Luxus discussion
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Try here: There is an option to only add the Extra Settings
SphericLabs - You are my new hero!! Need I say more!? Thank you so much - I'm all OK now.
oh I knew I should have included pictures with the description.
Thanks for the reply back.
Now Testing with the 2.2 gamma settings.
I disagree on the Tone Linear Gamma. I would leave that at 1.0. I have confirmed that Blender does the same.
This part still confusing me, among lots of others...:)
So leave Tone Linear Gamma on 1 and Texture Gamma set to 2.2 and Gamma 2.2?
*Speaking of that, brought up another question:
1: Is there any chance of maybe having a save preset option?
It would come in handy, while trying different settings and needing to go back to another setup.
The Gamma discussion is complicated. I can recommend 2 ways. I am partial to the first, others partial to the second:
1)
-> Use all default Render Settings. Turn on the GUI.
-> Render
-> Change in the GUI to Linear Tonemapping and then adjust the light groups.
2)
-> Change Texture Gamma to 2.2
-> Change Gamma to 2.2
-> leave Tone Linear Gamma at 1.0
-> Render.
Presets is a good idea. Undo does work.
@SphericLabs, dont know if you seen this part:
*Speaking of that, brought up another question:
1: Is there any chance of maybe having a save preset option?
It would come in handy, while trying different settings and needing to go back to another setup.
Also about to post a set of pictures maybe you can help out with or any other so far using Luxus.
In this set of pictures, there is one done using Luxus and the other using Reality.
But setup the same using 1 mesh light and ball converted to a light.
I like the way Luxus does not have the seem tear at the neck and leg area like Reality does!
But in Reality I'm getting the Specularity showing that does not seem to show in Luxus.
Is there something that needs to be turned on in Luxus or should it just do it automatically like Reality is doing?
Thanks.
This is going to be one thread full of learning tips and feed back help I see.....
Reality and Luxus differ in how they translate stuff. If you want more gloss you can increase specular color strength glossiness, etc.
Or if you want to go crazy, add a geometry shell and make the shell a a null glass2 volume. Depending on the index of refraction, your character could be encased in water or glass.
In this set of pictures, there is one done using Luxus and the other using Reality.
But setup the same using 1 mesh light and ball converted to a light.
I like the way Luxus does not have the seem tear at the neck and leg area like Reality does!
But in Reality I'm getting the Specularity showing that does not seem to show in Luxus.
Is there something that needs to be turned on in Luxus or should it just do it automatically like Reality is doing?
Thanks.
This is going to be one thread full of learning tips and feed back help I see.....
Actually if the second one is the reality one, you probably don't want that much spec; it's too shiny, like he's sweating which makes the second skin shorts look odd as well.
I seen a post by @Male-M3dia, where he said he had to turn the spec down.
So I was like, maybe I'm doing something wrong in Luxus because I don't seem to be getting any spec compared to Reality.
Actually if the second one is the reality one, that's you probably don't want that much spec; it's too shiny, like he's sweating which makes the second skin shorts look odd as well.
Wow!
You must of been reading my mind:)
I referenced you in my last post... before even seeing this reply.
I seen a post by @Male-M3dia, where he said he had to turn the spec down.
So I was like, maybe I'm doing something wrong in Luxus because I don't seem to be getting any spec compared to Reality.
It will depend on the art. Or in other words, the auto convert is best guess.
Actually if the second one is the reality one, you probably don't want that much spec; it's too shiny, like he's sweating which makes the second skin shorts look odd as well.
Yes, the second one is Reality without the badge I made for Luxus/ LuxRender one.
I like that badge. Very clever.
This is incorrect, they ALL should be at 2.2. (LuxBlend will export 2.2 if you set it to use the linear tonemapper, if not, let me know, because that is a bug).
This info was posted earlier, but I'll repeat it:
All of this has to do with something called "linear workflow" (you should google that). The reason we do this whole gamma correct-then-uncorrect song and dance is because your monitor isn't "linear". What that means is, if you took a graph with an input RGB value on the x-axis and on the y-axis you put how bright your monitor got in response, you don't get a straight line. You get a line the bows downward at the middle (to be exact, it forms a shape as though all the input values got raised to the power of 1/2.2). We call this a gamma curve
This causes a problem. Rendering calculations are in linear color space (meaning they don't have that gamma curve to them). You could say they have "gamma 1.0". The problem is, you can't just display this on your monitor, because your monitor isn't linear. If you do, weird things start happening. Your image looks far too contrasty, and things that should act linearly, like brightness sliders, suddenly DON'T. A good metaphor I've heard is "your render starts acting like 2+2=5". To fix this, we have to translate the render output for display so all the math works out. Your display's gamma curve has essentially introduced an unwanted "gamma" operation, so we have to do another one in the opposite direction to get rid of it. 2+2=4 again. We call this "gamma correction". This is what the "main" or "film gamma" setting in Lux is for. You should probably leave it at 2.2. If everything works right, you get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GammaFunctionGraph.svg
The line matches!
BUUUUT......there's another problem. While basic color values might have been in linear color space, your color textures probably aren't. They're probably painted or made from photos, and already have that gamma curve baked into them, it just happened as they were made. If you just apply the gamma correction described above, your solid colors look fine, but now your textures are all washed out. So we have to turn them back into linear color space before the render starts so the math works out for textures AND solid colors. This is what the texture gamma is for. If you want your textures to look in the render as they did in the image editor, this needs to be set the same as your film gamma. Which should be 2.2. On the other hand, if you don't care about appearances so much as the actual numbers encoded in the image file, you should leave this at 1.0 and not perform the correction.
If you're still with me, you might be wondering what that tonemapper gamma is for. Well, notice how the linear tonemapper bases its scaling factor on camera settings? Gamma correction would throw off how these settings match up to actual camera settings, so this value puts them back. It should be left at the same value as your film gamma, there is no real point to setting it otherwise.
Wrap-up notes:
1. Don't feel bad if this post made no sense, hardly anyone in my experience can make sense out of linear workflow the very first time it's explained to them. (i sure as hell didn't). Hit google, and just read a few different articles on it. It should start making some sense eventually. But in the meantime, know you really should leave gamma settings in Lux at 2.2.
2. You can actually change the film gamma to something slightly above or below 2.2 if you want, it'll have the usual effect of a gamma control like in Photoshop, but with the benefit of being HDR. Although if you care about THAT, I recommend you save an EXR from Lux and do some proper post/comp in something meant for that like After Effects/Blender/Nuke/Toxik/etc
3. Someone might try to tell you that if you have a Mac you should use gamma 1.8 instead of 2.2. This is not true and has not been true since 10.6 was released.
The "tone linear" gamma is not that important. It is only used by the linear tonemapper (the one with the shutter speed, ISO settings and fstop, like a camera). It is rather hard to guess correct values for these without having very much experience (just like with a real camera). So when using it, it will be likely used with the luxrender GUI where the first thing i usually do is to hit the "Estimate Settings" button, and that copies the gamma setting from the film response anyway. But regardless of what the linear gamma setting is, you can still get the exactly same images by playing with the other parameters. The "Linear Gamma" only effects how the other parameters are interpreted, not how they are applied, if that makes any sense.
Thank you!
The "tone linear" gamma is not that important. It is only used by the linear tonemapper (the one with the shutter speed, ISO settings and fstop, like a camera). It is rather hard to guess correct values for these without having very much experience (just like with a real camera). So when using it, it will be likely used with the luxrender GUI where the first thing i usually do is to hit the "Estimate Settings" button, and that copies the gamma setting from the film response anyway. But regardless of what the linear gamma setting is, you can still get the exactly same images by playing with the other parameters. The "Linear Gamma" only effects how the other parameters are interpreted, not how they are applied, if that makes any sense.
From the way this is worded it sounds like changing the Tone Linear Gamma after choosing the kernal to be Linear, should not affect the image at all. Its effect it quite a bit. It seems to only shift as opposed to actually applying a gamma function.
According to the spec linear_gamma defaults to 1.0. gamma defaults to 2.2. In the LuxRender code here is the line that shows that it truely does:
I bought Luxus a few days ago. I am amazed...Luxrender has my jaw on the floor most of the time. Having real-time photographic controls over the image during & post-render is amazing...this is what 3D lighting should have been all along (but we probably didn't have the affordable processor power to pull it off). I almost picked up Reality a few times over the last year but couldn't *quite* justify the cost...really glad I waited because Luxus seems like a more useful implementation to me.
All I've done so far is test renders, so nothing really worth showing off, but I do have a question about the attached image. That's Jack Tomalin's Mech in Stonemason's Walled City. The spot render is done in Luxrender, and as you can see the mapped texture isn't showing up on the mech. It's fine on the city (see the bricks in the background), but not on the mech. I've looked fairly closely at the default Luxrender settings for each, and don't see a whole lot of difference.
Anyone have an idea why this might be happening, or where I should look? Apologies if this was answered earlier in this (long!) thread...any clues would be a huge help.
Two things:
1) 500S/p is nothing. I don't even think about the render until it's hit at least 2000S/p, and if it's got a bunch of volumetrics, often go much higher than that. Some of my renders with lots of glass volumes I've taken to 15k+...
2) I'm assuming your ring of light textures are LDR as they were created for Studio. To use textures in Lux as a primary light source, such as you are doing here, they should really be proper HDRs. (Using textures as light sources for things like display screens, fire, etc., where the lightsource is more for glow effect than to light the scene is fine with LDRs.)
The #1 reason folks didn't create Reality presets for their products is the time required to do test render cycles to ensure the material settings are optimized. I've seen several developers say as much in the forums (well, the old DAZ forums, anyway). Luxus will be no different; the speed that LuxRender renders at is the real barrier. Not how much the plugin costs. For content creators, time is very much equal to money, and they just don't have the time to spend days tweaking material settings. And I don't care how good the default translations are; you will never get the optimal results without hand tweaking the auto-generated settings with an understanding of how LuxRender's materials work and if you are selling content to me, I expect you to have tweaked and not punted and used the default conversion. I can do the default conversion myself...
Two things:
1) 500S/p is nothing. I don't even think about the render until it's hit at least 2000S/p, and if it's got a bunch of volumetrics, often go much higher than that. Some of my renders with lots of glass volumes I've taken to 15k+...
2) I'm assuming your ring of light textures are LDR as they were created for Studio. To use textures in Lux as a primary light source, such as you are doing here, they should really be proper HDRs. (Using textures as light sources for things like display screens, fire, etc., where the lightsource is more for glow effect than to light the scene is fine with LDRs.)
If you got em, make sure you use the .hdr or .exr and it will be much better.
If the Mesh is using a custom shader, then the auto translate is likely to get it pretty wrong. StoneMason's snow does the same thing.
You are right about LuxBlend, if you choose Linear, tone linear gamma is 2.2. I yield
Two things:
1) 500S/p is nothing. I don't even think about the render until it's hit at least 2000S/p, and if it's got a bunch of volumetrics, often go much higher than that. Some of my renders with lots of glass volumes I've taken to 15k+...
2) I'm assuming your ring of light textures are LDR as they were created for Studio. To use textures in Lux as a primary light source, such as you are doing here, they should really be proper HDRs. (Using textures as light sources for things like display screens, fire, etc., where the lightsource is more for glow effect than to light the scene is fine with LDRs.)
1) good (and a bit scary) to know.
2) DS' UberArea Light doesn't actually accept textures that will (realistically) effect the light emitted by the mesh in any real meaningful way so I wasn't even thinking about it in Lux. Interesting, that changes things in a really big way:-)
The #1 reason folks didn't create Reality presets for their products is the time required to do test render cycles to ensure the material settings are optimized. I've seen several developers say as much in the forums (well, the old DAZ forums, anyway). Luxus will be no different; the speed that LuxRender renders at is the real barrier. Not how much the plugin costs. For content creators, time is very much equal to money, and they just don't have the time to spend days tweaking material settings. And I don't care how good the default translations are; you will never get the optimal results without hand tweaking the auto-generated settings with an understanding of how LuxRender's materials work and if you are selling content to me, I expect you to have tweaked and not punted and used the default conversion. I can do the default conversion myself...
I actually - I am tempted to say 'as usual' - almost completely agree with you. Unless, Luxus becomes a really widespread tool, that everyone uses, knows how to use and would make the 'extra work' actually worthwhile.
Even today, I encounter so many items with terrible spec / displacement / bump / normal maps, that I don't really see anyone actually spending more time on materials.
Yes, I understand that part. But, if I choose a material and set it to glass2 and then change my mind and go back in and set that material to perhaps glossy translucent, all of the settings for glass2 remain in the surfaces interface. If I change the material type, it seems like the other settings should go away.
Further, it seems like if I choose like volume and mesh and then decide I don't want to use mesh and uncheck mesh, it disappears from the interface but whatever settings I had chosen still are in affect on the render. I'm still need to verify this as I done so much with this today that I could be brain dead.
I would think that if you go back to the Luxus- Luxrender Material interface and make changes, whatever you have done would be replaced/deleted with your new selections? Or is there some other method for deleting what you don't want besides deleting the model?
Also, oddly, I have to put a check to 'Show Hidden Properties' in order to hide the hidden properties in Luxus? Not sure if this is a Daz Studio bug or not as it seems nothing changes in the standard properties area either way.
The idea was that you could switch without worrying about loosing your other settings. It was meant to be a feature. We could go with a finalize to clear out any parameters not used.
Duh!!! Well, I found the solution. If you want to rid yourself of what you have done, you can go back to the Luxus - LuxRender Material interface and the last thing in the list under the Material pull down is Remove LuxRender Properties. Looks like this allows a start over from scratch. So, it looks like it is in there and I just didn't see it.
The #1 reason folks didn't create Reality presets for their products is the time required to do test render cycles to ensure the material settings are optimized. I've seen several developers say as much in the forums (well, the old DAZ forums, anyway). Luxus will be no different; the speed that LuxRender renders at is the real barrier. Not how much the plugin costs. For content creators, time is very much equal to money, and they just don't have the time to spend days tweaking material settings. And I don't care how good the default translations are; you will never get the optimal results without hand tweaking the auto-generated settings with an understanding of how LuxRender's materials work and if you are selling content to me, I expect you to have tweaked and not punted and used the default conversion. I can do the default conversion myself...
I understand this point, however with Luxus being a Daz Store product and as it can save its material settings to the object, this is now a new realm.
This is some of what I have found when working with Reality. I pretty much 'know' what I need to do with certain materials to get the results I want. If I'm creating a product for the store, I should know at least some about Luxus and LuxRender settings. Once I have that bit under my belt, I should be able to hit what I want pretty quickly. I suppose one of the questions is will Daz allow the use of Luxus images as product images? Or will Daz require the use of 3Delight? It seems that if they allow the use of either, a PA should 'shed the best light' on their product and that would be via LuxRender.
I could create the best product in the world and do bad store images and sell nothing. Or, I could use great store images that would help it sell. But if I output great images, the user had better be able to do the same or they will be disenchanted.
Sorry, but I'm seeing this as the next new realm to further increase the quality of the user's output. Yes, it takes time. That time spent by the developer however can save each of the users of that product the time he spends... hundreds or thousands of users times saved. Simply a better user experience.
Change Texture Gamma to 2.2
-> Change Gamma to 2.2
-> leave Tone Linear Gamma at 1.0
-> Render.
So the Tone Linear Gamma should be 2.2 also?
Here is a bigger version of that badge that I made so you can see it
What about using the Luxus - Luxrender material remove option first and then adding what you want?
There's a lot of work which needs to go into creating materials for Reality's ACSEL and they're distributed freely via an uncontrolled service. In contrast, Luxus allows you to create material presets within Daz Studio itself and either distribute them with the product or create shader packs to sell in addition to the main product. In terms of which is offers ease of use and flexibility for material presets, Luxus has the upper hand in this one.
I'll admit though, I too was disappointed by the lack of good ACSEL shaders for many products. I will say though that being able to save a material preset for later use is far easier to do in Luxus than Reality, which also makes it handy for the end user. That said, I'm always going to find areas which Luxus is weaker at or stronger at than Reality and vice versa. Having access to all of the materials has left me experimenting more than actually making artworks, trying to find the best way to get the results I want.
You could try blueing the diffuse a bit, say [40 60 64] and moving the scattering colour towards paler yellow, maybe [250 190 130], which are the settings I used with the pale Children of Danu skin in my pervious image.