Luxus
Genevieve Laroche
Posts: 33
Hi!
Unsure If this is the place to post this, but here's my problem:
I just bought Luxus and installed it, but it doesn't seems to work, or rather I don't see it anywhere.. I'm new to this, so I thought I would see it in the render pane, but I don't.
My Daz Studio is installed in the Programs directory and not in Programs File (x86). I have Luxrender already installed as well.
I'm having Daz Studio 4.6 Pro.
Any help would be very well appreciated!
Thanks!
Post edited by Genevieve Laroche on
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Comments
Click on the render tab and there is a drop down menu for the render engine.
LUXrender should be there :)
Oh yes! I found it, thanks! :)
Don't forget that, once you've switched the Render Settings to Luxus, you must tell Luxus where you installed LuxRender; this is not done automatically. It's the first slot in the Render Engine section of the Render Settings tab.
A couple of other gotchas; first, make sure you installed the right version of LuxRender. If you have a 64-bit system, you should use the 64-bit version. Also, does your graphics card use the OpenCL standard? Note that this is NOT the same thing as "OpenGL". Most modern cards do, so if you install the OpenCL version of LuxRender, you can take full advantage of your graphics card during the render. (Well, not just yet. This part of LuxRender is still a bit buggy, but there is a new version due out in a few months which apparently fixes this little glitch. Until this is fixed, in the Renderer slot don't use the Hybrid setting, use Sampler.)
One other setting you should be aware of. Switch "Use LuxRender GUI" to ON, this gives you a screen of controls to let you monitor and change the render and lighting as the render is going on. It's possible to do the same things without using the GUI, but it's like nailing jelly to the ceiling; technically possible, but far from easy.
Thanks so much for the infos!
I am currently making my first test render. I am having an AMD RADEON HD 7350 graphic card , which I think support OpenCL, but I'm not 100% sure. It is not the latest graphic card too, but that will have to do for now. I think Luxus works best with Nvidia though right?
I did not used the GUI yet, but I did explore LuxRender itself... my question is: how do I save my image to .png or .jpg format once done?
Thanks once again!
I was never able to figure out how to do this without the GUI, so the first thing you need to do is enable that option. Once you have your render running, monitor the image quality at the bottom in Samples per Pixel — note that LuxRender never finishes, you just stop the render when the quality is good enough (usually several hundred or several thousand samples). This can take some time. Frequently hours. Sometimes over a day.
One useful tip if the render lighting seems to be a bit off: in the Tone Mapping section click on the Estimate Settings button. Renders always start with the same default settings, even when they shouldn't. Estimate Settings at least gives the program's best guess at what will probably give you a pretty good final result; the final tweaking is up to you.
When you're happy with the picture quality, use the pause/stop/resume commands in the Render menu, and save with File>Export To Image. You can ignore most of the options here until you get to know what you're doing a bit better, the straightforward "save my pretty picture" command is the top one, Tonemapped Low Dynamic Range Image. You can save as png, jpg or tiff. You can, but almost always shouldn't, also save as a bitmap (I'm not sure why modern programs still give this option).
I hope that's one of the things that gets fixed in the next update of the GUI, it's really a bit over-complicated.
I recommend using the GUI, as you can pause rendering and come back to it later. Also, ALWAYS render to a file when using Luxus. By default Luxus stores images in the Daz temp directory, the contents of which are LOST when you exit Daz Studio.
I recommend using the GUI, as you can pause rendering and come back to it later. Also, ALWAYS render to a file when using Luxus. By default Luxus stores images in the Daz temp directory, the contents of which are LOST when you exit Daz Studio.That last bit is not entirely true, Herald, The contents of the Temp folder are not lost until you reopen DAZ Studio to start a new session. I found this out because there have been times when I've had to render an image in the Standalone version of 3Delight using an RIB file I put into the Temp folder because I couldn't change the RIB to read the TDL files in my Collected folder for that RIB file instead of those in the Temp folder. Often times, to save on RAM during the render, I need to shut down DAZ Studio, and the contents of the Temp folder remain until I restart DS. Even if I shut down the computer and reboot it, the files are still there until DAZ Studio is reopened.
Thanks everyone for the useful tips!
SpottedKitty, I cannot find the Estimate Settings button under the Tone Mapping section. I have two options there: Kernel and Clamp Method with a drop down menu for each, that's all.
Ah... <headdesk>
Sorry, should have asked which Kernel setting you have. Reinhart/Non Linear is I think the default, and it is useful for some things, but I think most Luxus people use Linear for real-world-ish scenes — that's the one that gives you real-world camera settings as if you were looking at the scene through an infinitely programmable SLR camera. And the Estimate Settings button is right below the camera options. Here's what my usual GUI settings look like, running the Luxball test scene for a few minutes. I've used the Estimate button, then changed the Shutter to 1/8 sec. to bring the brightness up a bit.
Sorry about that, there are so many things to fiddle with in Luxus it's easy to forget one or two that are actually pretty important, if you've never done it before. :red:
No worries at all! You are being very helpful! I found it now, thanks! There is indeed many things to fiddle with in Luxus and it will take me a while to figure them, but I'll achieve to do so.
So I guess this is the Luxus thread... I have some questions as I am brand new to Luxus...
1) why does it not generate a resume file the way that Reality does? I want to be able to stop a render and then restart it. With Luxus, if you re-open the .lxm file it seems to restart the render from zero pixels, rather than where it finished last time.
2) how can I edit multiple surfaces at once? The way Luxus creates a Luxus material it places it under "Default" in the surfaces tab, but it does it separately for each materials zone! This means you have to laboriously edit each material zone separately. (this is done way better on Reality where you can just group and multi select zones).
3) why does adding a spotlight make the render look all weird? (I even changed it to a Luxus spotlight in the parameters tab)
Thanks
anyone?
There is an official thread here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21492/
thanks!