Luxus discussion
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A duf conversion of the lux ball was also posted in the Eluxir thread. It may be an older version of the luxball as it has the numbers as geometry instead of the png, but it has the light setup for Luxus. Maybe these should be merged together.
A duf conversion of the lux ball was also posted in the Eluxir thread. It may be an older version of the luxball as it has the numbers as geometry instead of the png, but it has the light setup for Luxus. Maybe these should be merged together.
That appears to be version 3. Version 6 is a higher quality and mostly quads. Users can pick and choose though.
I would be delighted if we could get the tranmaps to work all the time :) :)
First a thank you: this is fun! And an extra thank you for adding the possibility to remove the Luxus material settings!
I do read Readme's/Tutorials - and then I go aroung poking at things ... sometimes the poking does get wrong. LOL
Second, a question: is there a possibility to add lxm and lbm LuxRender materials somehow?
http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/lrmdb2
http://www.luxrender.net/lrmdb/en/category/material/view/13
A simple step by step tutorial on the howto would be nice.
1) Download the LXM file for the material you want to add.
2) Open the file in a text editor like Notepad and look for the line beginning 'MakeNamedMaterial'
3) At the end of the text add the line 'NamedMaterial "material_name"' where material_name is the material named listed under "MakeNamedMaterial"
4) Copy the entire material including the line you added.
5) Paste it into the Luxrender Extra Settings option in Daz Studio.
6) Render
I think I'm finally getting a handle on glossy translucent and homogenous volumes for skin!
It would be easier if the volume absorption colour was set by using required transmition colour at specified depth (similar to how uberSurface2 does it, and recomended for Lux exporters here) ...
Do you mind posting your settings for that image? I'm presently experimenting with all kinds of settings at the moment, but my last few attempts seem to give off multi-coloured patches. It'd be interesting to compare and contrast.
1) Download the LXM file for the material you want to add.
2) Open the file in a text editor like Notepad and look for the line beginning 'MakeNamedMaterial'
3) At the end of the text add the line 'NamedMaterial "material_name"' where material_name is the material named listed under "MakeNamedMaterial"
4) Copy the entire material including the line you added.
5) Paste it into the Luxrender Extra Settings option in Daz Studio.
6) Render
Thank you very much!
And thank you for step 6 - made me laugh!
Sure - I was going to try tweaking them a bit before posting, but it's a good starting point if others want to play. It is slow and takes a high S/p to clear up as you can see from the stats on the picture.
So here goes:
Glossy translucent settings:
Diffuse - diffuse map, colour [64 64 64]
Transmission - diffuse map, colour [255 255 255]
Specular - specular map, colour [12 16 20]
U and V roughness - 0.3
thin layer absorption colour - [3 130 255]
thin layer depth - 0.02
multibounce - on
onesided - on
For the volume, you want to calculate the absorption colour you need to give a specific transmission colour at a specific depth. I had to look in the Lux source (colourdepth material code) to remind myself of the equation, which is A = -ln(T)/d where T is the transmission colour for each of [R G B], d is the depth (in meters!) you want that colour to appear.
This gives large numbers that need to be split into the [R G B] triplet and scale. The scale is max(R,G,B) for A and the [R G B] triplet is found by multiplying the [R G B] values of A by 255/max(R,G,B) of A.
Hope that makes sense. For example, if I want a transmission of [250 50 20] at 5mm (0.005m) I get an A of [2 163 255] and scale of 509, which I rounded to 500.
So, volume settings:
type - homogeneous
refractive index - 1.00
absorption colour - [2 163 255]
absorption scale - 500
scattering colour - [250 100 20]
scattering scale - 340
bump - bump map, 0.0005 amount
Hope this helps.
Now that I know how to actually convert to Lux materials I'm having a blast! Did a short reviewish thang http://digisprawl.com/blog/unknown-palace/
Sure - I was going to try tweaking them a bit before posting, but it's a good starting point if others want to play. It is slow and takes a high S/p to clear up as you can see from the stats on the picture.
So here goes:
Glossy translucent settings:
Diffuse - diffuse map, colour [64 64 64]
Transmission - diffuse map, colour [255 255 255]
Specular - specular map, colour [12 16 20]
U and V roughness - 0.3
thin layer absorption colour - [3 130 255]
thin layer depth - 0.02
multibounce - on
onesided - on
For the volume, you want to calculate the absorption colour you need to give a specific transmission colour at a specific depth. I had to look in the Lux source (colourdepth material code) to remind myself of the equation, which is A = -ln(T)/d where T is the transmission colour for each of [R G B], d is the depth (in meters!) you want that colour to appear.
This gives large numbers that need to be split into the [R G B] triplet and scale. The scale is max(R,G,B) for A and the [R G B] triplet is found by multiplying the [R G B] values of A by 255/max(R,G,B) of A.
Hope that makes sense. For example, if I want a transmission of [250 50 20] at 5mm (0.005m) I get an A of [2 163 255] and scale of 509, which I rounded to 500.
So, volume settings:
type - homogeneous
refractive index - 1.00
absorption colour - [2 163 255]
absorption scale - 500
scattering colour - [250 100 20]
scattering scale - 340
bump - bump map, 0.0005 amount
Hope this helps.
Thanks for posting this; I'm new to this and was lost and in need of a starting point to experiment.
One question.. When I render with these settings on the skin, I get a bunch of warnings in the log:
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_multibounce' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_index' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_uroughness' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_vroughness' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_d' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_Ks' not used
[2013-03-17 10:36:26 Warning: 0] Parameter 'backface_Ka' not used
I'm not sure if I should have set something different, or if I should just ignore the warnings.
Definitely having issues with trans-mapped materials using UberSurface2 translating into Lux. Works right if you strip them back to the default DS Shader.
Couple questions.
Grouping lights: how can I do this in DS so Lux reads them as a group?
Grouped Mesh Lights: now that you've split up individual material zones into their own unique light, how can I combine them into groups?
IES Data: where can I plug it in?
Luxus Material Translations: Is it possible to see the final results of the auto-translation Luxus is doing?
Thanks, having lots of fun in LuxRender now:-)
They ought to sticky this thread, it's turning into a great resource.
Thank's to all.
I know LuxRender can handle the trans-maps; reality renders manage to get the settings converted over. I've been trying to compare the output files to figure out what Reality is doing that Luxus isn't. No luck so far :(
That's really quite nice. I must be doing something wrong, because I've had a simple render going for several hours now, and it isn't anywhere near done. I did let a render run while I was asleep last night, and it turned out nice, but that was eight hours. And it still didn't look anywhere as nice as the one you posted. Any tips on what I could do to speed things up?
No need to worry about this - glossy translucent surfaces can be defined as one sided or two sided with different settings on either side, controlled with the 'onesided' option, but Luxus always writes these parameters whether they're needed or not. Lux will just ignore them.
I just tried another render and had bright orange splotches all over it. I changed the sampler from metropolis to lowdiscrepancy and the blotches are not appearing, so I think either metropolis sampler doesn't cope well with homogeneous volume scattering or my settings are wrong.
Might be worth you trying it, anyway.
Grab the Luxball scene here - http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5527&p=94055#p94030 - and familiarize yourself with Lux Materials via the Lux Wiki. It will be MUCH easier to learn on a small scene where your only modifiying one or two surfaces at a time. You will have to create your own lights for it but that is easy. Just make a few primiative planes and use the Universal manipulator to make sure it is pointing towards the luxball.
EDIT:
I forgot to add, keep the scene small. 500x500 is more then enough to see what your results are cause Lux will render small scenes faster then large scenes.
I know LuxRender can handle the trans-maps; reality renders manage to get the settings converted over. I've been trying to compare the output files to figure out what Reality is doing that Luxus isn't. No luck so far :(
http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxRender_Materials_Null#Alpha_Maps
I must say I'm getting great results just letting Luxus do it's thing without tweaking any of the daz shaders. I find it much easier to use than I ever did Reality
I take back what I said a few pages back. I am finding it hard to find specific tutorails and more info on render setting than the LuxWiki can provide.
I just don't get how to adjust each area lights (two) indepenently inside daz studio and show in the render. Yes I have read changing the gain on one light effects the other and redoes the tone mapping blah blah balh...BUT why is my question, without knowing the why I will never understand the how. Can some kind soul please put me out of my misery and point to where some informative webstites other than forums and LuxWiki...for me that Wiki is a waste of time when it come to what each setting really does. A lot of jargon but nothing of substance to a dunce like me. I have tried numours render setting and came to the conlusion that that is not the problem.
I have managed to get a HDRI and Area light to play nice togther using the Lux UI and adjusting the gain of each but when it came to two area lights well that had me baffled. Not hard yeah I know. ;)
Yeah I definitly need a lux crash course.
I agree about shortcomings of the Lux Wiki.. for example I looked up the 'cloth' material to find out how it works, and the wiki just says, "The model's parameters are too many to expose individually" ... umm ok, that's what a wiki is for isn't it?
*sigh*
Anyways, about your lighting problem. I think it's the same problem I had a number of pages back. Is your Tone Mapping Kernel set to auto linear? If it is, set it to Linear then you can adjust the lights. You can change that either in DS's Render Settings or in the LuxRender GUI.
No need to worry about this - glossy translucent surfaces can be defined as one sided or two sided with different settings on either side, controlled with the 'onesided' option, but Luxus always writes these parameters whether they're needed or not. Lux will just ignore them.
Thanks. I thought that might be the case, but thought it odd that unused parameters would be passed to the render engine.
Thanks Mordur I will give that try tomorrow. Liner...yes I have tried Liner and everything was blown out so I will try again making some more adjustments. Thank you.
I will say that yes the wiki does have info that does help amoung the many pages and I have now a little more understanding. Just got to undo what I have learnt in Daz Studio etc. Anyways the basic material part of the wiki is some real help in basic surfaces which does in help to start to learn about what does what.
I read a page on Portals and I wonder if there are still needed.
Linear works like real world cameras for light adjustment.
If you are having issues, it is best to post the render showing the issue and the settings for the materials.
I once again suggest using the Luxball scene posted here several times so that you are only playing with a small scene with a few materials and dont render huge, just 500x500 or so.
yep small scene - check
500 x 300 - check
Linear - still to try properly.
But yeah I get the jist of it now how the Auto and Rienhard linear works now and why. Quite cool when I think about it. :)
I found this helpful http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/New_User_Tips_and_Tricks especially for some of the render settings.
I find Luxus easier to use than Reality. I was never able to get any good results with it. I think it helps the learning curve to have it integrated into the directly into DS parameters that I already understand. Lux does volumetric light right out of the box. This is easy to set up in Luxus. I have wasted whole months of my life trying to fake this effect in DS4.5, but It works as expected right out of the box with the any surface.
I opted for a HDRI and an plane mesh light and using Reinhard and got a nice balance so I will let that render over night. I am using Hybrid/Metro set to Path as it is a simple test scene.
Thanks Mattymanx
Hey,can anyone offer some insight to saving renders..?.......I have saved my scene (FLM) in the default location (daz/temp etc) shut down the PC.........turned everything on the next day and resumed the render no problem....great.
However If I create a new scene,luxrender seems to delete other existing scenes in the temp folder.....even if they have totally different file names?....any existing scene keeps getting replaced with the new scene?............I've saved my last scene in a different location/folder in the hope that I'll manage to finish the render.............is this normal?