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LUXUS for Carrara question

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  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    I see so many people doing great work on these forums and can never get the results other are producing. Even if they tell me what they did. It seems to be the case that no matter what program, renderer or model I use, it takes lots of experiments to figure out how to use them. Then its a lot longer to figure out why. =)

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    I see so many people doing great work on these forums and can never get the results other are producing. Even if they tell me what they did. It seems to be the case that no matter what program, renderer or model I use, it takes lots of experiments to figure out how to use them. Then its a lot longer to figure out why. =)

    Hi Joe,
    I believe that in all that is artistic, each one has its sensitivity.
    In the case of the 3D, it is not at the final render that the work is done but well during the construction of the scene.
    I believe that the most important point is the lighting.
    One can speak as long as wanted about various plugins of renders , it's the way in which you emphasize the objects of your scene with lightings which will make the quality of final render.
    Perhaps the plugins bring a small “more”, but they don't do the principal work.
    But, everything that I can see from you is extraordinary, why would you want to copy others, you have a style, keep it !

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Good points DUDU,
    I agree that the real work is done long before rendering and that lighting makes all the difference in the world. No plug-in is ever substitute for creativity and hard work.

    Thanks for the kind words about my work. I guess I bring up other because I really like what they are doing and look for a way to get similar results. It's nice to break from my personal style to stretch my skills and knowledge.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,210
    edited December 1969

    You do some great art, Joe! Don't cut yourself short!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Dartanbeck said:
    You do some great art, Joe! Don't cut yourself short!

    I absolutely agree with Dart, Joe. You do some great stuff and it's nice to see you share your results!

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited June 2014

    Thanks guys,
    It's great to have such knowledgeable people to learn from and for support.
    I didn't mean to sound grumpy. I am extremely happy with my results so far and I am having lots of fun experimenting.

    Every experiment leads to higher goals. :)

    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • IamArtistXIamArtistX Posts: 119
    edited July 2014

    Had a bit if time so decided to give Jons settings for Lux skin a go, two versions, one is plain straight from luxus, the other is a colour corrected version, 1920x1080, 1K sample, I know the eyes need to be worked on, might give PhilW's eye bright shaders a try, and she has no hair as that requires different settings and atm i am just messing with the skin :)

    lux_skin_corrected.jpg
    1920 x 1440 - 389K
    lux_skin_untouched.jpg
    1920 x 1440 - 306K
    Post edited by IamArtistX on
  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited July 2014

    Love it. Jon's settings and experiments are fantastic. Is this Victoria 6?

    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • IamArtistXIamArtistX Posts: 119
    edited December 1969

    No, its Victoria 4, and the Amy Elite Carrara shaders

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited August 2014

    This is another experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. I have been reading the "Jack Reacher" Novels by Lee Child and thought I would try to create the main character as I pictured him in the books.
    Thanks for looking.

    reacher02.jpg
    540 x 960 - 131K
    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Wow, how did I miss this thread before now? These renders are great, and very impressive! I'm very glad if some of my experiments and trial render settings helped anyone, you guys are turning out some pretty damn impressive stuff!

    joeping said:
    I see so many people doing great work on these forums and can never get the results other are producing. Even if they tell me what they did. It seems to be the case that no matter what program, renderer or model I use, it takes lots of experiments to figure out how to use them. Then its a lot longer to figure out why. =)


    You've got to be kidding Joeping, I'm stunned by the quality of the renders you've done in this thread - jaw-dropping, breathtaking stuff, truly!

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks encouragement Jonstark,
    Your thread and experiments are what inspired me to play around with Luxus for Carrara. I use your settings for all of them. :)

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    I'm a fan of the Jack Reacher novels, and yeah that last render looks about right! :)

    Don't stone me for this, but I actually thought the Jack Reacher movie was tremendously good, and was very happy they are going ahead with a sequel. I fully realize Tom Cruise's body size is pretty much the exact opposite of the character in the novels, but despite that I thought he was great, and it was one of my favorite movies of 2012/2013.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks,
    I liked the movie too, that is what got me reading the books. Now I'm hooked.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    edited December 1969

    I've been trying to decide whether or not to get Luxus. My only real focus is a single character who's all metal. Does Luxus dramatically improve the look of metals? Thanks

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    I like the way LUXUS handles metal, but I also like the way Carrara's default renderer handles them too. The trick seems to be what you reflect in them and a HDRI really improves the renders.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Yes. To reflect something you need something to reflect. I recall in the old forums there was someone that came in from Poser or D|S that had bought Carrara and was having problems getting a reflection. He had a really hard time grasping that you didn't need a reflection map. It was almost to the point of a flame war as it was explained to him again and again that it was not a bug or a shortcoming in Carrara that it used "real" reflections by default.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    edited August 2014

    evilproducer said:
    Yes. To reflect something you need something to reflect. I recall in the old forums there was someone that came in from Poser or D|S that had bought Carrara and was having problems getting a reflection. He had a really hard time grasping that you didn't need a reflection map. It was almost to the point of a flame war as it was explained to him again and again that it was not a bug or a shortcoming in Carrara that it used "real" reflections by default.

    Yeah, for quick shots I'm okay with applying a soft light opactity warped video mask in AE to metal, but I've also been thinking about bringing pictures into Carrara and see how the model likes those (if possible). I never animate environments, though. I only bring character animation into real world environments or I render out hi res still frames of backgrounds and work with them in post, so animating in an actual CG environment wouldn't jibe with my workflow.

    Post edited by BC Rice on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    BC Rice said:
    evilproducer said:
    Yes. To reflect something you need something to reflect. I recall in the old forums there was someone that came in from Poser or D|S that had bought Carrara and was having problems getting a reflection. He had a really hard time grasping that you didn't need a reflection map. It was almost to the point of a flame war as it was explained to him again and again that it was not a bug or a shortcoming in Carrara that it used "real" reflections by default.

    Yeah, for quick shots I'm okay with applying a soft light opactity warped video mask in AE to metal, but I've also been thinking about bringing pictures into Carrara and see how the model likes those (if possible). I never animate environments, though. I only bring character animation into real world environments or I render out hi res still frames of backgrounds and work with them in post, so animating in an actual CG environment wouldn't jibe with my workflow.

    A trick that I have done in the past is to place a large plane behind the camera and apply the image I wanted reflected onto the plane via the color and glow channel in the Texture room. I would use this trick if I didn't have a high enough of a resolution image for the scene's background.

    Speaking of the background, ideally you would have a spherical image you could place in the background to be reflected.

    Also, do you know that Carrara's texture room has a shadow catcher lighting model? Not only does it catch shadows, but it can cast shadows and act as a mask.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:
    BC Rice said:
    evilproducer said:
    Yes. To reflect something you need something to reflect. I recall in the old forums there was someone that came in from Poser or D|S that had bought Carrara and was having problems getting a reflection. He had a really hard time grasping that you didn't need a reflection map. It was almost to the point of a flame war as it was explained to him again and again that it was not a bug or a shortcoming in Carrara that it used "real" reflections by default.

    Yeah, for quick shots I'm okay with applying a soft light opactity warped video mask in AE to metal, but I've also been thinking about bringing pictures into Carrara and see how the model likes those (if possible). I never animate environments, though. I only bring character animation into real world environments or I render out hi res still frames of backgrounds and work with them in post, so animating in an actual CG environment wouldn't jibe with my workflow.

    A trick that I have done in the past is to place a large plane behind the camera and apply the image I wanted reflected onto the plane via the color and glow channel in the Texture room. I would use this trick if I didn't have a high enough of a resolution image for the scene's background.

    Speaking of the background, ideally you would have a spherical image you could place in the background to be reflected.

    Also, do you know that Carrara's texture room has a shadow catcher lighting model? Not only does it catch shadows, but it can cast shadows and act as a mask.

    Yeah, that's a good idea about the textures. Going to try that. :)

  • CoolBreezeCoolBreeze Posts: 207
    edited December 1969

    Hi,
    I was going to ask, what sort of system setups do you have , those of you that have posted renders and examples in the thread here, and how long did those renders take in Luxus? that being said, CPU, Hybrid, or GPU rendering modes...

    I've already bought Luxus for Carrara, just haven't put a system together yet...

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    I let most of my experiments in this thread take about two hour to render. I use an Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core from 2012. The render times have been keeping me from animating with LUXUS for Carrara.

    I also seem to get better reflections by using HDRI maps instead of textured planes.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    I let most of my experiments in this thread take about two hour to render. I use an Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core from 2012. The render times have been keeping me from animating with LUXUS for Carrara.

    I also seem to get better reflections by using HDRI maps instead of textured planes.

    That's a hefty render time for sure. I usually just animate characters in a scene. I don't ever really find the need to animate backgrounds. If you just treat 3D like traditional animation, you should be fine just rendering a single background plate and then animating your characters.

    I did this as a quick test a couple days ago on a character I'm working on. Took about 45 seconds per frame.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mYXKeQuGFQ&list=UUMrS1l5cn4Ukq9ztJcMlptQ

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    That's cool BC Rice,
    Is that the Carrara default renderer? I've been averaging about 10 sec per frame with the Carrara default render.

  • BC RiceBC Rice Posts: 591
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    That's cool BC Rice,
    Is that the Carrara default renderer? I've been averaging about 10 sec per frame with the Carrara default render.

    Yeah, it's the default with full ratraycing and indirect lighting and the whole spiel.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited August 2014

    BC Rice,
    Very neat stuff, try adding the background image of the video as a HDRI map. It shouldn't add much to the render time and your reflections would really stand out.

    You can see the benefits of using HDRI by viewing my first Carrara test video at http://youtu.be/dJ-4Nl_-yoY?list=PLnSggzklmsJGSjzOhaN1QRuG-ROMww6AM
    This was done with the Carrara default render. All the reflections are from a sample HDRI map and it improved the reflections versus no HDRI map.

    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    You can also use any spherical image in the background. Technically, you can use any image, but spherical will look better.

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the great info EvilProducer,
    I have just been using HDRI maps since this first test because it seemed the be the fasted way to get the reflection results I liked and still get a clean alpha channel. I'll have to give your methods a try.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    joeping said:
    Thanks for the great info EvilProducer,
    I have just been using HDRI maps since this first test because it seemed the be the fasted way to get the reflection results I liked and still get a clean alpha channel. I'll have to give your methods a try.

    I don't know about LUXUS, but Carrara can use any image placed in the scene's background as an IBL (Image Based Light) if the Skylight is enabled. In fact, any of the options it gives you will act as an IBL if you enable the Skylight in the render room.

    I made a couple hi-res spherical renders as an experiment a couple years ago. Feel free to try them out. I want to make more with different environments. I love that Carrara has a spherical camera!

    http://www.sharecg.com/v/64485/view/6/Texture/Spherical-Dystopia-night-with-clouds
    http://www.sharecg.com/v/51297/view/6/Texture/Dystopia-Spherical-background-image-map

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,210
    edited August 2014

    Very cool, evilproducer! Thank you very much!

    Here's a cool Image Based Lighting Tutorial - By the Truly Wonderful Holly Wetcircuit!

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
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