Iray for Carrara?

TangoAlpha

3drendero said:

Well, you do have Iray in Carrara.
It is called Luxus and there is a GPU accelerated beta version called LuxusCore.
Just like Iray, new shaders are needed to make full use of the new engine.

Even the NVIDIA Iray promo video mentions LuxRender at 6:30:
http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5536.html

Will it be available for Mac? AMD?

3drendero

Luxus for Carrara is already available for Win and mac. Assuming that it will be the same for Luxuscore in the future.

http://www.daz3d.com/luxus-for-carrara

Hermit Crab

I ask this from the position I'm in of having always rendered with Carrara's native engine and having done so 99.9% of the time with the default settings.

Clearly there's room to improve :cheese:

This discussion has prompted me to take a look at the description of the Infinite Skills Rendering & Lighting Course and also at the Luxus For Carrara product. For the latter there is a companion product by Phil Wilkes: Luxus For Carrara Resource Pack.

If I decided to opt for Luxus and also the resource pack, would I be correct in thinking that I could still use the native render engine?

I accept that the native engine, in the right hands, can generate amazing results and that artistic talent along with texturing and lighting skills go a long way to getting the best results possible.

So I need to decide on whether to buy the training course or whether to try out Luxus. Or perhaps a good grasp of what is taught in the training course would make using Luxus easier? (Or is the training course somehow more specific to Carrara's render engine?)

Any advice? (I do have books on general principles to refer to besides seeking software-specific advice).

PhilW

Well, as the author of both, I feel I should comment! (well, not Luxus itself but the resource pack).

The Realism Rendering in Carrara training is specifically for the Carrara renderer and how to get the best results out of it, covering lighting, render settings and shaders. Having said that, a fair amount of the learning arose because of using and comparing unbiased renderers, firstly Luxus / Luxrender and then more recently Octane. So while the training does not specifically cover Luxus, you can apply some of the methods to that. You can watch the first couple of chapters free of charge here:
http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/carrara-realism-rendering.html

If you get Luxus, yes you can still use the native Carrara renderer, so you just add to the choices that you have. You can even render twice, once in Luxus for the realism of its lighting (for example) and once in Carrara for (eg.) dynamic hair (as dynamic hair does not render in Luxus). Then you can put them as layers in Photoshop or the image editor of your choice and combine the best bits from both using layer masks. it will be worth trying out the new LuxCore stuff as well - the beta is available to try for free, see other thread.

If you do go for Luxus and the Resource Pack, I would advise that you don't just use the stuff in it but have a look how it was put together, that will help you in creating or modifying your own shaders etc.

Happy rendering!

Hermit Crab

Many thanks, Phil, for the instant reply to my questions.

I confess that I jumped in and asked without first doing a search of these topics!

I'm one of your customers already (for Carrara training) so there was no doubt in my mind of the value of your products - just which avenue to follow.

Best Regards.