How many hours does it take to render a frame with Luxus for you?
I've just bought Luxus and try the first 851x315 frame. It took more than 3 hours and I gave up. I stop it before the final result came. I was warned that it might take several hours to render a picture but I didn't think that even a Facebook cover also takes that long. Do you have any tips or tricks to know the final result before start rendering? If we are to trial & error by taking several hours for a picture, how can we finish our jobs? (I've learnt that The Cars 2 used the fastest supercomputer at that time and took 11 hours to render a single frame. Just wonder how really tough it is in this 3D world.)
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
LuxRender will not stop until you tell it to stop...that's how unbiased render engines work. It'll just keep on calculating as long as you allow it to, although after a while you probably won't notice a difference in the image. When I render using Luxus I usually let it go overnight, and longer if needed. But usually you can get a good sense of what it will look like within a few minutes.
Oh my, I should know this sooner. I confess that I just downloaded and tried without knowing anything. Just thought that it works like 3dlight. Thanks a lot Scott.
How long something will take to render in lux is almost entirely dependent on the gpu and cpu of you're pc. Something I've found to better assist me in getter faster results when using luxus/reality is making the scene its self smaller by hiding things not visible, making the image smaller, making textures smaller, or turning all cores in your pc on, if you have more than 1. If you never have done anything with your cores, the way to turn them on is to go to the start menu>search msconfig>Boot>advanced option>number of cores and turn them on. it uses more energy so higher electricity bill, and laptops will die way faster.
For me gpu acceleration render doesnt render very fast so I dont use it. It may be faster for you though. Also raise the number of threads of you are able. I usually go to 32(max number) to get a fast render. After you experiment with renders you'll have a little knowledge and estimation on what renders will take alot of time. I honestly couldnt get luxus to work properly, because the lighting still used daz lighting as far as I knew, so I got reality. without the lights the image will remain black and you'll never see anything, so be sure that it will never "finish" nor "start" visibly because you cant see it.
Post you're specs, number of cores and whatnot
In reality I was having alot of trouble getting renders done quickly cause my specs where that bad. I had a render that i spent 146hours on and got 10sp, had a friend render on his pc and he pulled 15sp in 30 minutes. that was when i still used gpu rendering, my gpu sucks so it wasnt a good idea...
It never tells you when its done though, you just stop it when the noise is cleared up by luxrender.
Something else that can cause a very slow (or very bad) render is the lighting. Lights in LuxRender are very different to the setup for 3Delight as used in a plain D|S render; it's a lot closer to real-world lighting, and many standard D|S lighting rigs create "impossible" or drastically over- or under-lit results if you let Luxus auto-convert them. You will have to re-learn how to light a scene for LuxRender. It can be mind-bendingly tricky, but the results can be mind-bogglingly good.
I'm a newbie at Luxrender. Lux is awesome ! Luxrender takes quite a bit more time then 3Delight, but the results are impressive. Longest render I've done is approx 30 minutes, mostly portraits, no complex scenes. But as Scott states, usually an individual can get an idea of render after few minutes. I like Lux functions of being able to pause, stop, save render/continue to render, etc....... I've also noticed while rendering with Lux, I can do other tasks on the computer, does not interfer with render speeds, while 3Delight slows to a crawl, as I perform other task on the computer. It's all preferance. As each of us learn to master various techniques, we become more faster, renders become more faster, etc..... Have fun friend.
Thanks for your tips, liltay. I'm on 8 core iMac and this is my specs.
Well said :-D I will remember and may try to tell my son this quote.
This is a very good tip that I've never known before. Thanks!
Note that this can vary, not always in line with OS/RAM/CPU cores/CPU speed. I have an Intel i5, 4 cores, 2.8 GHz, Win7 64-bit, with an old-but-still-works NVidia GT 240 graphics card. I've only rarely had more than minor slowdowns when multitasking doing 3Delight renders, and the only times I've had Luxus runs crash out on me are when I forget and use a hybrid CPU/GPU mode that isn't yet completely supported in LuxRender.
It's still early days, remember, LuxRender has a lot of development ahead of it, and a lot of neat features on the we're-working-on-it list.
Some of the stuff in the Luxrender 2 pipeline looks absolutely fantastic...
Rendered with LuxRender via Luxus (right image), compared to the same image in 3Delight (left image).
I usually let the images render for the night, 6-7 hours. It's something of a learning curve, i.e. with the surface settings. At first, I had a too low texture sample setting, so my characters had no texture at all. Then, there is the issue of specularity, which can mess up a render. In the Lux-render I posted, you see some pixelation on the stomache of the right hand guy. This is caused by a mixture of too much specularity and glossiness in the original surface settings for the skin.
Also, the light color works a bit different; I have used sunlight for the LuxLight, though it should be some flourescenting light, similar to the 3Delight render.
Personally, i like to play with both render engines, as each offers a different approach and a different result.
Thanks for your tips, liltay. I'm on 8 core iMac and this is my specs.
:O 8 core mac huh? To be honest it seems macs already render faster for some reason, who knows?
http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2008/05/disabling-cpu-cores-on-a-mac.html
I personally dont have a mac so I wouldnt be able to tell you everything you want about enabling or disabling cores, but this thread can tell you how to at least activate them.
Typically when you purchase a new computer its using 1 core to save power, cause if they had all the cores active it will use more energy etc. they leave it to "advanced" users to decide weather or not to activate them, turning them on will increase overall render speed so I'd go for it
Really? When did this start? My i7 quad and i7 hex came default with all hyperthreads active. Are you thinking of Overclocking? That is different. I can set Overclocking but that heats your cores faster and can be bad on your PC in the long run.
Overclocking is bad for a system. I would only think about it if the system is getting outdated and wanna try and get its last leg out.
Not overclocking. They typically never have more than one core active, for all windows and some macs. Its no harm in checking to see if all 8cores are active seeing as the cpu is a major player player in render, cause if not active whats the purpose in having them?
Also some computers have warranties if you over clock with in their "safe" parameters going any farther and the warranty is void. I only know some cybertrons and alienwares to come with those, and I think you'd have to by it directly from them.
His specs are really good though, overclocking wouldn't be necessary under normal circumstances.
Umm.. I humbly agree to disagree.
Jade...the only ones I've ever noticed being 'throttled'/set to minimum by default are the off the shelf 'vomit boxes' at places like Walmart, etc...custom built/'enthusiast' machines generally come 'ready to perform'.
Yes if the system doesn't come overclocked then if you add it then it will void the warranty.
mine actually even had an overclocking program on it when I got it!
(I have never used it though)
Can you provide links for us the beginners to the product you use? I used google and found that luxus render is a standalone product and I believe require some plugin to send your scene, am I correct? I found these:
http://www.daz3d.com/luxus/
and
http://reality-for-daz-studio.com/
What is the workflow and what is one plugin doing that another one is not?
Does this renderer allow you to have caustics, volumetric lighting like in Maya, Max etc?