Luxus for Carrara alpha release available - Luxrender in Carrara

3drendero

Change the Luxus renderer from Sampler to Hybrid, then Luxrender uses the engine that uses the GPU for assisting the rendering. Small speedup depending on graphics card, but less limitations than full 100% GPU renderers.

Tried a 1.3 beta, does not work yet.

Which exact scene rk66?

rk66

Desk only works, the other presets not.

rk.

Dartanbeck

3drendero said:

Change the Luxus renderer from Sampler to Hybrid, then Luxrender uses the engine that uses the GPU for assisting the rendering. Small speedup depending on graphics card, but less limitations than full 100% GPU renderers.

Tried a 1.3 beta, does not work yet.

Which exact scene rk66?

Thanks. Did you see that AMD released new cpus that have dual graphics cards built into the actual cpu chip? Some 587 CUDA cores or is it more than that? Can't remember off hand... Cool, nonetheless - and the chip is surprizingly inexpensive for such a thing! Makes a geeky little Computer builder like me wet my pants! But only on the inside... only on the inside! :roll:

Dartanbeck

So far I've only seen them releasing Quads like that, or perhaps dual core too... but no Eight Core monstrosities with the in-built Graphics.
Oh... and those are Radeon cores... silly me! AMD, duh!

I've been an nVidia guy for the most part. I tried a high end ATI once and it fried. I never push graphics that hard, so it had to be a flaw... but it still leaves goo in the mouth.
This baby's got the eight screeming cores with 16GB of cooled RAM to feed 'em! :ahhh: Love it!!!
nVidia Fermi Graphics... nothing special. I just wanted a wee bit of power for my Carrara OpenGL. Carrara's all I ever ran - till now. Now I've got Dogwaffle!!! My 48 CUDA cores have been proving to be quite zippy little buggers!

Dartanbeck

Valuable quote from 3drendero:

In Assemble room, choose Insert then Lux Infinite or Lux Sunsky to get one main background light, Infinite is like HDRI in Carrara, you need to type the full path to the HDRI map in the Map field.

In the Shader room, you first choose Lux Surface in the Top Shader, then Lux Materials in the Material field below, for example Lux Matte which supports textures. The object can be turned to a mesh light with the Area light material. Recommended to use 1-2 of these, together with the Sunsky/Infinite.

The Interior/Exterior are for more advanced effects, like SSS, something to explore later: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxRender_Volumes

Render room:
Hybrid renderer uses GPU to assist, some speedup when using a fast GPU.
Surface integrator: Path is faster, but works only for exterior scenes.

In Luxrender: Change lights while rendering. Also you can save files for postprocessing later, like turning off a light.

Hope this helps ;-)

3drendero

Spheric Labs is so fast, we cannot keep up with the learning and tutorial making, here is his tips on setting up materials to start with:

At this point it is totally manual setup and very much incomplete.

Try the following on a single object:
-> Change Top Shader to Lux Surface
-> Change Material(1st slot) to Lux Matte
-> Change Diffuse channel of Lux Matte to texture map
-> set a texture map as you normally would.

For glass do:
-> Change Top Shader to Lux Surface
-> Change Material to Lux Glass2
-> Change Interior to Lux Clear
-> On the Lux Clear -> Fresnel, change the Index of Refraction to Common Glass

Make sure you have a plane underneath or backdrop so you can see the glass

For area light, plug the area light into the Light slot of Lux Surface.

Kodiak3d

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3dtoday

Count me in!

3drendero

SLG is scheduled for the next Luxrender version.
Early betas don't work yet with Luxus for Carrara, probably a Luxrender thing.

Dartanbeck

3drendero said:

SLG is scheduled for the next Luxrender version.
Early betas don't work yet with Luxus for Carrara, probably a Luxrender thing.

It'll come. Then we'll get to use all of our CUDA cores on Lux calculations! Weeee! :ahhh:

This is all so frackin' cool! (BSG quote use fully intended)

3DAGE

quick material and lighting test.

Q: is there a way to have a metal shader using a texture map

3dOutlaw

I have been out a few....did he work on the instances yet? :) Sorry so anxious...

3drendero

Instances are exported as geometry, so it works, just not exported as Luxrender instances. Not that it matters on modern 64bit OSes with 16GB RAM for <$100...</p>

Advanced Luxrender materials supports mixing. The DAZ Studio Luxus handles that with a separate program still in development, Eluxir. Maybe there are other ways though...

SphericLabs

3DAGE said:

quick material and lighting test.

Q: is there a way to have a metal shader using a texture map

The latest update fixes the texture map not working in the metal2 slot.

3dOutlaw

3drendero said:

Instances are exported as geometry, so it works, just not exported as Luxrender instances. Not that it matters on modern 64bit OSes with 16GB RAM for <$100...</div>

Yea, I am laptop bound, with a max of 8gb...and many mouths to feed. A forest of trees is not pleasant to try and render on my box. I've tried and failed ;-)

3DAGE

HI Spherical labs ;)

Thank you for the info and the great plugin work your doing. it's much appreciated

is there any chance you could post the link to the latest update here as well as over at the carrara cafe.

I'm currently having issues accessing the Cafe site.
:(

Dartanbeck

3DAGE said:

HI Spherical labs ;)

Thank you for the info and the great plugin work your doing. it's much appreciated

is there any chance you could post the link to the latest update here as well as over at the carrara cafe.

I'm currently having issues accessing the Cafe site.
:(

Me too.
So 3dage... I really like your image. Thanks for sharing. Those glass pitchers look fantastic! But actually everything does. Very good idea of a test for this. Bravo!

SphericLabs

http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Luxus.zip

3dtoday

quick material and lighting test.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/index.php?&ACT=50&fid=66&aid=64159_ToH2dczLujmSW3cl1Xiv&thumb=1&board_id=1

===============================

Nice.

gaffer2

Late to the party again! what version of lux do I need to make this work? there seems to be quite a selection on the lux website

3DAGE

Hi Gaffer :)

I'm using build 1.2

SphericLabs :)

Thanks for that,. however,. I get the same message when trying to access that file,.. that I get on the Carrara cafe site,. (I'm hoping you're both on the same hosting provider) ......and I get an invalid zip file when (right click menu) selecting "Save target".

but thanks anyway :)

Dartanbeck :)

Thanks ,.. i made the glass "things" with a twist in the body which should show the distortion of the light through the glass (IOR)
the Stair's have a little lip at the front edge, which should create shadowing
the walls and floor, are standard primitive Planes with texture maps, and the metal balls are just a primitive Sphere.

I'll upload the scene file here later.

3Dtoday :)

thanks ,. I like them to. ...there's a nice soft fall off to the shadow edge which looks quite natural to me.

SphericLabs

Weird, I just tested downloading the link and extracting it to carrara extension. Works. does the link work for anyone?

rk66

Hi,
best thanks Spheric.

Zip file works.

rk.

Dartanbeck

3DAGE said:

Thanks ,.. i made the glass "things" with a twist in the body which should show the distortion of the light through the glass (IOR)
the Stair's have a little lip at the front edge, which should create shadowing
the walls and floor, are standard primitive Planes with texture maps, and the metal balls are just a primitive Sphere.

Well it really looks good. The lip on the stairs looks great where you see it, like the top two courses. I bet they'd shadow beautifully were the light off to the left of the scene a bit further. And... those "things" you made, as most of the rest of us from Wisconsin will tell you, are for drinking beer. What else would you do with them? lol

3DAGE

Hi all :)

here's the little test scene. (36 kb)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/Lux_test_scene.car

no textures included since we should probably be using the new lux shaders. :)

SphericLabs

Almost all of the Lux Shaders allow you to switch the colors to texture maps if you want.

3DAGE

Then here's the textured version

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/Lux_glass_steps2_.zip ( 19mb )

3dtoday

I got one or two scenes to render.

3drendero

I can confirm that the small scene by 3DAGE does not work with the 3rd release of Luxus (dated 16/4).
Guess it was built with version 2 and the huge shader upgrades of v3 are the reason for the loss of shader information.
For example the red sphere were black and the glass details were lost.

SphericLabs

Sorry, I should have messaged that files saved with the prior versions would not likely load in later version, but the next version will be save/load stable going forward.