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Not to worry, I think I have managed to fix it, I had to go into the 'Window - Workspace - Customize' and re-add the menu item
That's not a plugin problem, per se, but it is a rather common problem with ANY DS update, more so with the Beta versons. Resetting the UI is pretty much second nature after an update, for me, now, that I don't even think about 'missing' plugins, any longer.
That's not a plugin problem, per se, but it is a rather common problem with ANY DS update, more so with the Beta versons. Resetting the UI is pretty much second nature after an update, for me, now, that I don't even think about 'missing' plugins, any longer.
Normally just resetting the interface does the trick, but not this time round, I had to add the menu item manually via Workspace Custimization.
I sure hope there is a simple solution to this, but I haven't been able to discover it on my own. I've noticed that, when using glass with a volume, or anything other than architectural, that anything behind the glass that has transparency (such as other glass or something with a transparency map) loses it's transparency. Specifically, if I have a pair of glasses on a face, the cornea and eyelashes no longer have their full transparency. The lashes look like dark rectangles with a bit of the lash texture showing and the corneas do not show the iris beneath at all. This problem goes away if I set the glasses as architectural glass, but then I am unable to get the refraction or magnification that I want.
Any ideas? I know in other renderers, increasing the raytracing bounces helps with this, such as in reflections as well. But Luxus does not seem to offer such an option.
It does, sort of... I think. When you go to Render Settings and select LuxRender, away down near the bottom of that huge settings list you'll find the Surface Integrator group. Exactly which one you need to use depends on the Surface Integrator setting, but anything with "depth" in the name seems to work like the Raytrace Depth setting in 3Delight. Choose the one that matches your Surface Integrator setting and bump it up a bit until the render works.
E.g. I used to have problems with lots of overlaid transparencies (the old Big Cat lion tail tuft was worst affected) until I pushed the Depth value up quite a bit, from 16 to 24.
Light Depth and Eye Depth if you're using bidirectional - the slider caps at 16, but you can turn off limits and go higher if that isn't enough.
Here's the Luxrender definitions...for each integrator and the relevant settings.
Bidirectional
sppm
Max photon depth
Maximum recursion depth for light/photon tracing.
Thank-you, all 3 of you, for your answers. I have already shut down my computer for the night, but if I know me, I will have to get up and try those settings before I can fall asleep :)
Let's hope it does the trick. If it worked out with the big cat tail transparency, then hopefully that's what is needed here, too.
Mordur and Spotted Kitty, that did the trick! Thank you both so much. Also thanks to mjc for that recap of the LuxRender documentation. Alot of it went over my head, but I still appreciate the info.
I always just set the ray depths to 48 in Lux. This isn't too expensive, because Lux will cancel rays that don't need high counts automatically (e.g., if they bounce off into infinity) and there is also the Russian roulette algo in Lux that cancels rays if it thinks the probability of the ray hitting something is too low.
Speaking of the LuxRender material on their wiki... a few days ago I bought a nice scenery set that came with a handful of .hdr files. I've had a go at setting them up as environment lights in Luxus but, as happens much too frequently, the wiki says only that such-and-such a thing can be done, but it's either very light on the details of how to do it, or mentions only LuxBlend.
I've added a Distant Light to my scene (one figure, ground plane, building in background) and converted it to a LuxRender Infinite Light, then slotted the .hdr into the Environment Map parameter. Is that all I need to do? How do I know if I need to change the Mapping type? I get weird-looking results often enough to be fairly sure I don't know what I'm doing.
Very quickly, from memory, you use HDRIs in Luxus via selecting the Light in scene tab, going to Pose tab and using the context menu of the Parameters tab to select Luxus Light and picking .... um, the strange named ... something-metric one from the dropdown list. Under properties, once selected, pick the type again and there will be a 'light map' selector where you can pick the hdr file to use.
Ow, my eyes — nope, "goniometric" definitely isn't it, I get something like a high-contrast point light in place of the unconverted Distant Light widget. This definitely only seems to work if I use "infinite".
Goniometric lights are useful if you're using IES, but certainly isn't what you need for a HDR map. In this case, you're correct in using the Infinite light option. My Luxus HDR presets use the Infinite light for this same purpose.
Goniometric lights are useful if you're using IES, but certainly isn't what you need for a HDR map. In this case, you're correct in using the Infinite light option. My Luxus HDR presets use the Infinite light for this same purpose.
Gah, yes - sorry, that was from memory! :)
Ah, so I'd use that goniometric setting if I want to use an IES file on a light? What kind of D|S light would be best to start from, then, a point or a spot, or a mesh? Or does it matter?
I've followed some of the wiki links on IES files, but the scarcity of how-to-use-them details put me off trying anything.
Something I just realised: those hdr setups I was experimenting with last night seemed to resolve towards good-enough renders faster than I was expecting. Do IES lights differ in any way from the mesh lights I've mostly used so far, when it comes to sampling speed?
Ah, so I'd use that goniometric setting if I want to use an IES file on a light? What kind of D|S light would be best to start from, then, a point or a spot, or a mesh? Or does it matter?
I've followed some of the wiki links on IES files, but the scarcity of how-to-use-them details put me off trying anything.
Something I just realised: those hdr setups I was experimenting with last night seemed to resolve towards good-enough renders faster than I was expecting. Do IES lights differ in any way from the mesh lights I've mostly used so far, when it comes to sampling speed?
IES lighting files are used in conjuction with area lights. Create a sphere, make it into an area light, and put the IES file on it.
-> http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/29667/#448545
Got it, thanks. Time to do some experimenting.
So I've finally been exploring Luxrender via Luxus, and I must say I am really enjoying learning to use this new tool set. Wondering if anyone could help me figure out what is going in the render below. Notices the black artifacts in Genesis' head...look like cracks. Render without hair... no artifacts. Render with hair: artifacts. The artifacts change shape and position depending on the hair model used. These are not as bad as the last one I tried which left a huge black swath right at the hair line.
Any ideas?
And on another note, I used one of Dimension Theory's HDR images (Skies of Economy Sunny 5) but it was so dark (its on a LuxRender Infinite Light, default settings) I had to crank the gain up to 26 in Luxrender to get the effect I wanted. I did not expect that and it seems odd.
I have that problem sometimes as well. From my experiments, it appears to be caused by the edge of the hair intercepting the figure. I haven't come up with any way to get rid of it; hopefully someone has though.
Just a guess, but there may be a displacement being applied to the scalp material, and that is making it stand out away from the head.
I'm sure someone else can explain this better than me, but what you're seeing might be where the actual geometry of the hair, part of which is hidden by the transmap, intersects with Genesis' head. To fix it, you'll likely have to use the hairs' adjustment morphs or, if there are none, the hair props' scaling so it no longer cuts into the head. Maybe smoothing can get the job done as well.
For adjusting and testing purposes, it might help to remove all trans and diffuse maps from the hair prop so you can see the actual geometry at work. Since you're using Luxus anyway, you should be able to edit the DS surfaces for this without changing the Luxus surface settings and thus not influence the render itself.
If you have not tried it already, I think SpottedKitty might have the answer for you(increase Eye Depth)
-> http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21492/P450/#541527
Don't forget what I said in that thread, though — there are different "depth" settings, and which one you need to bump up depends on what "Surface Integrator" is set at. I think most people will be using "bidirectional" or "path" depending on which gives the best/quickest render (as (almost) always, there is no "One True Setting" that will always work with every scene, you'll have to test, tweak and re-render... maybe several times).
Don't forget what I said in that thread, though — there are different "depth" settings, and which one you need to bump up depends on what "Surface Integrator" is set at. I think most people will be using "bidirectional" or "path" depending on which gives the best/quickest render (as (almost) always, there is no "One True Setting" that will always work with every scene, you'll have to test, tweak and re-render... maybe several times).
The list I posted, after SpottedKitty's post lists all the relevant depth settings/surface integrators....
Thanks for all the tips. It was either the hair or parts of the super suit head that were morphed inward. I added a smidge of a push modifier to the hair, and went through each of the super suit materials reducing the morph and making the materials invisible. Rendering again now.
Tried a different IBL image and got similar results: very low response.
Don't forget what I said in that thread, though — there are different "depth" settings, and which one you need to bump up depends on what "Surface Integrator" is set at. I think most people will be using "bidirectional" or "path" depending on which gives the best/quickest render (as (almost) always, there is no "One True Setting" that will always work with every scene, you'll have to test, tweak and re-render... maybe several times).
I did look at this as a possibility. I'm using Path because I tend to use the hybrid renderer (though not with this one because the hair model seems to be too big for my video card) and the bounces appears to be maxed according to the Luxus UI at 16.
I should try bidirectional since I can't use the hybrid renderer.
Try bi-dir...and you can override the Luxus limit.
Are you sure you are using the correct image map?
If I recall, there is a LDR map that is used for reflections/background in those packs and the actual 'light' map which was the HDR, but may be in tif (tone mapped LDR) or tdl format (could still be an HDR or it could be LDR).
Luxrender prefers true HDR maps...not the tdls or the other maps (jpgs).
I've been trying to come up with an IBL that is usable, without reloading anything, in both Luxrender and 3DL...and while doable it requires at least 3 versions of the maps to be loaded in DS...you need both the 3DL converted HDR and the 'raw' HDR image to make them happy...and then any background/reflection maps. And that can get kind of 'weighty' (memory use) as those maps tend to be kind of 'big'.
The problem comes from 3DL requiring that tdlmake be used to create the maps...if they don't include the tags that tdlmake adds, 3DL doesn't register the map properly and treats it just like any other image/texture map, not something to use for lighting. While Luxrender just uses the HDR as a light source, as long as you tell it the format the image is in (lat-long, etc).
Thanks for the tip, but yes I am using the HDR version (though the extension is....ummm the E one.exr?) I've been working with various forms of ibl in lots of renderers for a while so I am pretty conversant with the needs of them and the various moving parts. But perhaps I am telling Luxus the wrong things when I am setting it up
I looked at several that I've got set up...and yes, they are all 'cranked up' to some degree...but not that much.
Part of the problem is how the exporter is converting the setting to a Luxrender setting...some use scaling factors, some use a direct method. All I do know for certain, LuxBlend and Luxus don't use the same way of setting it...
I'd say check what the level actually is in the lxs file...that should give you a better idea of what's going on
Has anyone got a decent skin result from a G2F character or Vicky 6 ? If so, would you be kind and post your Luxus material settings that I could use as a starting point ?
For example, Luxus defaulted to a value of "1" with GlossyTranslucent Bump so I was playing around for ages with values between 0.4 - 1.0, not knowing that it should be in the range 0.001 - 0.005 for Luxrender.....!!
Extremely frustrating to say the least, a bit of a shot in the dark when your factors of a thousand out of where you should be. I thought Luxus would default to 'just about right' values. There is some other default value somewhere that I'm completely missing but with the Luxus/Luxrender factors out of sync it'll take thousands of years to try tweeking them all without a guide.
One other thing, it would appear that Luxus doesn't translate Displacement maps, or if it does then its out by miles and they don't have any effect.
I've tried using settings used from other characters, but I've never seen anyone post settings for G2F/V6 skin like Slosh did for F5 in this thread - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20918/ ?
Please help, I've spent a week rendering Avatars and Oompaloompas !
Thanks.
p.s, no complaints about Luxus in general, the auto-convert works for me 99% of the time, I'm just trying to improve the skin quality and make the displacement maps work.