LUXUS RENDER REVIEW
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I got an email from Daz promoting a new product called Luxus. I immediately sat up and clicked the link and read up on it.
"Luxus allows you to render a DAZ Studio scene to an image using LuxRender. Luxus will automatically translate your scene to LuxRender, or you can control the translation by adding parameters specific to LuxRender in your DAZ Studio scene."
Now one of the "hardships" to using Reality is the integration of the plugin and how you have to use Reality Lights and it can get a bit difficult at times. While not impossible I have finally (after some issues for over a year and a half) gotten some fantastic pieces out of Reality. That being said, I am always looking for a simpler way to get the results I want with less hassles. So I purchased Luxus, installed it and began rendering. Out the box it seems to process scenes faster. It also AUTOMATICALLY translates existing lighting versus Reality that will not render existing lights but asks for Reality Lights. Luxus also will use the default view as a camera since it is native to Daz Studio. In Reality if there is no camera it asks to create one.
To be fair I do prefer Reality's built in material window and the ability to convert scene properties to lights. I have on more than one occasion converted a computer surface to a light source and then used the Preset for tv/computer screens to great effect.
Now using my existing Reality Renders as a gauge I tested a scene I had done previously that took about 12 hours or more to render to 2k S/p that's approximately 166 samples per hour. Some of that may be my RAM which I'm upgrading today and I'll reevaluate after the upgrade. However Luxus had gotten to 180 S/p within about 15 minutes which astounded me. That would make it 720 samples in an hour which translates to 8,640 S/p in 12 hours. That's nearly 4x as fast as Reality 2.5.
I'm not a professional at evaluating these things I only have my own experience to speak of so I will approach this as any lay person.
3Delight does it's usual exceptional job at a steady pace. Overall everything looks precisely the way I designed it. DOF camera turned out really well and terrain looks good if not perfect. When it saves I choose the place or leave it at the default Render Library path and name the file upon completion.
LuxRender via Reality 2.5 exceeds my expectations. With the help of my new RAM (went from 4GB to 16GB) it renders nearly twice as fast as it had before. DOF looks good. The only hangup is that the materials in bow and arrows were lost in translation. I'm okay with that but it can be frustrating at times to wait for a render then have to go back and fix stuff. Within the Reality GUI you pick the save location and output name prior to rendering.
LuxRender via Luxus. The Good: it's hella fast at almost four times the speed of 3Delight or Reality, however something is seriously being lost in translation. The DOF camera is gone completely. The Bump Maps are being handled totally wrong and the lighting seems overexposed. Within the native DS4.5 GUI the file saves much like 3Delight however you have no ability to adjust lighting in realtime so I choose to use the LuxRender GUI (the same one used after you hit "Render Frame" in Reality) so that I can use LuxRender's adjustment features and see what the finished product looks like on the go. Turns out like you see above ONLY when you exit LuxRender you do not know where your file is. It does not go to the place you set in the DS4.5 native GUI render panel. So after reading the Luxus documentation thoroughly and posting to the Luxus forum at Daz's community center I discovered via a poster to the forum Luxus saves in the temp file set in the Daz Preferences pane. So I go there and find nothing. I'm stumped. So setting it to render again I wait another 20+ minutes and before exiting LuxRender I go to the temp folder and viola there is the resources being used to make the file. It choose a default name d42.png. I stopped LuxRender and closed Daz and went back to get the PNG file. It was gone. Once more I set the file to render YET AGAIN and this time I copied the final result before exiting LuxRender which is the one I used for above.
Bottom line: If they can solve the translation issues with even a modicum of Reality's expertise while still keeping their speed which blows Reality away, SphericLabs would have a killer product. Until then, this render engine was frankly rushed to the market before it's time.
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Comments
You can set "Render To:" in the render settings to "Image File" and then define a folder and file name and your lxs file plus image will be found there. By default it goes indeed into the temp folder of DAZ Studio (defined in preferences), if you do not render to a specific image file.
You can set "Render To:" in the render settings to "Image File" and then define a folder and file name and your lxs file plus image will be found there. By default it goes indeed into the temp folder of DAZ Studio (defined in preferences), if you do not render to a specific image file.
After testing this you are absolutely right that does work, thank you.
The main difference between Reality and Luxus is that Reality will NOT use DAZ Studio Shaders at all. It converts everything to Lux Materials which will give you better results. Also, it will convert the lights to Lux style lights. Luxus WILL allow you to use DAZ Studio Materials in LuxRender if you so choose but will also allow you to convert everything. Same with the lights, you can carry over DAZ lights or convert to Lux Render lighting.
Lux Render will render faster WITHOUT converting your lights and surfaces to Lux lights and materials. However, for best results, it is recommended that you take the time to learn about the different settings in Lux via their online Wiki and how to use the materials and lighting. It will take longer in the end BUT it will be highly worth it if you want to out do yourself again and again.
I just got Luxus yesterday from Daz. This seems a nice option. I too had the issue of finding the file. It was indeed in the temp location for Daz Studio, and it gave it a random name of d25.png. I changed my temp location to be a location I can find easily, but in the Daz Render Settings GUI. I chose to render to an image file and gave it a name and navigated to a folder called Luxus Tests in my default Render Library and all of the items needed including the 2nd named test were there. Here is that test. I have an 8 core AMD FX 8120 and 16gb of ram. This was an exact 10 minute render. Not bad. I do see that the bump maps do not translate over.
new base SSS shader dont any setup mats for Luxrender only export with Luxus
I do not know which type is translated this shader in Lux
but SLG gives error message: ” SLGRenderer supports only Matte, Mirror, Glass, Glass2, Metal, MatteTranslucent, Null, Mix, Glossy2, Metal2 and RoughGlass material (i.e. not class lux::GlossyTranslucent). Replacing an unsupported material with matte.”
it seems that this shader is translated as GlossyTranslucent ?
He's (?) saying that he didn't translate materials but let Lux do it. Also, he doesn't know what it got translated to, perhaps Glossy Translucent.
LOL,thx Gedd for the translation.
Np, I figure it's got to be hard for people where English isn't their primary language. I give them credit for doing as well as they do :)
Too true...I keep saying I only speak one language and badly so I always applaud anyone who can type and speak more than one language.
yes that's right ... sorry for bad english
I showed a picture of a scene exported with Luxus
I setup new base SSS shader in DS and exported scene to Luxrender
I think Luxus very good translated mats
Yes it looks good. I was wondering how the new shader would translate over. I haven't tried it myself yet :)
it scene in DS
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/328619/
Oh and what a great image you rendered too...nicely done.
So are you saying that Luxus automatically alters the materials from DAZ ones to Luxus ones? I was under the impression you had to do this yourself from the surfaces tab > Luxus - LuxRender material
Luxus does an autoconversion of SOME of the materials to true Luxrender materials (others it fakes...basically drops the textures/colors into the right slot on the equivalently named Lux material and not much else) with passable results...but manually converting them is better. Also, the autoconverted materials can't be edited in DS...you'd have to manually edit them in the export file, and those can be a bit on the super-extra-mega-largish side, so finding what needs to be edited can be a bit of a pain.
Auto convert...passable
Manual...more control with the chance of spectacular.
Reality did not invent it's own light system, It applies already established concepts of natural lighting and studio photography. After reading the Reality Users Guide I was getting great results in minutes with no background in Photography whatsoever, and when I started 3D modeling the established concepts that I had learned from using Reality were identical to how to light a scene in the modeling software.
Luxus is not a rendering engine neither is Reality. They are both exporters for LuxRender. Rendering time is based on resolution, lighting, geometry and surfaces. Having Luxus converting surfaces to matte settings so their are less reinfections for LuxRender to calculate the same result could be achieved for Reality in two steps: Select all textures you want as matte and changing the shader type to matte or selecting the surfaces in the Reality interface and changing them to mattes, however in most instances doing this does make your render less realistic but will result in a faster render time since less calculations are needed for reflections and light bounces.
What I am missing is a good possibility to correct the autoconvertion.
For example the node editor in blender is very fine.
A graphical editor like Eluxir (also from sphericlabs) is missing.
This project didn't get beyond the beta stages.
it looks like you disabled Depth of Filed (DOF) on the last image, the one you rendered with conversions from Luxus
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/index.php?&ACT=50&fid=16&aid=57794_aqflq0K0ZK17a3lwTyct&board_id=1
if so your render did not have to interpolate the out of focus image between pixels which generally result in a much longer render time necessary.
Try removing DOF from the 3Delight image and see if your finding for 3Delight are still 50+ minutes, I don't think they will be even close.