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Comments
I think you're going to want the GPU card whichever way you go. Even if you're not planning to move to Octane, or even if you find some other unbiased render solution that doesn't include Carrara in your workflow, eventually I think nearly every unbiased renderer is going to be moving to taking advantage of GPU rendering (ultimately I think they will all end up as GPU + CPU combined, although very few have that now as far as I know). You might be thinking 'I don't want to spend the $ for Octane' and I can sympathize, even though I'm not at all unhappy I was willing to spend. But since Luxcore can use GPU too, I think even so you'd want the GPU card so you keep your future options open and your render times faster. I haven't been beta testing Luxcore, but I've been watching this thread like a hawk, and I will definitely be purchasing it when it's released. I like having lots of options :) In general from what I've seen, GPU is a good deal faster than CPU rendering, even on my laptop which has a pretty dinky GPU card and a pretty heft CPU (i7 multithreaded 8 core). Octane absolutely crushes Lux render times, but then again Thea (which uses GPU & CPU together) crushes my Octane render times (but since there's no plugin I have to export the scene as an .obj file, import into Thea, texture, and render, much like you were thinking of doing in Blender with Cycles).
I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with the materials you're using, even if they are unchanged, but I would point out that your second render (which looks pretty great) doesn't have a light emitting material set for the actual wall light in the room, so if anything needs to be changed it's just that.
New benchmark scene, using the Carrara preset Indoor/Day, from the other thread about faking GI I got (OpenCL/Path):
1Ms/s on CPU (intel 2700k quadcore/octathread at 4,6GHz)
3Ms/s on GPU (AMD R9 280x stock)
9Ms/s on 3xGPU
Details:
Single sunsky2 luxcore light, manual shader update of chrome and matte to luxcore (Multiple shading domains with empty shaders do not translate with the current luxuscore version)
Result after 6 minutes and 17 minutes @ 10 000 samples:
Yes, Like Jonstark suggested I'd look more carefully at the lights. At first glance, the scene does not appear unbiased to my eye. Shading isnt quite what it should be and the key lights have hard edged shadows.
It is a good idea to delete any lights you may have added back when you were rendering it in Daz Studio. Unbiased render engines don't need any additional helper lights so the way of thinking when working with unbiased is less cluttered. All you need to do is to properly assign the key lights. And for that you want to use a mesh shaped object of some sort and provide it with an emission material, because in real life light doesn't come from single points, and a mesh light will provide the correct physical behavior.
Check the settings as well for rendering, because Lux if I'm not mistaken provides for some biased rendering methods as well as unbiased, one must be certain they are actually selecting unbiased options.
Keep it up, you are probably going to fall madly in love with the whole unbiased approach. Welcome aboard!
Okay. is it too late for me to join this beta test process? I would really like to know. I am curious if scenes that have materials flagged for Octane and for LuxusCore at the same time, if this leads to any sort of incompatibility either within Carrara or within either of the plug-ins.
While allowing the applications to translate materials for me, in Octane I find it easier to start with Octane Materials in the first place. And I assume the same will be true for LuxusCore. SO it is very possible users will create content that has three sets of shaders, Carrara native, Octane flagged and LuxusCore flagged. How will these work together? Or does a vendor need to release separate versions in order to avoid conflicts?
Anyhow I can probably answer all these questions for myself once I can have both of these amazing plug-in installed and operating at the same time with the exact same scene. I can compare unbiased render output in a more direct way that we ever had been able to do before, and that is my ultimate goal.
Any feedback on this issue is greatly appreciated.
Feel free to download the plugin in the OP and render away.
So far Luxus and Luxcore work together (or not against each other).
Not skilled enough in Carrara shaders to know if you can "hide" an Octane and Luxrender material within the same shader, that gets ignored by Carrara but picked up by the others. Would require some sort of update of Octane and Luxus at least to ignore the autotranslation and then read the new "hidden" real shader.
Woohoo, got some real 3D geometry hair into Luxcore.
It is not Carrara dynamic hair, just static 3D hair, but still GPU accelerated and good quality with small VRAM usage.
Yes, the render sucks and the hair does not fit...
EDIT: Added render with correctly scaled hair.
Another Build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/preview/win64/LuxusCore.zip
Changes
-> Glossy Translucent Material working
-> Updated LuxCore to include improvements in last 2 months done by LuxCore developers.
I installed it but I'm having some really odd problems.
1. Some objects are missing when viewed in the IPR
2. I cannot see my backdrop/background whatever. In this case its an hdri
3. I do not see the sun or sky
4. I do not see the camera response list nor do I see any post-processing options.
I'm certain I've not set this up correctly so any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Hi Rashad,
I have only just started to look at this exporter, but will try to help.
1. Which objects?
Whatever objects are shown in render, will need to go through exporter, so there are possible limitations.
2. HDRI / EXR image for GI are added to "Luxcore Infinite" from light drop down menu. The orientation/rotation of the HDRI / EXR image is controlled via the orientation of that light.
3. Sun / sky is again added from light drop down menu.
4 Sorry, I do not know what you are looking for. Have you more info?
If needed, Config / Scene settings for Luxcore can be added via Carrara render room when renderer set to "Luxcore via Luxus".
I installed it but I'm having some really odd problems.
1. Some objects are missing when viewed in the IPR
2. I cannot see my backdrop/background whatever. In this case its an hdri
3. I do not see the sun or sky
4. I do not see the camera response list nor do I see any post-processing options.
I'm certain I've not set this up correctly so any feedback is greatly appreciated.
1. Shaders did not translate, so no object. Empty shaders must be filled, for example multi shader domain
2. Insert-Luxcore infinite
3. Look outside
4. Not done yet, early beta version
Sweet, thanks!
Steve,
Thanks for the sunlight and sky help. Here is a screen shot of the missing objects. Thanks for your help.
Check the shader room for the missing objects. No shader means no object in luxcore. So add a shader.
Sweet, thanks!
I should point out one particular improvement from the LuxCore developers. In general, textures take alot less gpu memory.
when this renderer works its amazing but when it doesn't wich is more often for me i have to ctl+alt+del out of carrara thats all kinds of frustrating
I hear you. Its back to the "save often" way of working.
3 things planned should help with this.
1) Avoiding the out of gpu memory problem. In the future I will check to see how much gpu memory is currently being used before sending textures and memory across
2) Figure out all the rest of the problem edits during IPR that give us crashes.
3) LuxCore itself is maturing
This is a quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and the latest Luxuscore Carrara update. I "cheated" and used a stock image in the background. :)
Love the improvements.
I just cant win with this i'm back to getting nothing but tiled number 1's
Try the IPR, for example it says "no lights" meaning no render, when the RenderRoom just gives 1's.
Maybe not the problem that you have, just a hint...
keeps giving me unknown material even on older saves that used to work
OK, I'm trying out my new 4G video card.
I loaded the luxuscore default scene
Engine : OpenCL
Strategy: Path
OPENCL_GPU : GeForce GTX 970
The scene renders at about 8-9M samples/sec
The rest of my machine begins to freeze up.
Typing this message while rendering was excruciatingly slow.
I had better success with CPU rendering (16GB RAM)
If GPU rendering is this difficult with this small a scene I am suely doing something wriong!
Any thoughts?
It seems some people tend to have a certain measure of success with Luxcore while others don't, Joeping for example seems to be having a ball. I got stuck with the materials / objects that just fail to show in Luxcore and I've almost given up, hoping a build will come where that's no more a problem. If it's down to a lack of knowledge on how to use Luxcore, then I lack the knowledge on how to gain the knowledge needed to make it work. :roll:
i'm going to have to move on i can't BETA anymore i'll try again when its out of beta
A quick round of tests. W7.64 Titan Xeon2.93 12G, C8.5pro. RAM demanding apps opened in the background.
Generic DS prop, Genesis female Gabi V5 texture set, custom clothings 2 pcs. Lux Sun Sky. No shader change. Removed/consolidate etc.
IPR
OC Path doesn't work (just black for up to 360 sec) with Genesis characters loaded but fine with prop set only.
OC Bi works. acceptable at 90sec, no fireflies at 120sec.
CPU Path works. Possibly the fastest firefly banishment, at 90sec all gone.
CPU Bi works, seem to be on par with OC Bi.
Render Room. SOBOL.
CPU Path works.
Then the next trial crashed and produced Runtime Error!. I forgot if it was on CPU Bi or OC Path when that happened.
QVBH was on too when runtime crash happened.
Loading IPR preset test scene instantly freezes my system (very rare), all input devices stuttered, but memory use spiked only 1/3. Force close Carrara was needed. Culprit was default IPR setting of that particular preset scene.
I remain a bit confused if Render Room config impacts IPR, assuming not.
Alt-R or marque preview render also brings me to the render room and behaves like Ctrl R. Is that by design?
Hope to have a pause render button on IPR viewport. Possible?
Seems CPU Path and OPenCL Bi feel the most responsive at realtime camera moves update.
That's all for now. Pic is a 90sec CPU path IPR with no firefly.
Assuming that you are using a modern web browser, that is 3D accelerated, meaning that luxuscore loads the card at 100% while the browser tries to get some "acceleration" from the card too.
Could also be the NVIDIA OpenCL driver, it used to slow down everything at 100% OpenCL load, but is better nowadays I think.
I am very curious about the 970, the was a lot of debate about its 3,5GB Fast VRAM and 0,5GB slow VRAM.
Do you have the time to load up a scene and add objects while checking the speed and memory (via GPU-z for example)?
In theory, it should be fast until reaching 3,5GB, then slow up until 4GB and after 4GB luxuscore fails to start.
Thanks for the detailed report.
So you have a Titan graphics card, but it never started in OC/Path GPU mode because it ran out of memory?
Can you start with the simple test scene and report the score?
http://sphericlabs.com/scratch/LuxusScene.zip
Both for checking, but would like to add some benchmark results too at:
http://carraracafe.com/plugins/luxuscore-for-carrara-plugin-unofficial-manual-2015-02-15/
You can check GPU VRAM usage with GPU-z and I can usually see a failed start (overloaded VRAM) after <10 seconds when the cards frequency goes up and the directly down.</p>
Same setup, uses 2GB of VRAM, but the clothes did not convert so they may take a little more.
OpenCL Path via GPU works well and fast, tested even at 4000x3000 and it rendered a 12MP image :)
EDIT: Tried 8000x6000 and got a 48MP picture, slow but it works.
I know i said i was done but i can't give it up I've finely figured out that Luxcore isn't seeing any lights except luxcore infinite light with an hdmi.
all other lights are completely ignored resulting in solid black renders
delete accidental double post [forum acting weird?]
During yesterday’s tests I suspected the main culprit for the black IPR was Genesis. IPR had longer “texture compute pre-crunch”, then started normal time ticking, so it thought it was rendering. Yet it worked out of the box when I first loaded the castle prop. I loaded Genesis basic female, Carrara hanged, I then changed it to Gabi texture set which I remembered to be lighter, no more hang but still black screen. I then moved on to other kernels…until the crash.
Just tested your scene above. Launch straight from download folder. Instantaneous, no typical pre-crunch, immediate start. See pic.
Then I tested the castle genesis scene again. Keeping everything out of the box. Same long pre-crunch then black IPR. Then delete Genesis. Instantly worked. Then I placed a plastic shader on all Gabi shading domains. Worked.
Dealing with default Genesis texture set seems to be the issue. Possibly default Genesis shader settings conflict. The castle is quite heavy, multiple 2-3k textures, but otherwise uncomplicated shader settings.
So OC/Path is fine, and fast and responsive too - registered minor changes and restart render, even when I make a change in scene manager from highlighting object to ‘Scene’, though this may be an unwanted response for those with slower systems.
Also loaded default living room scene. I think the missing coffee tables issue is due to Carrara spline object not playing well with Luxuscore. I changed its shader, converted to other modeler-vertex native, weld, reverse normal etc, still don’t manifest, though IPR registered scene change and restart render.
That’s all for now.
The test scene, I pressed stop when IPR stops to add caustics.