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LuxusCore Carrara

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  • wavyeyewavyeye Posts: 18
    edited December 1969

    SphericLabs said:
    woodscreation said:
    This is good stuff, it feels really nice to use Lux in Carrara and the IPR certainly takes away the chore of fixing shaders.

    I have a question however.

    How do you set the camera?
    As in Exposure, White Balance, Depth of Field and Tone Mapping.

    Thanks.

    It can be done via the config settings, DOF would be via the scene settings. I need to get the parameters exposed in a nice UI.

    Could you be so kind as to show how that would look for now until you get your UI sorted.
    What would I type in the config box for example to set:
    ISO 100
    F number 5.6
    Shutter speed 200

    Thanks.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    An experiment with LuxusCore Carrara and the Licorne 18th century corvette. 200 second render :)

    Click here to view the stereoscopic 3D version at 3dLive

    sailing02a.jpg
    960 x 540 - 226K
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Is there a new beta version coming up for February?
    Any new features?

    Thanks for another great plugin!!!

  • EyosEyos Posts: 114
    edited December 1969

    LuxCore expired, and as of today causes Carrara to crash when launched.
    I removed it from the extensions folder and now Carrara works fine.
    Is there a new update coming for LuxCore?..

  • SphericLabsSphericLabs Posts: 598
    edited February 2015

    Sorry y'all. Some stuff going on that has required my full attention.

    Win64 build
    -> http://sphericlabs.com/preview/win64/LuxusCore.zip

    Changes
    -> Users can configure their OpenCL devices.

    Post edited by SphericLabs on
  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    Thanks see how it goes

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited February 2015

    Thanks for the update and the new options, all 3 GPU's are now running and I am enjoying realtime rendering.

    Started a little guide/manual sort of thing over at the CarraraCafe forum, will post here once there is more details.

    Thanks again for an awesome plugin!

    Post edited by 3drendero on
  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    Sweet.. can you also choose hybrid cpu + gpu mode as well? Just wondering since I have dual r9 290x's and dual xeon e5-2690 v2's ... 40 cores alone from the cups, would love to see how much improvement it is over the straight luxus plug in :) (and whether or not adding another 2 290x's to the system would be beneficial ...

    I played with the Lux core a bit before it expired and yeah the ipr window was really neat and useful .
    Lastly, can one switch out and/or use custom hdri's or just limited to the default Lux core sky ? Was jut wondering. Thanks!

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,751
    edited December 1969

    Mohandai said:
    Lastly, can one switch out and/or use custom hdri's or just limited to the default Lux core sky ? Was jut wondering. Thanks!

    To use an HDRI you need to insert a LuxusCore infinite light, then select the HDRI you want to use in the General parameters tab (see the red arrows in the attached image).

    Hope this helps.

    luxuscore_hdri.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 422K
  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,751
    edited December 1969

    SphericLabs said:
    Sorry y'all. Some stuff going on that has required my full attention.

    Win64 build
    -> http://sphericlabs.com/preview/win64/LuxusCore.zip

    Changes
    -> Users can configure their OpenCL devices.

    Thanks for the update! The device selector works perfectly on my laptop - no more manual configuration - woohoo!!

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited February 2015

    Woooot!

    Thanks a ton Dustrider!

    And Thankyou too, Sphericlabs!

    Yeah, talk about a MAJOR difference... 7 - 16m samples/sec I'm getting with both the CPu + GPU...

    Hmm... Ok, that works for brand new documents...

    Trying to load and render a previously created scene, one I just did last night using Carrara's native render engine, and experimenting with HDRI... I do like the result however I'm trying to load the scene and try it for quality and speed comparison against LuxCore ...

    So there wasn't any Scene lights, just the Scene -> Background -> HDRI ... = Serpentine Valley

    Now, I removed the Scene HDRI, and added the LuxCore Sun-Sky , set the Render Room to LuxCore , and Assembly Room launch the LuxCore IPR
    I get message bottom of IPR window: The scene doesn't include any light source {note: volume emmision doesn't count for this check) ...

    Here's the Scene Setup:
    - Assembly Room (dropbox link)

    - Render Room (dropbox link)

    - IPR Config (dropbox link)

    Terminating a Terminator 2015

    Mohandai said:
    Ok, I've seemed to have good luck with this render project I put together last night and finished tonight... Used the same Serpentine Valley HDRI at 900% intensity, 0 Basic Lighting, Full Global Illumination - Skylight and Indirect Lighting 100% each ...

    Bit of camera DoF included...

    Was just revisiting and remixing an older scene I had done years ago, when I didn't have as good vehicle props to use, let alone scene lighting. Re-imported 2 of the 3 Generation 4 characters, updated their skin shaders for SSS, and added a newer 4th character (M4 also)... Will have to get them converted over to Genesis2 at some point...

    Shader on the T800 endo skeleton is a modified Dull Metal shader. Vehicle Golden Yellow Paint shader is my own work. Used Black Patina on the wheels.

    I like the way this one turned out... TSCC still has a soft place in my heart ;)

    Here's the original from '09 "Terminating a Terminator"


    :edit:

    Try again (dropbox link)

    Tried it again, this time saved out the characters and set pieces in a group to Carrara's Objects browser.

    Exited Carrara, loaded Carrara anew, made new scene, loaded the "Group 8" , set main document camera 1 to the other camera position, deleted the extra camera. Set the light to LuxCore Sun-Sky, Set the Render Room engine to LuxCore, Set the LuxCore Config and enabled the LuxCore IPR ...

    Doesn't matter if I select any of the 3 OpenCL devices, or shift-click to select them all Highlighted...

    Tried again, having consolidated shaders and removed unused shaders, still no go...

    Its great and very speedy when it works, usually loading just a few simple items... Loading a V4 can be ifffy especially with a building set prop...

    Post edited by CoolBreeze on
  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    On the flipside, here's a render tried first with Carrara's native render engine and using IBL, the second being LuxCore @ 25660 seconds...

    Would be nice to have / see a image resolution type field box, sinze we're blindly sizing the IPR window and the size we make it is the size it saves out as.

    :)

    LuxCore_hdri2a_25660s.JPG
    1617 x 1281 - 187K
    Doc5b.JPG
    1200 x 1200 - 138K
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Excellent work, thanks for the renders!

    Just a wild guess, but you may be running out of GPU RAM in complex scenes, the dropbox links do not work to check the complexity.
    I use MSI Afterburner to check if all GPU's are 100% busy and their RAM usage: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    Hmm, ok, I wonder if this works .... (Dropbox Links Update)

    Dropbox links used to work fine per individual file when ricght clicking and choosing "share dropbox link" in the context menu...

    I tried MSI Afterburner - never could get it to work... I do have multiple monitors, so i'd need an app to view on the side monitor...

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Using Chrome so that may be the problem with Dropbox.

    Try GPU-z instead, very simple interface and can also monitor the GPU RAM usage, (though you need to switch between GPU's if you have more than one, or render with them all at once): http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited February 2015

    OK, found a big scene that can be used to stress systems with limited GPU RAM.
    The "Day at the beach" that ships free with DAZ Studio, works out of the box in Carrara and Luxcore.
    It needed 1.9GB of GPU RAM, shown in GPU-Z and Afterburner, easy job for my 3GB GPU.

    If you don't have it, get it at:
    http://www.daz3d.com/day-at-the-beach-bundle

    If using DAZ Install Manager, load via Carrara browser -> Smart Content -> Products -> Day at the beach.

    Notes:
    -No changes to the original DAZ Studio file was done, meaning that the render can be much better.
    -Rendered for 3 minutes, looks good after 1 minute in 1280x960.
    -Same memory usage in Assemble room with IPR as in Render room with Luxcore renderer.

    DatB_luxcore_1280x960_190sec.png
    1280 x 960 - 1M
    Post edited by 3drendero on
  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited February 2015

    1.9 gb gpu ram for that little content? Ouch ....
    think I have 3gb per card as they're r9 290x's ... still...

    Will have to check gpuz with that scene...

    Post edited by CoolBreeze on
  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited February 2015

    3drendero said:
    OK, found a big scene that can be used to stress systems with limited GPU RAM.
    The "Day at the beach" that ships free with DAZ Studio, works out of the box in Carrara and Luxcore.
    It needed 1.9GB of GPU RAM, shown in GPU-Z and Afterburner, easy job for my 3GB GPU.

    If you don't have it, get it at:
    http://www.daz3d.com/day-at-the-beach-bundle

    If using DAZ Install Manager, load via Carrara browser -> Smart Content -> Products -> Day at the beach.

    Notes:
    -No changes to the original DAZ Studio file was done, meaning that the render can be much better.
    -Rendered for 3 minutes, looks good after 1 minute in 1280x960.
    -Same memory usage in Assemble room with IPR as in Render room with Luxcore renderer.

    Hmm, ok, interesting results...

    Have the GPU-Z loaded... here's what I get from both Info and performance / usage monitering... Also found out my 2nd R9 290x is in an 8x pci-e slot (argh!)... Going to have to check into that and correct it...

    Guess my R9 290X's are 4gb GDDR5 cards... And this particular scene seems to use about 5 - 7.5gb of the combined gpu ram ...

    Hadn't tried the TSCC scene render yet just the A6 Battle girl apartment lounging render...


    :edit: ok, just tried the larger scene again the TSCC with 3 chars, 1 building, 1 vehicle, 1 robot... still errors out, nomatter what i do ... Rather it doesn't even try...

    load_2.gif
    400 x 494 - 22K
    load_1.gif
    400 x 494 - 22K
    r9_290x_2.gif
    400 x 494 - 29K
    r9_290x_1.gif
    400 x 494 - 29K
    Post edited by CoolBreeze on
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Well, there is your problem, you are out of GPU RAM and I guess Luxcore is trying to use CPU RAM via the PCI-E 3.0 bus that strangles the GPU at 20x slower bandwidth (16GB/s vs 320GB/s or 40x slower for the second GPU).
    Amazing that it does not crash out as old GPU renderers did once the RAM was out, the newer GPU's support "virtual memory" which is slow.

    I still think that only 4GB is available to Luxcore, since combining multi-GPU RAM is a brand new function that has just been announced by AMD and NVIDIA, but SphericLabs maybe knows if Luxcore is that bleeding edge.

    Like with all GPU renderers, the first problem is to reduce the texture size, all human textures are at 4096x4096 and there are a lot of them.
    Not sure how to do that quickly in the Carrara Shader room, the interactive renderer has these functions built-in, it even cuts the textures when there is GPU RAM available since Carrara is getting a little old...

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Does it respect Carrara's consolidate duplicate shaders command?

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    First thing I did and always do is "consolidate" then "remove unused textures" command when I'm just about ready to render or have finished tweaking certain shaders. (Especially when the same texture is used for multiple material zones , sometimes you want to adjust the channels separately ie leather and metal buttons). I would have thought that would apply to Lux core The consolidate commands since it actually removes the excess same shaders in the entire document.

    And yeah I'll have to switch out the 2nd gpu to the nearest 16x pci-e slot when I get home this evening.

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:
    Does it respect Carrara's consolidate duplicate shaders command?

    -Just tried and got 0% improvement with Consolidate and Remove unused shaders in the Day at the Beach test scene.

    -So I deleted all the character shaders and got about 50% improvement in GPU RAM usage, <1GB are the default Genesis2 textures.<br /> -Deleted the Bikini shaders and got another 20% improvement in GPU RAM usage
    -Deleted the Hair textures and got another 20% improvement in GPU RAM usage.

    The geometry and the volleyball (1024x1024 texture) take up about 200MB GPU RAM.
    Now I have an empty scene that is boring but does not use a lot of GPU RAM.
    At least I know where the memory is wasted.

    All I need is "Resample all textures to 50%" command...

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited February 2015

    Hmm, the interesting comparison tests would be to see if carrara's own native render engine would be using the same 3 or 4gb ram to render that scene with and without the textures and using the consolidate and remove commands... minus the memory carrara uses to have the scene loaded.
    would be neat if the Lux core had a command or option with min allowed texture scale reduction ... would be a hassle to hand reduce each texture in the scene. sort of texture reduction upon loading into the Lux engine...

    I did experiment a bit last night BTW and the size of the ipr window also affects how much gpu ram usage ... smaller ipr window the less resources it seems. Wish there was an option to set the actual render resolution separate from the size of the ipr window. If you want a 1680×1050 sized image its tough to estimate how large to size the ipr window to If you have a 2560×1440 27" monitor for example. Or likewise if you only have a 22" monitor of 1680×1050 and you want to render at 1680×1050 , there's no way your going to get the ipr window to the size. This of course total available gpu ram pending... while I have r9 290x cards with 4gb, not everyone else will, and even rarer for the 6gb card ram models in am or Nvidia flavor.

    Post edited by CoolBreeze on
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited February 2015

    Hmm, you do know that the render room supports Luxcore as a renderer and that you can write the exact render resolution as usual, right? Change photoreal to Luxcore renderer and render away.

    Post edited by 3drendero on
  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    3drendero said:
    Hmm, you do know that the render room supports Luxcore as a renderer and that you can write the exact render resolution as usual, right? Change photoreal to Luxcore renderer and render away.

    *facepalm*

    Ok you got me there ;) Will have to try it and see it... Was just using the "Save" button in the IPR window... Thought the IPR window kinda made the render room mostly redundant with the Save / Render / Stop buttons.

    Good to know!

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Mohandai said:
    Hmm, the interesting comparison tests would be to see if carrara's own native render engine would be using the same 3 or 4gb ram to render that scene with and without the textures and using the consolidate and remove commands... minus the memory carrara uses to have the scene loaded..

    -Rendering in Carrara with all options ON to be as close as possible (indirect lighting, caustics...) takes about 500MB RAM, which is efficient since Carrara says that there are 1,75GB of textures in the scene.
    -With the interactive renderer (OpenGL) set to max quailty, another 500MB are used.

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Tried a few simple V4 scenes with proper Carrara shaders, for example V4 Elite Lana.
    Renders with about 2GB GPU RAM.
    Eyes are white with Luxcore sunsky lights though.

  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    Confirmed bug/problem that 3 figures with textures in one scene runs out of memory (3GB GPU RAM).

    Both IPR and Render Room just tries to start by getting the graphics card to work for 1 second and then nothing happens and graphics card goes to sleep again, other than Carrara leaking memory and filling the RAM (CPU) and then the page file (HDD). Gave up at 16GB of RAM for a scene with V4, V5 and V6.

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited February 2015

    3drendero said:
    Confirmed bug/problem that 3 figures with textures in one scene runs out of memory (3GB GPU RAM).

    Both IPR and Render Room just tries to start by getting the graphics card to work for 1 second and then nothing happens and graphics card goes to sleep again, other than Carrara leaking memory and filling the RAM (CPU) and then the page file (HDD). Gave up at 16GB of RAM for a scene with V4, V5 and V6.

    Ouch ...

    Well, even that simple apartment with the A6 Battle Girl in red lingerie in 3DC's 2260 Apartment and a few props, Carrara's system ram climbs up to just shy of 60gb, luckilly I have 64gb of non-ecc , unregistered 1866mhz ram (clocked automatically at 1600mhz and gives tighter latency timings) ... Yet barely uses a 10th of that to render with Carrara's own native renderer...

    The LuxCore still is nice though, for the IPR window in itself, if you don't mind the load times for it to initialize ...

    Btw, while I swapped out the Radeon R9 290X in the 8x PCI-E 3.0 slot and moved it one over to a full 16x slot.... I tried the same scene again... Interestingly I'm not see'ing any *noticable* difference in render times or performance using the IPR window... Things still seem to take about the same amount of time.

    Though I'll have to uninstall and re-install my AMD Catalyst drivers, as apparently, Star Wars The Old Republic is not liking the Crossfire mode being engaged... When moving or turning, save for the ground, everything has a rapid shifting effect... Returns to normal when disabling Crossfire. (was in Crossfire mode previously in the 8x slot) . Who knows, maybe a driver uninstall / re-install might prove beneficial to the IPR window in Carrara too... ;)

    Post edited by CoolBreeze on
  • 3drendero3drendero Posts: 2,026
    edited December 1969

    After 60GB, do you get Luxcore to start or do you just shut down Carrara?

    All scenes I tried, start to render after 8 seconds, both IPR and Render Room, independent of the scene complexity. The ones that run out of GPU memory, starts after 8 seconds by activating the graphics card, but stops and Carrara starts eating CPU RAM instead...

    Realtime rendering with LuxCore is AMAZING though!!!

    Nore sure if PCI-ex bandwidth is needed, maybe cuts a second when loading since a scene is 2GB and that has to be transferred via the bus.

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