Lux vs Octane

Xfitz

I currently use Lux via Luxus for my renders and am getting fireflies on my model's skin. I have lowered the specular settings and upped the raytracing/occlussion samples to 128 and still get them. I set the skin material setting at "glossy" in Luxus. I don't get them when I set the skin for "matte" but the result is too, well matte-like. Any suggestions?

Also, I heard there is now a plug in for Octane for Daz. Has anyone tried that yet?

StratDragon

These are the rendering engines options for Daz Studio.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17897/

Xfitz

Thanks. That more or less answers my Octane question, but I did not notice any reference in the discussion to my main concern: firefiles in my Lux generated renders. Can you steer me to a discussion about that? Thanks again for your timely response.

JimmyC_2009

Two very large threads available here : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21492/ and Spheric Labs posts there too.

StratDragon

there is a Lexus thread in the commons I think. I use Reality but ultimately it hits LuxRender, so if you are getting "fireflies" you need to check a few things:

If you are using a skin setting or glossy setting for the surface of the skin try reducing your glossiness to half or less.

If your lights are too intense turn the intensity down, or remove a few to see if it makes a difference. If it's an outdoor scene use one light. In Reality you can use a distant light, name it "Sun" change the camera view to "Sun and point the light. Viola, sunlight.
The next step is to adjust your levels in Reality to fit the lights, this is not as frightening as it sounds.

How long are you letting the render run? Firefiles are very common for the better part of a render's initial stages and sometimes linger for hours after rendering.

When you begin a render in LuxRender the application does not know how you want your scene lit and for the most part the settings can be counter productive when you've exported out of Studio.
As a general rule you can change the Kernal type to Reinhardt/Non Liner and make very small adjustments with the pre, post and burn. It may take your computer a few seconds to show you what you did so think small steps, not Steve Via with a wha-wha pedal.
For outdoor scenes with the single light I find I get really good results using the Kernel set to Linear,
Sensitivity 100, exposure 16, Fstop 1/125, Gama 2.2, -2.6

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

start small, get an idea for this software and get a feel for it, it's very different.

linvanchene

Some more links to other threads:

- - -

Octane Render plugin for DAZ Studio released by Otoy

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19492/

- - -

Render speed comparison between 3Delight and Octane?

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/22339/

- - -

In case you wondered why there is not so much talk about Octane on the DS forum it may be because there is a dedicated forum especially for the Octane Render Plugin for DS on the otoy site:

http://render.otoy.com/

All users have access to the public forum but only licensed customers can visit the sub forums.

- - -

My personal experience:

Luxus

I was using Luxus when it was released and used it only about a month.

Plus:
I liked the realistic look of it compared to 3Delight.
I also liked very much how it integrated the DS surfaces with the Luxux materials
Additional licenses for additional CPUs are free.

Downsides:
It took quite a while until I was able to render images I liked.
I was disappointed that not all Kernels of the Luxrender engine were fully supported at launch.
Not all parameters needed for the Ex-photon mode were available.
Especially the Hybrid mode a mix between GPU and CPU had still problems.
All in all I was especially disappointed by the slow render speed.

Disclaimer:
I did not test the new GPU modes of luxrender.
I am not in a position to judge which of the points I mentioned have been improved in the meantime.

- - -

Octane

I switched to Octane the very day the Octane Render Plugin for DS was released

Now it is my prefered render engine.

Plus:
I was able to render great looking images even without much adjusting of materials.
To put it different: I had no clue what I was doing and the images looked great from the start
Speed: The GPU Render speed is about 10-15 times faster than CPU.
Even rendering of zbrush fiber mesh hair is extremely fast.
You do not need to buy shaders because there is a huge live online database of shaders to which all users can upload new presets
There is great continued support for the Octane Render plugin for DS
Each month new features have been added so far

Downsides:
You need to buy Nvidia graphic cards (at least at the moment)
You need to learn to manage the VRAM because there is only a limited amount of space for textures.

- - -

What have Luxrender and Octane in common?

- You can use the free Luxrender license in combination with any render farm like Amazon and rent additional CPU

- At the end of 2013 there will be an octane render cloud editon that lets you rent GPU power whenever you need it.

- - -

To sum it up:

To me it seems to be a matter of cost vs speed:

If you have the money and want fast results in a few minutes Octane Render is the way to go.
If you do not mind waiting for a single image for days and like that it is free use Luxrender.

Personally I believe in the long run Octane will offer more and more features because it is supported by companies like Nvidia and autodesk.
On the other side the free licenses of Luxrender put it in a similar spot as Blender. If the community supports it new features will be added as well.

Rhale

Xfitz, post example of your skin material settings please?

StratDragon

I have not used Octane, I really don't possess a graphics card that would take advantage of it and the price tag is still hovering in a realm I consider not viable for the hobbyist. So f you don't mind paying for Octane, AND unless you already have a graphics card that will take advantage of i, it might be your preferred investment. If you want power in your CPU for other things it's not like Octane will take advantage of that. If you have multiple systems can you farm out an Octane render to your own SOHO without having it consist of higher end GPU installed boxes or would it be cost effective to pay the proposed $1/per gpu - per hour for the cloud? On Lux if i have enough RAM on a box I can use pretty much any CPU laying around the house of office but not everyone has either I know.

which one is better? It really depends on the tool in the hand of the artist, I've seen the results of both engines range for from utterly astounding to epic pooh. Jackson Pollack and Michelangelo Buonarotti got very different results from paint brushes. I'm using LuxRender, I'm not waiting days for results on complex and large scenes, that's not everyone experience. I sometimes wonder those who say it took 48 hrs to render it in Lux could have stopped it at 6 hrs and gotten the same visual results.

Xfitz

Thanks for the help. The links have been edifying but time consuming to wade thru. Much of it is still a mystery to me - how to create water in Lux via Luxus for example; I am confused by what "volume" is and how to use it - but I am slowly inching along towards some imaginary finish line where I will know how to use Lux and Luxus proficiently. So thanks again. As for Octane, it seems a bit too pricey for now.

Oh, unfortunately I can not comply to the request for a sample of the skin. I deleted that render. The suggestion to reduce glossiness as well as fiddle with some other settings, and to allow the render more time, seemed to help reduce the fireflies.