Daz Studio gets another LuxRender Plug-in
scottidog2
Posts: 319
Daz Studio gets another Render Plug-in.
Will Carrara ever get one?
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its ok if you want to watch paint dry :-)
The Vendor did answer this question in his Commercial thread here.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18555/#272908
by the way, I was never interested in daz studio, so I don't know how it works, but to try that new render plug in,with a carrara scene, the only way is to import in daz studio, via obj, and loosing all the carrara materials?..
Why? Yes luxrender looks better then studio, but not carrara, so what would be the point?
well,it's difficult to know, like that, on some poors renders, if it's , or not, better... the only way is to try, with his own scene, and see if things are improved, or no... So , my question was: is it very complicated to import a carrara scene in studio?..;
Depends on a lot of things but yes. It would be much easier to build the scene in studio then export to carrara. What I have seen of the luxrender renders the lighting looks much better then studios, but textures don't look as good as carrara's. The renders I have seen just look like studio renders with better lighting.
Can we see some comparisons? It's been a LONG time since I've seen a Carrara render. Most are "postworked" in photoshop. It'd be cool to confirm that statement with a few side-by-side renders. Done in Carrara and a LuxRender render. No postwork involved, lets see Carrara/lux skills, not photoshop skills.
**edit**
I should redefine that as "Carrara/Daz skills" or "Carrara/Poser" skills since Lux is simply the render engine. The comparing images could use either Luxus, Reality 2.5 for Daz, or Reality 3 for Poser to compete. I think that'd actually make for an interesting contest! Looking at raw, unpostworked images could show off the artists skills as well as each program's strengths and weaknesses.
Can we see some comparisons? It's been a LONG time since I've seen a Carrara render. Most are "postworked" in photoshop. It'd be cool to confirm that statement with a few side-by-side renders. Done in Carrara and a LuxRender render. No postwork involved, lets see Carrara/lux skills, not photoshop skills.
**edit**
I should redefine that as "Carrara/Daz skills" or "Carrara/Poser" skills since Lux is simply the render engine. The comparing images could use either Luxus, Reality 2.5 for Daz, or Reality 3 for Poser to compete. I think that'd actually make for an interesting contest! Looking at raw, unpostworked images could show off the artists skills as well as each program's strengths and weaknesses.
Search the forums. There was a render challenge pissing contest similar to your suggestion a couple months ago. Meh.
Here's one I did last night. I did paint out a collision artifact where a foot was poking through a stirrup, but I didn't touch levels, color, contrast- anything. It's for a freebie scene I'm putting together so I'm trying to get some promo renders without postwork.
Since the scene and render utilizes plants, volumetrics etc. and uses absolutely no GI of any kind whatsoever, and rendered in a little over two hours on my ten year old computer, it's probably not fair to compare. I don't see how it could stand up to the modern un-biased render engines. ;-)
Now's the time to try it and give feedback
-> http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20383/
This was the pissing contest: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17205/
I know "all renderers are capable" blah blah and "a great artist can paint the mona lisa with child's crayons..." etc etc... But when you look at the pics posted in that thread (which was for comparing BIASED vs UNBIASED renderers, but didn't stick specifically to that contest) I think it is pretty OBVIOUS which program *needs* a different renderer.... Based on the pics posted in that thread, there is no contest. see for yourself.
Carrara has an awesome renderer, but starts to fall apart with the GI and IBL especially under animation where frames can be drastically different (flicker, crawling ash, etc)... thing is Carrara's scene lights and the original renderer are SO GOOD that you can make fantastically realistic renders without GI in a fraction of the time.... You need to practice and learn to use those lights. It's not a "push here dummy" solution, but imo it is the *best looking* solution.
I never use post-processing, that doesn't really improve images. Post processing actually degrades color information. Unless you are going for a specific NPR "look", post should never be necessary - get off the crutch, you'll never learn to run!
I played around with Luxus for Carrara. When it becomes available I will buy it. IMO it is not "better" than Carrara's hdr/IBL GI, but it should be more consistent (that is the whole concept of "unbiased" - it is more consistent). It has a different look. That alone is worth the price of admission. Not to replace, but to have the options when you want the different look.... Carrara's GI is "soft" and can be very pretty, but takes forever to get the ashes out.... LuxRender has no ashes but it has "speckles". It's a different look.
Below are 3 renders: Luxus, Carrara's GI, and Carrara's scene lights. It's not a scientific comparison but I suggest you grab a copy of the beta plugin for Lux and have a play with it. It's fun! If you are using Carrara's GI in your scenes you owe it to yourself to try to duplicate the look without GI, and also with LuxRender.... If there are options, why not explore them?
Nothing to see here.
heh heh
You always brighten up my day Holly. :)
I wasn't saying the renderer is necessarily better in fact I deliberately prefaced with the opposite, but go look at the images submitted to that thread and then come back here and tell me there are not "problems" with D|S. Whether those problems are the renderer or the users is open for debate, but i know what I'm looking at.
Perhaps SPEED IS EVERYTHING when it comes to learning your tools. If it takes half a day to see your results, how can users get better?
Just general light qualities are not what is being debated (I have no experience with Lux and I post because you can easily see the speckles. If you say that Lux's renderer delivered "the most realistic by far" and that was my very first render, then my friend you have 100% made the case why anyone would want the LuxRender addon. It delivers "the most realistic by far" even when someone is completely cluless as to what they are doing, and flying completely blind with no previews.... Think about that.
Open the images full size and you will see the very REAL problems with Carrara's GI. That pic took over 2 hours to render and it is unuseable due to the ashes. In comparison the "straight" render took about 2min.... Yeah SPEED IS EVERYTHING, I'm sorry it just is. When you need to learn and you need results, being held back by a slow renderer has OBVIOUS detriments - as evidenced in the "pissing contest" thread.
It's cute to try to say "all is equal" koombiya, let's hold hand and jump in the fountain... etc... But in the real world when you are looking at the results, no not all is equal. There is something VERY wrong with the D|S renders, and I'm not saying it is the capability of the renderer.... I'm saying in very practical real world terms that D|S's render speed is probably holding people back.
I am sorry Araneldon has decided to remove his comments. I'm leaving them for now in my reply because I think whathe says is perfectly valid, and true... At least in theory, up to a point.
I was also very skeptical about using another renderer other than Carrara's, so I tried it. *shrug* That my first render is worth posting at all, yeah ok. I'm convinced there is potential there. That's what happens sometimes when you try to back up your ideas with actual practice, sometimes I'm wrong.... I don't think I'll abandon my "straight" renders in Carrara because it still delivers the most control in a fraction of the time. I animate. These GI renders just aren't going to happen except for the occaisional "beauty" shot....
heh heh
You always brighten up my day Holly. :)
I apologize Araneldon. I do not mean to ofend you. Just to "put my money where my mouth is" so to speak.
Seems to me that clueless people do bad renders no matter what software they use, I really don't see much of a difference. Maybe there is more crap done with DAZ Studio because the software is free.
Stonemason has some DAZ Studio (and Poser! ick) renders in his gallery, don't know any others because I generally don't look at other people's work.
No need to apologize, really. I removed my post before reading your response. I'm trying to avoid getting into these internet arguments where I just end up looking like a fool eventually... I don't know why but my mind seems to be slowly going bad or something.
Anyways, it's all good :)
Yeah, I've seen gorgeous stuff with Poser, but I never got it to look like anything but butt ugly... lol. :ohh:
Rashad Carter got me to realize what is actually meant by "biased vs unbiased"..., needless to say I was biased. Hahaha.
It has to do with how the light is calculated. from frame to frame unbiased will be more consistent because of the way it is doing it's math... There are lots of problems with Carrara's (biased) GI renders, and the renderer provides "tricks" to get around the problem (like only using the original frame's GI calculation because the next 20 calculations will all be different).
From what I understand if you are not using GI then there is no bias or unbias involved, that's just "straight" 3D.... Why I say the "pissing contest" doesn't actually prove the case for Carrara's biased renders because (imo) the best looking renders were Carrara's scene lights and no GI at all.... When we keep saying that this bias thing is a joke, what we really should be comparing is Carrara's biased GI vs LuxRender's unbiased GI...
I think if you are really into GI then you should grab the free beta for Luxus and have a play around.... It's free for now (and it times out). And yes, it is kind of like watching paint dry, but so is Carrara's GI at the highest settings....
I'm not really impressed by any that I've seen. The good ones I've seen posted in the DAZ forums without the ashing or speckles are usually tiny because it takes so long to render.
The other issue for me, is that I usually spend a lot of time on the shaders getting them to look the way I want in Carrara. These external renderers require that the shaders be rebuilt, and quite honestly from following a couple of the threads, the process doesn't sound intuitive and at this time the functionality seems very limited compared to what I can do in Carrara. Personally, I'd rather wait for the technology of these renderers to mature, before I plunk down money for a plugin that allows you me to export a scene for a renderer that seems barely beyond the beta stage.
LOL well, seeing as how we can not plunk down money yet - not even for C8.5 - there is little here worthy of *serious* debate. LOL
DAZ has all but erased the Carrara community. We have like 10 regular posters and that's it.... Gotta generate SOME kind of controversy so we know we're still alive...
:sick:
LOL well, seeing as how we can not plunk down money yet - not even for C8.5 - there is little here worthy of *serious* debate. LOL
DAZ has all but erased the Carrara community. We have like 10 regular posters and that's it.... Gotta generate SOME kind of controversy so we know we're still alive...
:sick:
True enough about the community here! Truth be told I lurked here for probably a year and a half before I even posted anything, so the number of regular Carrara forum posters may not be a completely accurate snapshot.
I'm anxious to get the free scene I've been working on posted to see how many DLs I get. O.T. I know, but what's the file size limit at the Cafe? Can I upload a zip?
We tried to set the upload limit to 100MB, but it seems WP is thwarting us. The actual limit for user uploads seems to be around ~5MB. If you can break your scene into <5MB chunks then please upload! If your zip is bigger, and you can email or dropbox it to me I will put it up on the server and give you a link to share...</p>
I don't think there is any (public) record for the number of times a file is downloaded....
I'm also trying to look into a reward system for sharing..., there is a module that allows you to accumulate points for each post comment and upload. I'm not sure what could be used as rewards.... I'd also welcome any ideas or contributions to help. I'd just like to get people excited about using Carrara again....
I may just stick it up on ShareCG and DropBox. The scene file alone (un-zipped) is 54 MB saved locally. So the folder with the scene and assets un-zipped is 101.2 MB. The zipped version weighs in at 30.7 MB. Quite a bit smaller! Still, for ease of use I'd rather keep it in one folder. I will make sure I promote the heck out of it at the Cafe though.
Yeah... I'm disappointed, still trying to get a work around...
But honestly I think the REAL untapped potential is in-the-moment file sharing, like a shader fix, or a portrait light set up...
Since all my freebies are like hair, the file size is like 38kb... I guess people really would rather have big complete scenes as freebies than small individual things like shaders and trees... :down:
I have scene components that I can share that easily fall into the file size limit. I had started building the scene for myself, but it was coming together so nicely that I thought, why not share?
I may just stick it up on ShareCG and DropBox. The scene file alone (un-zipped) is 54 MB saved locally. So the folder with the scene and assets un-zipped is 101.2 MB. The zipped version weighs in at 30.7 MB. Quite a bit smaller! Still, for ease of use I'd rather keep it in one folder. I will make sure I promote the heck out of it at the Cafe though.
Can you expand on this subject please - I think I know what you are talking about but what is WP for example?
I presume this is a push for sharing carrara files ? If so It's a brilliant idea because there could be so much useful stuff to share - not just scenes. We are all looking for ways of doing things so if we found a way why not share it. I'm talking maybe things like.
Smoke ,Explosions,Special lighting effects, water ( anyone made a really good looking animated ocean yet?)
This sort of contribution could save community members huge amounts of time experimenting - trying to reinvent the wheel etc.
Ive got some particle bubbles you might like:)
The main thing is getting it all in one place.Anychance it could be hosted at the cafe? It would be a really useful resource for Carrara users and when you see what Daz is doing for Studio ( videos / training etc ) maybe they could/should support something like this. Its not really competing with products they sell.
Other Companies more and more provide such facilities for their users.
Regards forum posts. Yes I've noticed a drop off with just a few of the same names appearing. That in itself is a bit daunting to me as a non professional because it appears like a closed club for a select few - matybe thats stupid but I have been put off by it and if you look at how many views DartenBecks Carrara help thread ( some 12000 odd ) there doesn't seem a shortage of people visiting the forum.
By the way the new cafe webface looks good which I think is down to you holly ?
Just my ten centsworth
Holly Wroteth
Goes both ways. I use Carrara to improve my post work. Maybe Carrara is the crutch. ;)
Can you expand on this subject please - I think I know what you are talking about but what is WP for example?
I presume this is a push for sharing carrara files ? If so It's a brilliant idea because there could be so much useful stuff to share - not just scenes. We are all looking for ways of doing things so if we found a way why not share it. I'm talking maybe things like.
Smoke ,Explosions,Special lighting effects, water ( anyone made a really good looking animated ocean yet?)
This sort of contribution could save community members huge amounts of time experimenting - trying to reinvent the wheel etc.
Ive got some particle bubbles you might like:)
The main thing is getting it all in one place.Anychance it could be hosted at the cafe? It would be a really useful resource for Carrara users and when you see what Daz is doing for Studio ( videos / training etc ) maybe they could/should support something like this. Its not really competing with products they sell.
Other Companies more and more provide such facilities for their users.
Regards forum posts. Yes I've noticed a drop off with just a few of the same names appearing. That in itself is a bit daunting to me as a non professional because it appears like a closed club for a select few - matybe thats stupid but I have been put off by it and if you look at how many views DartenBecks Carrara help thread ( some 12000 odd ) there doesn't seem a shortage of people visiting the forum.
By the way the new cafe webface looks good which I think is down to you holly ?
Just my ten centsworth
YAY! MONEY! $0.10!!! lol
It's about 4 of us volunteering to work on it. and DAZ 3D sponsors Cafe by paying for hosting and other necessities, but they are mostly hands-off on content because it's really meant to be a community-driven site and a Carrara showcase - but they occaissionally "leak" some info there when it isn't really time to make any official announcements.... So sort of the best of both worlds...
I'm mostly trying to organize the new "social" sections: new forums, user galleries, profiles, etc. but I'm definitely not alone on it... WP is WordPress - it's the backbone software of the site and has a lot of plugin options... The upload bottleneck seems to be an issue with WP, but it might be the server or a number of other secret "settings".... But things like particle fountains, and shaders and such should be well below the 5MB threshhold... The good thing is you can just upload a small file right in the conversation in a post.... New FREEPOSITORY is here:
http://carraracafe.com/freepository
Please upload!!
I agree there seem to be more lurkers, so I'd like to get some more fun activities going, some challenges or contests, and definitely more freebies... :) Right now the Luxus plugin is getting a lot of attention because it's new to us..., so we just need new ways to refresh what people are doing with Carrara... Around here it tends to be a lot about the DAZ figures (understandably). They're great, but there's so much more to Carrara than content, which has always been the goal of Cafe...
Goes both ways. I use Carrara to improve my post work. Maybe Carrara is the crutch. ;)
I'd be interested in hearing how you use Carrara for post work! Yay Crutches!
Heh, heh . But seriously, it's just another tool in the box so to speak - though the box is getting pretty full I just noticed.
Mind you, I keep my Carrara all shiny.
On the lurking question, I have been lurking for well over a year . I rarely participate because you guys are so far in advance of my Carrara knowledge that you answer stuff well before I can even think of the question! I'm sure I am not the only "lurker" who really appreciates the dedication, effort and sheer enthusiasm that you all bring to this forum. Please, Please, Please don't stop!
A distant admirer :-)