has anyone compared a luxrender to DS's best render settings?

MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
edited February 2015 in The Commons

was thinking, why wait for luxrender to render, when i could up the DS settings and wait for the better settings render.

my compy only has 2 cores and 4gb, can't feasibly do a test like that :lol:

was wondering if anyone has tried it?

or compared luxrender to Carrara best render settings?

Post edited by Mistara on

Comments

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Can't speak to Studio, but in PhilW's Realism Rendering tutorials he definitely compares Carrara to Lux side by side; with the correct settings applied Carrara can get very very close to Lux results, some of the best biased rendering I've seen. I have 3 unbiased renderers, Luxus for Carrara (which renders in Lux), Octane for Carrara, and Thearender, so I've had lots of opportunity to do side by sides of Carrara and the duplicated scene in Octane, Lux, and Thea, and I've been pretty astonished at how closely Carrara can duplicate the render (key is setting gamma correction to 2.2 to allow Carrara's linear workflow to render with light calculations physically correctly).

    I love my unbiased render options and I'm glad that I have them, but I wonder sometimes if I had known back when I bought them the settings to use in Carrara that give similar quality renders whether I would have thought I need the unbiased solutions at all.

    I think all render engines can be tuned to solve light calculations accurately for realistic effect. For unbiased renderers, it's like they are solving Pi to infinity. For unbiased renderers, they are solving the equation to a certain number of places. Carrara is very good when the proper settings employed, it's like it solves Pi to 26 places (to give an analogy).

  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,167
    edited February 2015

    was thinking, why wait for luxrender to render, when i could up the DS settings and wait for the better settings render.

    my compy only has 2 cores and 4gb, can't feasibly do a test like that :lol:

    was wondering if anyone has tried it?

    or compared luxrender to Carrara best render settings?


    I can't speak for Carrara because I don't use it but DS uses 3Delight and moreover it uses only some of 3Delights actual potential for a final output.
    The render settings in DS don't necessarily make for a better render by pumping the values up, and in many cases they can actually make for a slower render with more or less the same result.
    Unless you had specific assets in your scene that take advantage of what those settings have to offer you may not get the results you think DS is going to spit out. I've gotten results in an hour from LuxRender that I don't think any amount of tweaking would produce in 3Delight but both of these engines are RAM and CPU intensive and two cores not going to give you much flexibility when your trying to get realism AND speed. I've tried it, the solution for me for realism out of DS was: LuxRender as my main engine.

    Post edited by StratDragon on
  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,340
    edited December 1969

    It's hard to do a one-to-one comparison because a light setup that looks good in DS might not look good in Reality, and vice-versa. Probably the only way to do it is to use lighting that's designed to work with both. Fortunately, a few such sets exist, and the promo renders for them sometimes show the same scene or similar scenes rendered both ways.

    For example:
    Skies of Economy (compare DS, Poser, Carrara, Reality)
    Photo Studio - Point and Shoot (compare DS, Luxus)

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    Lux and 3Delight are different styles of render engine. Use the right tool for the job at hand.

    You can get amazing renders out of each, if you are willing to put in the time to get lighting, cameras, shaders, etc. set up correctly.

    Neither includes a magic "Make Art" button (I believe that may be in the next release of DS, but it might have to wait, depending on priorities. :) ) but both do have a range of information available to get the most out of them.

  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,167
    edited December 1969

    I wanted to add I have hardly dismissed 3Delight for my Studio projects. I still use it pretty frequently and it does what I need it to do. Now if only I could get a better grip on lighting.

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    I wanted to add I have hardly dismissed 3Delight for my Studio projects. I still use it pretty frequently and it does what I need it to do. Now if only I could get a better grip on lighting.

    If you haven't already, my recommendation is to start with Jeremy Birn's [digital] Lighting & Rendering.

  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,167
    edited December 1969

    I wanted to add I have hardly dismissed 3Delight for my Studio projects. I still use it pretty frequently and it does what I need it to do. Now if only I could get a better grip on lighting.

    If you haven't already, my recommendation is to start with Jeremy Birn's [digital] Lighting & Rendering.

    Out of sheer curiosity is there any lighting system for 3Delight that works similar to real life lighting for example a photographers studio?
    I ask this as someone who uses a 3 point lighting system with the default lights or UE2, or sometimes both with confusing (for me anyway) results. Is there a package thats more "real life" for lighting?
    thanks!

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited February 2015

    I wanted to add I have hardly dismissed 3Delight for my Studio projects. I still use it pretty frequently and it does what I need it to do. Now if only I could get a better grip on lighting.

    If you haven't already, my recommendation is to start with Jeremy Birn's [digital] Lighting & Rendering.

    Out of sheer curiosity is there any lighting system for 3Delight that works similar to real life lighting for example a photographers studio?
    I ask this as someone who uses a 3 point lighting system with the default lights or UE2, or sometimes both with confusing (for me anyway) results. Is there a package thats more "real life" for lighting?
    thanks!There are plenty of Portrait sets in the store if that is what you are looking for. There are also plenty of environment lights. Some are better than others all depends on personal taste.

    For example this is a 3Delight render I did as a test. Nothing really special, and not much time taken on it. the lighting, IIRC is just the one that comes with the set.

    Note the car is not out of the box but a combination of DS shaders from various sets.

    356Thoughts.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    Post edited by DAZ_Spooky on
  • DestinysGardenDestinysGarden Posts: 2,550
    edited December 1969

    Out of sheer curiosity is there any lighting system for 3Delight that works similar to real life lighting for example a photographers studio?
    I ask this as someone who uses a 3 point lighting system with the default lights or UE2, or sometimes both with confusing (for me anyway) results. Is there a package thats more "real life" for lighting?
    thanks!

    Pretty much any of InaneGlory's Photo Studio light sets were designed off of the concept of lights and light set ups like a photographer would use in a portrait studio.
    http://www.daz3d.com/inaneglory

    Predatron and Diane have this one;
    http://www.daz3d.com/boudoir-photo-studio-and-lights

    Maclean has this one:
    http://www.daz3d.com/fashion-studio

    I know there are others, but this is what I came up with off the top of my head.

  • cwichuracwichura Posts: 1,042
    edited December 1969

    I will echo the statements from others that doing a comparison between 3Delight and LuxRender (or any other render engine) is actually a non-trivial exercise. The approach to how you configure the lights, material settings, etc. is radically different between the various render engines. To do a fair comparison, you'd need people skilled with both render engines to each give it their go. You can't simply 'turn up the settings' on 3Delight.

    Both engines are capable of amazing results when used by someone that has learned them. Both are also capable of absolute poo. But the rookie mistakes you see in LuxRender are different from the ones with 3Delight. 3Delight you typically see very bad lighting, no shadows getting cast, no GI, etc from folks getting started with it. (Assuming fairly modern Studio content used, which usually have decent material settings out of the box. Anything imported from Poser will usually also look like poo in rookie 3Delight renders, since the imported material settings are basically garbage.) Whereas LuxRender makes it very easy to get decent light even for a novice, but the material (shader) settings are almost always completely whack (like super glossy/specular settings making everything look very plastic -- even my early Lux scenes suffered from that).

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,737
    edited December 1969

    Out of sheer curiosity is there any lighting system for 3Delight that works similar to real life lighting for example a photographers studio?
    I ask this as someone who uses a 3 point lighting system with the default lights or UE2, or sometimes both with confusing (for me anyway) results. Is there a package thats more "real life" for lighting?
    thanks!

    Pretty much any of InaneGlory's Photo Studio light sets were designed off of the concept of lights and light set ups like a photographer would use in a portrait studio.
    http://www.daz3d.com/inaneglory

    Predatron and Diane have this one;
    http://www.daz3d.com/boudoir-photo-studio-and-lights

    Maclean has this one:
    http://www.daz3d.com/fashion-studio

    I know there are others, but this is what I came up with off the top of my head.
    +1 for InaneGlory's Photo Studio Lights! I have Photo Studio (1) and Photo Studio 2 and both sets are great.

    I don't have the others mentioned, so I can't compare/rate them.

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    With the proper materials and light setup, DAZ Studio and 3delight can produce some great looking renders. Just did the render below and it's not even at full quality final render settings.

    White_Valentine_2_Compressed.jpg
    1538 x 2000 - 362K
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    i've started trying out the omnifreaker sets. starting with the softlights.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    what is the carrara render engine?

    uses terms like 'shiny' in the shader parameters,

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    what is the carrara render engine?

    uses terms like 'shiny' in the shader parameters,

    The Carrara Render Engine is the Render engine that comes with Carrara.

    There are two components, that generally deal with Specular, One is the Specular channel which determines the amount of specular highlight that comes from something, and the other is the specular size or shininess. (In a Physically based render engine it is Glossiness and Glossy Roughness.)

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    edited December 1969

    what is the carrara render engine?

    uses terms like 'shiny' in the shader parameters,

    The Carrara Render Engine is the Render engine that comes with Carrara.

    There are two components, that generally deal with Specular, One is the Specular channel which determines the amount of specular highlight that comes from something, and the other is the specular size or shininess. (In a Physically based render engine it is Glossiness and Glossy Roughness.)


    it's learning different languages :)
    carrara says glow, which guessing, means ambient.

    everybody uses the blinn and the phong?

    is physical based the same as unbiased?

  • DAZ_SpookyDAZ_Spooky Posts: 3,100
    edited December 1969

    what is the carrara render engine?

    uses terms like 'shiny' in the shader parameters,

    The Carrara Render Engine is the Render engine that comes with Carrara.

    There are two components, that generally deal with Specular, One is the Specular channel which determines the amount of specular highlight that comes from something, and the other is the specular size or shininess. (In a Physically based render engine it is Glossiness and Glossy Roughness.)


    it's learning different languages :)
    carrara says glow, which guessing, means ambient.

    everybody uses the blinn and the phong?

    is physical based the same as unbiased?
    Remember that in Carrara Glow, if you turn on Global Illumination, is also a light source. (Or, in many cases you can use Anything glows instead of GI for the same effect.)

    Phong is the default shader in Carrara (no need to set it), and yes.

    Physically Based means that real physics are used for the calculations and is generally what is used in Unbiased render engines, though biased render engines can also be physically based.

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