Octane currently. So Lux, via Reality, is an affordable alternative.

It won't replace my use of Firefly... not at present for sure. My workflow using Firefly is too established... and I'm very happy with my results from that.

Indeed, for simply rendering human figures / skin realism, I don't see Reality / Lux as offering any major advantage over what Poser can now do with SSS. Not for what I'm after.

But in other areas... e.g. caustics, through glass... or getting photo-realist results (i.e. simulating real world photography), as opposed to the more illustrative hyper-realist look I tend to shoot for with Poser, at present... I think Lux/Reality will be a great combo to have at my disposal.

As a mac user, the GPU acceleration in Lux is of major interest certainly... looking forward to seeing some further developments on that front.

Quote - > Quote - It could be that the mask which is used in the lux material conversion is not working properly. It is supposed to exclude lashes and eyebrows from having SSS. Maybe it does not work for the eye lashes you use

I saw the same thing on the render from yesterday, and I'm pretty sure the lashes are different. Would you have a clue about how I might address that issue?

Go to the face material in reality and turn the mask off. See if that makes any difference. If it does, then you have to modify the mask (or leave it off) to fit the new eyelashes.

If the mask is not there, you have to load it. I think it is described in the manual . I have not done this myself yet, I only turned it on and off to see the difference.

Lux is - like any other render engine - has its own quirks to deal with. The most difference between FF and these renders is the specularity, absorbion and scattering. They are treated differently and you have to adjust. I think Paolo does what he can, but some of it depends on the texture, specular and bump maps and cannot be automated.

I see the same type of issues in Octane. The trick is to find the optimum settings which are in your taste, save those as a preset and re-apply to other skiin sets.

You will find that texture sets are all very different and some look better with default settings as others. In Poser you compensate with light sets, in Lux you can do the same of adapt the texture colors.

 

I don't think anybody is really complaining about Reality, apart from the odd bug (normal in any software).

I think what is really at issue is the big hype that was leading up to the release of  Reality 3. You would be forgiven for thinking, reading the "hype", that Reality was giving you easy access to the greatest thing since sliced bread and head and shoulders above anything the Poser user has ever had access to, when in all reality (excuse the pun), similiar results can be had from Firefly.

Anybody who has seriously worked with Blender will have used LuxRender, and many will tell you, it's not a one click trip to realism.

It's great that Reality offers another solution for Poser users, but yet again I suspect many people have been sucked in by the hype, and will never achieve the scale of realism that they were told could be achieved.

 

Website: The 3D Scene - Returning Soon!

Twitter: Follow @the3dscene

YouTube Channel

--------------- A life?! Cool!! Where do I download one of those?---------------

Quote - I have the OpenCL version of Luxrender installed and set it to use OpenCL in R3.  According to the stats during a render I have 8 threads on the CPU and one on the GPU.  I assume this means that it is working with OpenCL but I am not sure and don't know how to check.  Also not sure what impact it will have but I am just at the bottom looking up at this steep learning curve at the moment, but having fun.

If Lux is showing 1 GPU in the render stats, that does mean that it is using OpenCL. I've experimented with GPU assisted renders, and easily get 2-3 times greater samples per second rates than with straight CPU. But what I've found so far is that the GPU assisted renders take a lot more time to clear up the fire flies, but I could be doing something wrong.

.............................................

On a different but related subject, I have always found lighting in Poser very difficult, while lighting in Carrara, DS, and Lux is easy for me. For those who struggle with Poser lights like I do, Reality 3 may make using Poser much "easier". Typically my final renders take quite while (hours), so using Lux isn't as big of an issue for me as anyone who want's/needs to have the render done in 10 minutes to an hour tops.

Lux also provides something that Poser doesn't .... caustics. For anyone who has dreamed of rendering their scenes with caustics for more realistic lighting effects on glass, fliuds, jewels, etc., Reality 3 makes this fairly easy now, and at a very reasonable price compared to some of the other options.

Laurie is pretty accurate about throwing out what you've learned for Poser when it comes to lighting and shaders with Reality/Lux. But this is basically true with any new/different 3D application/renderer. Just like with Poser (or just about any 3D application), those who are willing to put the effort in to learning it will get great results. Lux is slow, but there are people who are able to optimize their scenes and get great results with decent render speeds of 1-5 hours.

My 3D app of choice is Carrara. So tweaking mats/shaders and setting up my own lights to render "Poser" content is part of the work flow. I started using Carrara to render Poser content with Poser 4 and Carrara 3, so I'm really used to this being a part of my work flow. I also like learning new things, so for me learning to optimise Poser mats/shaders for Lux isn't a big deal - But .... your milage could vary.

I posted an image this morning in my gallery here (link in my sig line) titled "A Simple Test" that was done with **no **modifications to the mats/shaders. It's not a great render, and could easily be made much better with a little extra effort. It was just a quick test to see how well Poser SSS mats would transfer from Poser to Lux via Reality 3. I was very pleased with how well Reality handles the conversion of the mats from Poser to Lux. The render ran for 7 hours, but I'm pretty sure that I could have stoped it in around 2-3 hours - I just let it run while I slept.

From my experience with poser mats in Carrara, and what has been posted in the threads here so far, I can gaurentee that not all mats/shaders will convert so effortlessly. So anyone who is on the fence about purchasing Reality 3, keep this in mind. Shader conversion is really a crap shoot. Sometimes it works so well that the converted shaders look better than they did in the native app, sometimes they just don't work at all.

As with any purchase in the Poserverse, how happy you will/would be with Reality 3 (and LuxRender) really depends on what you want, and how you want to do it. Just like Reality 2, Reality 3 is a top notch program, does an excellent job of translating the data from Poser to Lux, has a very detailed manual, and an interface that makes editing and setting things up for Lux fairly easy. Paolo (Pret-a-3d) also seems to truley care about the quality of his products, and customer satisfaction.

IMVHO, if you want to use an unbiased render engine with Poser9/PP2012, and don't want to invest $250+ to get there, right now, Reality 3 is your best option.

__________________________________________________________

My Rendo Gallery ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......

I've been playing with it a bit.  After 4 hours...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wisdom of bagginsbill:

"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?"
"The [R'osity Forum Search] 'Default' label should actually say 'Don't Find What I'm Looking For'".
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...However I wish the hair looked as good as it does in Firefly (7 minutes whist LUXRender was running)  I thought the hair might have baked in highlights, but the baked in highlights on the lips show up quite well in LUXRender...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wisdom of bagginsbill:

"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?"
"The [R'osity Forum Search] 'Default' label should actually say 'Don't Find What I'm Looking For'".
bagginsbill's Free Stuff... https://web.archive.org/web/20201010171535/https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/Home

Yer, I've yet to see transmapped hair look better in anything other than Poser Firefly...even in Vue Infinte it never looks quite as good as in Poser.

 

Website: The 3D Scene - Returning Soon!

Twitter: Follow @the3dscene

YouTube Channel

--------------- A life?! Cool!! Where do I download one of those?---------------

Here is one of mine from Lux (via Reality 2, albeit same premise)  I was really impressed with what I could do with the lighting in Lux without any postwork! (click pic for bigger)

Only postwork in this was frame and sig, I believe (was a little while ago). 

It is WAAYYYY too early to give up!  Every tool takes time to learn.  My initial Lux stuff was garbage, and I bugged Snarlygribbly to death about his Pose2Lux stuff.   I got better.  If your at it for just a portrait...then it will be an even match, but for an environment, like a kitchen with glasses, sun shining in a window...its tough to beat unbiased!

Heck, I always go back to Carrara when I need trees and stuff....but I dont use it for portraits.  Use the right tool for the right job.

(btw, I thought it did a good job on this hair, but maybe its just me :tongue2: )

Tis an excellent render, 3dOutlaw! Not much to fault with it at all ;)

I will just say one thing about unbiased renderers, and thats my thought about grain in most unbiased renderers - some people are put off by it, and I can understand why, but my view has always been to treat render engines like people used to treat different camera film types (you remember, the days before digital ;)) - each has it's own characteristic and should be treated as such, and not as a fault.

 

Website: The 3D Scene - Returning Soon!

Twitter: Follow @the3dscene

YouTube Channel

--------------- A life?! Cool!! Where do I download one of those?---------------

Quote - I haven't yet seen a character render in lux that is that much better than I can get in poser alone with much shorter render times. ex - this was 3 years ago and rendered in (poser only) 30 mins.

I personally don't think that Luxrender does a much better job on facial portraits than Poser Pro 2012 with the appropriate shaders and IDL. That said, I think it does better than Firefly on scenes where realistic lighting is important, especially those with reflections, or lots of metalics, glass, liquids etc.

I agree with the above comments regarding portraiture, the down side being that the majority of Poser users use it for just that reason, making portraits.

Skin material conversion by Lux (or any 3rd party renderer) is faced with the issue that material conversion will always be qualitatively inferior to that of the original in that it is only mimicking the original material. An anology would be transcoding loss with video where conversion will always result in output inferior to the original. Whether or not the loss of quality is perceptable to the human eye in a render is another matter.

Skin material shouldn't necessarily be inferior, as the same texture is being used; it would actually be better if the shader was more representitive of real skin..

One thing I noticed about the two renders I posted above is that the LUXRender image has a better dynamic range.  The reflection of the emitter in the eyes is quite realistic, whilst it is blown out in the Firefly render.....

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wisdom of bagginsbill:

"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?"
"The [R'osity Forum Search] 'Default' label should actually say 'Don't Find What I'm Looking For'".
bagginsbill's Free Stuff... https://web.archive.org/web/20201010171535/https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/Home

"Would anyone hate me if I said most of the ones I've seen look like Poser9/2012 renders? I'm not being a bitch either. LOL. I think they do. Maybe that's a testament to how much better the newest version of Poser is compared to the former versions as applies to rendering anyway."................"

......"I think what is really at issue is the big hype that was leading up to the release of  Reality 3. You would be forgiven for thinking, reading the "hype", that Reality was giving you easy access to the greatest thing since sliced bread and head and shoulders above anything the Poser user has ever had access to, when in all reality (excuse the pun), similiar results can be had from Firefly."

@Laurie& Cheers

I completely Agree
the true problem IMHO is that  when you take a photographic simulator be it LUX or Maxwell etc.
and drop in a "humanoid " model that at best is "Stylized " you get the same thing you have seen from the latest version of firefly

another issue is the tendency of poser user to render single figures in a mostly  DARK& EMPTY UNIVERSE

which often gives very little opportunity for indirect bounced lighting to add to the realism.

cheers

My website

YouTube Channel

**Yer, I've yet to see transmapped hair look better in anything other than Poser Firefly...even in Vue Infinte it never looks quite as good as in Poser."**

Must Disagree here, Vray ,C4D native "AR" and MODO Does an excellent job with poser transmapped hair
here is a quickie from  MODO401

My website

YouTube Channel

Might be beginning to get the hang of this.

Two of the prop mesh lights, about 25 minutes render time with 7 threads, around 500 scans/pxl.
Where it really surpasses firefly is in using light emitting objects.

If it normally takes poser pro 1 hour to render your final scene, how long will that translate into Reality 3?

I'm not sure it's even possible to have that kind of correlation to say all 1 hour poser renders will take 6 hours (or whatever time length) in lux. First I'm sure that the choices you make in reality will vary from scene to scene and each setting had the potential for changing the render time. In addition where you render until you want to stop, that will also affect the render time. It's almost like asking how long will it take me to make soup if I can make spaghetti in 30 minutes.

In addition, with as new as Reality 3 is, there wouldn't be enough data to make an accurate comparison.

To skew the data even father, I accutally had a render get to poser quality in a shorter time than it took to render in poser, by like half the time.

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Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

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I use Poser 13 and win 10

To add complexity to this discussion, I can set up a Poser render that takes many hours to complete.  Right now, for example, I have an image rendering in Firefly that measures 1600 x 1600 pixels at 300 dpi, with separate IDL and SSS passes. I started it rendering at 6 this morning, and now, 7 and 1/2 hours later, it's still not finished. So, I'm not ready to give up on Reality just because it's slow.

There's a logic to the idea of using a particular render engine for a particular purpose. Maybe I'll use Lux for a scene involving a character immersed in water, or something along those lines.  I'm interested to see how the render engine handles water, which is particularly unrealistic in Firefly.

I know this may sound crazy, but can you use Reality 3 in a way where you're NOT going for realism?  I'm trying to avoid the scene becoming so realistic that it makes the characters look like mannequins.

Has anyone tried using reality 3 for NON-realistic renders for a more cartoony, colorful, comic style feeling?

Reminder guys, use the flags for nudity and language, even when quoting.  

...... Kendra

Quote - Aww :(. I'm sorry to hear that. Seriously. Hmm...maybe it's because you have to throw out what you know about Poser and start over with Luxrender :). I can't imagine what's up with the lashes tho. I'd have to see the materials files..hehe. Not asking for em or anything...I don't need to know ;).

Laurie

 

The lashes could be an issue of "use hair mask" being unchecked. The mask prevents the SSS from making eyelashes look funky and reddish.

I really recommend that everyone read the user guide. Also, the forum over at RuntimeDNA is useful.

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And I totally agree about people needing to throw out what they know about Poser when trying unbiased rendering.

Me, I took one look at Poser lighting and went "are you kidding me?" Luckily, I came across Reality, Lux, and a far more simple, intutitive and real-life way of lighting scenes.

But then I learned that many of the products out there don't look good in physics based-rendering, mostly because they were created for a more cartoony rendering style.

As a result, I became more discrminiating about the products I buy. Painted-on buttons and lacing are a pass. Very painted skin textures are also a pass. I'm going to be very honest and say that many Reality renders look like photos of plastic dolls, but they would be vastly improved by simply using better photo-based textures.

Okay, I shouldn't say "improved." Some people want the doll-photo look. It's fun for humorous stuff. Still, there's a reason why many Reality users use the bleep out of Danae's skin textures. They look effing awesome in Lux...with a little tweaking.

With DAZ's Reality, I've never once not fiddled with the textures in Reality's editor. However, I have to do it less with Reality 3. You noobs are lucky. Still, would I never expect to just load an object, light, and hit the render button because, again, most of the content out there isn't made for unbiased rendering. Now that we have Reality for Poser, I am hopeful vendors will start making products with Lux in mind.

 

Tl;dr: Unbiased rendering is another tool. It requires learning, and a different perspective.

If you're going for the less reasitic and more toony or comic book type, you might wanna check Freestyle. I have no experience with it whatsoever, so take that as it is. I do know however that there are much better images out there than what's in their gallery.

Laurie

Quote - I personally don't think that Luxrender does a much better job on facial portraits than Poser Pro 2012 with the appropriate shaders and IDL. That said, I think it does better than Firefly on scenes where realistic lighting is important, especially those with reflections, or lots of metalics, glass, liquids etc.

Poser Pro 2012 - it's not the tool. I admit there are some things for which I prefer Lux, but you didn't name them.

 

 

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Caustics?

We all have been spoiled with BB shaders for poser. When ever I try new rendeing software, I never see anyone who approachs shaders the same way as Bill. That's a problem for me.

Well, Poser won't do caustics, but I have rarely felt I needed them. Let's be clear, though, that I do not use the loose meaning of caustic as many people use it. The specific meaning of caustic is concentration or dispersion of light due to a curved refractive surface, causing a localized modulation of the light intensity after passing through the refractive medium. Hot spots. Poser is missing, altogether, the ability to transmit light through glass to reach and illuminate other objects. (possibly coloring it) This causes me trouble. I don't care that much about focusing the light - just let it through.

Generally there are four things I run into frequently that Lux does great and Poser does poorly, even in my hands:

1. Interior lit by exterior daylight, through windows.

2. Small, hot mesh lights. (e.g. a light bulb filament)

3. Some specific glass situations (not all are bad in Poser) and I'm not talking about caustics - I'm talking about seeing through the glass and letting light through the glass. A wine glass sitting on a white table cloth will, in Poser, incorrectly render the table cloth as being in shadow of the wine glass. You have to use transparency instead, and that ruins the illusion.

4. Overall a better, more accurate handling of bounced light so any situation where that is a significant factor in the light - interiors, corners, crevices.

There is also the fact that so often Firefly will do a credible job of bounced lighting, but there are so many artifacts I just can't use the render.

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For architectural, glass and metal Luxrender is quite awesome ;).

Laurie

I was going to argue that Poser metal is fine. But then I remembered I can't do anisotropic reflections yet in Firefly.

Example: brushed aluminum.

Laurie there's nothing wrong with your jewelry in Poser. So it's not fair to say it can't do metal and shiny things.

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Poser has no trouble with this sort of glass. I don't see anything Lux can do better.

But I see something here that Lux cannot do AT ALL that Poser does brilliantly. Can you spot it?

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Use the BagginsBill Environment Sphere?

No it can use the sphere, I tried, made it a mesh light. I haven't used Reality much yet, but I guessing it's smoothing?

Oh well, not sure why someone would do that, but it was more of a joke. :tongue1: It's late, I've had a good laugh with this comment, "...and Poser does poorly, even in my hands." :lol: , and its time for bed.

Cheers, and happy rendering! 

motion blur

 

Spinning wheels. Camera in motion as is the truck.

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Lux can do motion blur.

 

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

Quote - I was going to argue that Poser metal is fine. But then I remembered I can't do anisotropic reflections yet in Firefly.

Example: brushed aluminum.

Laurie there's nothing wrong with your jewelry in Poser. So it's not fair to say it can't do metal and shiny things.

I don't think I said there was anything wrong with metal in Poser did I? ;). I just said I looks great in Luxrender. Mileage may vary...it's a personal opinion. Saying I like something better isn't knocking the thing I like less, is it? :P

FWIW I'm probably having more fun in the material room lately than I ever have to now. Infact, I don't think I've EVER had fun in the material room..lol. Maybe because some of it is finally starting to sink into my thick skull. Sure, I'll probably never completely get it, but I've been satisfied with my jewelry and the shaders for it more or less ;).

Laurie

Metal is pretty good in Poser, but after getting Vue and rendering some shiny :-) things with the Vue rendering engine, it looked even better then in Poser. So do caustics, but that's no surprise at all. I'm still impressed by the way Vue handles caustics, but I guess coming from Poser, it's not hard to impress me.

But metals and caustics sure look impressive with LuxRender as do some of the other effects. But who knows what the next version of Poser will bring?

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

A lot of the shortcomings of Poser rendering are a direct result of the way Firefly is built (hybrid REYES) so unless that changes, I wouldn't really hope for a huge improvement.

As for jewelry poser is missing dispersion and absorbtion which help to get the rich and deep look of gems, and the 'fire' in diamonds. Absorbtion also helps with things like colored glass and liquids etc

Quote - Lux can do motion blur.

 

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

Whoops - thanks for the correction. I guess I stopped paying attention too long ago. In 2011 (last I looked at Lux) people were rendering multiple frames and merging them to get the look of motion blur.

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5815

So now Lux has motion transforms - I wonder if Reality includes this information in its export.

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Quote - As for jewelry poser is missing dispersion and absorbtion which help to get the rich and deep look of gems, and the 'fire' in diamonds. Absorbtion also helps with things like colored glass and liquids etc

Having been a Luxrender user before I knew that this is what was missing in gems in Poser. I waited so long for glass that just didn't turn black (like it did for me in Poser 8) that I supposed it was a small sacrifice and I could accept it.... I really try not to expect too much from Poser, even tho I would like it all ;)

But anyway....don't wanna drift too far off topic :).

Laurie

My experiences: First off, although I've owned and used Poser, Carrara, Bryce, (even Animation Master) for years, I'm more a casual user than anything else [read: perpetual newbie] to rendering.

However, I have a specific look in mind and I won't give up until I get it. And I think I've almost found it... using Poser 9+Lux, using Reality.  I have a very high polygon face + hair setup.  At least in Poser, it looks very wrong no matter how I play with settings. And at 1280x1280, Poser 9 just stops/aborts rendering with a partial-hair frame and a subscattered face. Anything less size still looks bad for materials.  To be fair, I'm probably doing it wrong.

However, the same setup is unbelievably real in Lux. Sure, a 1280x1280 takes 5 hours to get to 200 samples per pixel (my base minimum), and 50 hours to get to 10k (wonderful). [Machine: i7(dual)-win8-16gb and a terrible graphics card (NVIDIA 640) plus one slave (i5)].

This has inspired me to go deeper. LuxRender's CURRENT GPU set up (1.2.1), I've found, is broken - causing bad white spotch looks (perhaps it's NVIDIA vs ATI on OpenCL). If you have a bad image, try turning off GPU [for now]. Version 1.3 (within a month or two) has much better GPU (and has daily to weekly pre-stable downloads to use now).

I tried a NVIDIA 660ti and, with the drivers bombing with Lux, read that (supposedly) NVIDIA cripples (or doesn't fix/doesn't improve) their drivers regarding OpenCL. All I know is, I installed everything (even the partially hidden OpenCL drivers available on NVIDIA's site) and their card still doesn't work / drivers bomb.

Soon, I'll be trying an ATI RADEON 7970. 

Bottom line is, I see the best reality in Lux and with Lux continually improving their engine, including GPU, I'd rather put my resources in hardware and have multiple rendering engines to choose from. Reality does an EXCELLENT job of bridging Poser to Lux.

Quote - I picked up Reality for Poser yesterday and tried rendering a saved Poser image using Lux. It DOES take much longer, and even when I've got the singular light I have in the scene turned down to something ridiculous like 5% intensity, I'm getting hot spots and the image looks way too bright.

So, it's clear that I have some learning to do insofar as managing light is concerned. I read in the documentation that I can adjust light "on the fly," but I've not noticed how that works yet.  More reading and experimentation is in order.

On the positive side, the Reality plug-in works seamlessly inside Poser, and I really LIKE that I can resume a render in Lux whenever it suits me. I may not use Lux for every render because it takes so long, but in instances where I really need the quality, this might be the way to go.

:)

There is more than one way to skin a cat here.  You don't have to turn the lights down to 5% intensity.  You can leave them as they are and fiddle with the exposure settings.

Quote - [quote  

Thats the first thing I tried. The mesh light created very even illumination, but what I wanted were deep shadows that derive from a single point light. I also wanted a warm color to the render, like that created by an incandescent bulb. At this point, I have to learn how lighting in Lux works before I can use the render engine properly.

 

 

Now I understand what you are trying to do and yes the mesh light does gove even lighting.  TYhe section on lights in the manual is very good and cover the differences in the way Luxrender uses lights to Firefly.  Certainly the there are differences and shadows is one aspect that appears to be very different.  Anyway I am off home to play and see if I can get my head around this. 

Lighting is something I'm always trying to get my head around better than what it is.  On the warm tones deal though; try fiddling with some of the film responses.  I've found that using Kodak Portra 160 NC produces very nice warm flesh tones.

You can also try the Reinhard / Non linear tonemapping and playing with the prescale, post scale and burn parameters which has a major effect on the tones.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

those lux renders at rdna are fab IMVHO.  based on above discussions, one can feel confident that, in next few months, nobody need worry that anybody shall post an FF Render that could be confused with a lux render. 

Quote - those lux renders at rdna are fab IMVHO.  based on above discussions, one can feel confident that, in next few months, nobody need worry that anybody shall post an FF Render that could be confused with a lux render. 

 

I wouldn't say thats true entirely.. I've seen some very lackluster renders out of lux, just as I've seen some gawd awful poser renders.  I've even posted some (quite frankly not all that good renders) on DA and had comments asking if they were DAZ + reality.  

The tool is only part of it and LUX sint going to be miles ahead of firefly for every scene.  Though it may make higher quality results quite a bit more widely accessible.

To be honest, while a lot of the render are quite nice, I can say that I've actually been 'blown away' by many of the character renders(maybe a couple) I have looked at.  Even the environment ones seem like they are heavily reliant on the quality of their textures.