Luxus discussion
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YIKES! You're absolutely right! I have Millennium Environment v2.0 backdrop placed behind the house. After you mention that, I realize this actually casts a huge shadow which makes scene light appearing uneven.
Now I am finally confident that Luxus has done everything well! I even appreciate awesome job in material translation from DAZ Studio to Luxrender. The material, reflection, etc.. Amazing job!
Thank you for pointing it out. :)
Quick question #1, about arealight planes.. Can we turn them invisible but will emit light and how?
Quick question #2, can we get light to pass thru an object unaffected? It'll be useful for skydome, backdrop, etc.
Thank you everyone for your kind words.
I can’t take any credit for the realistic feathers I’m afraid, they are amazing by themselves, that’s the talent of the creator. Getting good textures to start makes a huge difference as there are not that many Luxus materials and they don’t always react as you expect.
There is no postwork, which is amazing as I find I usually have to do some, what I did though was play with the film response and try different films as I thought my initial light setting too washed out.
The ability to control so many things while still rendering, and also to restart the render makes life so much easier, even if it does take longer.
It occurred to me while testing material settings on various objects that to really set up material settings for a render engine such as Lux, one needs to set them up so that they will work under various lighting settings with other objects set up at different times, ie.. one needs a standard. The challenge is, there are various lighting conditions and circumstances so how does one go about setting up this standard. The only conclusion I could come up with is a set of lighting conditions that represent a gamut of options from indoor florescent to outdoor cloudy, sunny, etc... If there were a 'standard set' of lights (and render settings,) one could bring in any object and set that objects material settings so that the object looked good under all said standard light sets. Even if one had a radically different light/render setup they were using, they would be starting from a known quantity.
This I think is what I will end up doing. I am not at the point of doing it yet however, so if anyone else finds this a useful concept and wants to start the project, feel free :)
I should add, if one does set up some standard sets, they should be well documented so everyone using them know exactly what each setup in the set defines and represents. I would think it would also be helpful to name the set clearly and uniformly so that one easily identifies the set among other light setups in their library, such as 'XXX's Test Setup Sunny, XXX's Test Setup, Indoor Florescent'
Related to the last post, one thing I would put on a wishlist for Luxus is a function to output a text file that lists any changes from the base on a given render settings set. This would make documenting, troubleshooting, and learning much easier (imo) :)
If one had that, they could save the settings with a picture so they could easily see what they used in a given image, similar to the metadata that shows in Photoshop Lightroom/Bridge related to camera settings.
You have to think of Lux light panes like real photographic light sources, you can't turn them invisible and expect them to work, you need to hide them out of shot, remembering that the light sources can be blocked by items of scenery in the way.
In the same way a sky dome will block out the light from the Lux "Sun".
Wierd I have two Light mesh planes that are hidden and emitting light. Both the Daz Studio and Lux Material Opactiy settings are set to 0% and they work just fine.
Dome yeah I agree, HDRI or use the Pre Multiply Alpha button (ON Transparent Background) in the LuxRender render setttings in Daz Studio and overlay your render on top of a background of your choice.
Weird, I was sure they had to be visible to work.
I just checked in Daz Studio Surface part of the Surfaces Pane Opacity 0% and Lux Render part, Opacity 0% and I have light emiting from both planes.
For those who track such things, Reality for Poser has finally been unleashed.
I'll have to try that.. I'd heard it wasn't possible so I never tried it.
Now I've got to find some extra time to finally figure out how to use Poser. I bought PP12 when it went on sale a month or so ago, but without LuxRender support I just couldn't justify the time to learn the interface.
First of all, let me apologize if you have seen this in the Biased vs. Unbiased Showdown thread. I am following both threads and wanted feedback.
I messed around with the glossytranslucent material to come up with a nice skin shader. I am fairly happy with this one, but will continue to work on it, trying out each setting, until I get something great.
The image was made for the Michael Initiative thread, so there is a reason the character is wearing lingerie. :-)
I like how the skin turned out. :)
Considering the results you have been getting, I take that as a very high compliment, Hellboy. Thank you
Weird, I was sure they had to be visible to work.
Lux works differently, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The surface emits light whether or not it is rendered. A null material (one which is ignored by the render engine) will still emit light fully across its surface as if it were visible. Of course, while the emitter might not be visible, the light it fires out will be. This means that if you're looking directly at the light, or if there are reflections, you will see that light.
The downside to this is that you can't shape lights by using alpha maps. If you used, for example, a cutout alpha map for a star shaped light it would have no effect on the shape of the light displayed by Lux. The full surface is still emitting light, regardless of how visible it is. The only way to shape lights is to place a shaped filter over it with the alpha map applied so that the light is forced to pass through it and form the desired shape.
Actually, just scale the light texture by the alpha mask and use that as the texture for the arealight. Then you will only get light from the areas the alpha mask specifies. My latest render, Terminatrix 001, is a perfect example of this technique. The blue lights on the walls are the LEDB lampspectrum preset scaled by the ambient alpha map that the Cube prop comes with. As such, only the blue lights emit instead of the entire face of the wall. The same is true for the red lights, which use the RedLaser lampspectrum preset. The Terminatrix outfit also has simple color constant textures scaled by the ambient mask to get the glow on the outfit without making the entire outfit glow.
Stunning work! I'm yet to do any LuxRenders I'm happy with. I had a few from when I was using Reality 2 that I was almost happy with, but that was when I was working with the program a lot. Starting fresh with Luxus is like learning it all again.
Lux works differently, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The surface emits light whether or not it is rendered. A null material (one which is ignored by the render engine) will still emit light fully across its surface as if it were visible. Of course, while the emitter might not be visible, the light it fires out will be. This means that if you're looking directly at the light, or if there are reflections, you will see that light.
The downside to this is that you can't shape lights by using alpha maps. If you used, for example, a cutout alpha map for a star shaped light it would have no effect on the shape of the light displayed by Lux. The full surface is still emitting light, regardless of how visible it is. The only way to shape lights is to place a shaped filter over it with the alpha map applied so that the light is forced to pass through it and form the desired shape.
Makes total sense! Explains all the questions I was going to ask. We should make a FAQ about it to help the others. ;)
I'm having a struggling to make a material that looks like swimming pool, lake, ocean. If someone has materials all set up, can they share the Luxus Material parameters? Would the cube be needing many SubD to simulate water wave/ripple?
For water, you want to set the material to glass2 with an interior clear volume that has the IOR of Water (~1.33) and ideally uses the Pope97 measured absorption data for the absorption factor. (This data needs to be scaled up by 100 to match the units Lux uses, however.)
For the waves/ripples, you could do a couple things. You could use a D-Former in Studio to make the waves. Or use a displacement map with the waves pattern. If using a displacement map, you need to make sure the surface has enough geometry for LuxRender to push around. Using a plane with only a single quad isn't going to cut it, for example. You might make the plane have 100 segments in Studio, and then specify a few levels of subdivision to LuxRender.
Reality has a water pseudo-material that sets all this up for you, including a procedural noise texture for the ripples displacement map. Not sure if Luxus does anything similar. I've used Reality's water many times in my renders, the most recent being Sunset Swim. For that render, I set the ripple strength fairly low since a swimming pool wouldn't have raging water... :)
Lux works differently, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The surface emits light whether or not it is rendered. A null material (one which is ignored by the render engine) will still emit light fully across its surface as if it were visible. Of course, while the emitter might not be visible, the light it fires out will be. This means that if you're looking directly at the light, or if there are reflections, you will see that light.
The downside to this is that you can't shape lights by using alpha maps. If you used, for example, a cutout alpha map for a star shaped light it would have no effect on the shape of the light displayed by Lux. The full surface is still emitting light, regardless of how visible it is. The only way to shape lights is to place a shaped filter over it with the alpha map applied so that the light is forced to pass through it and form the desired shape.Thanks for the extra info HeraldOfFire much appreciated.
I wanted to do a more dramatic test of the Glossy Translucent with Homogeneous Volume, IBL and DOF. So I used the Stanford Happy Buddha for this.
The idea is to set the volume so you can see the candle light scattering inside the statue.
The first image shows an HDRI, a frontal AreaLight and the candle.
For the second image I turned off the HDRI and the Area Light to show better the effect.
It needs more cooking, but I think you get the point.
Wow... All you talented people here simultaneously inspire me and drive me bats. The inspiration part is obvious: when I see amazing artwork, I want to do it too. The batty part is because I want to be able to do that sort of thing now!!! Skip the learning process, I wanna see something gorgeous come out of my computer right now!!! ;)
Hellboy that is incredible :)
On another note can anyone give any suggestions for eye setting?
Thanks, Szark! It is disturbing, yet somehow does not seem as feminine as it was intended. And, (I can't believe I'm about to admit this) having modeled my wife's undies for her on occasion, it feels oddly familiar. :red:
Simple directions for "something gorgeous come out of my computer right now" . . . well, now-ish:
a) Set up (and save) an outdoor scene -- don't use a skydome or any backdrop.
b) Create a single Distant Light and rotate it to where you want your sunlight coming from. With your Distant Light selected go to the Parameters Tab, and in the Options Menu (upper left corner of the tab, the little box with the lines in it) click "Luxus - LuxRender Light" (it's fourth from the bottom) -- in the box that pops up click "sun sky2" then click the "okay" button.
c) Go to your Render Tab, at the top make sure "Advanced" is highlighted (not "General"), then change the Render Engine to "LuxRender via Luxus". For quick results keep your render dimensions low, like 500px on the wide side. And I like to turn "Use LuxRender GUI" on, so you can see it run.
d) If you're happy with the first 20 minutes or so let it run overnight -- in the morning you'll probably have a gorgeous sun-drenched scene on your screen. (If not, post it here and ask for help -- that worked for me!)
Simple directions for "something gorgeous come out of my computer right now" . . . well, now-ish:
a) Set up (and save) an outdoor scene -- don't use a skydome or any backdrop.
b) Create a single Distant Light and rotate it to where you want your sunlight coming from. With your Distant Light selected go to the Parameters Tab, and in the Options Menu (upper left corner of the tab, the little box with the lines in it) click "Luxus - LuxRender Light" (it's fourth from the bottom) -- in the box that pops up click "sun sky2" then click the "okay" button.
c) Go to your Render Tab, at the top make sure "Advanced" is highlighted (not "General"), then change the Render Engine to "LuxRender via Luxus". For quick results keep your render dimensions low, like 500px on the wide side. And I like to turn "Use LuxRender GUI" on, so you can see it run.
d) If you're happy with the first 20 minutes or so let it run overnight -- in the morning you'll probably have a gorgeous sun-drenched scene on your screen. (If not, post it here and ask for help -- that worked for me!)
e) find "Make Art" button and press it ;-).
that was all I could find as well.