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Did you get this working, cause I sure can't get it working. I have the same setup, except for the Fitlering option, I don't have Fast Mip Map even as a selection?
Also, are you guys using 8.5 or 8.1? My 8.5 license timed out, I dont see a new one.
Also, are you guys using 8.5 or 8.1? My 8.5 license timed out, I dont see a new one.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20690/
OK, I think I know the problem. The object I am testing with, a clump of grass, uses a texture map the color and the alpha...but in Carrara, in the shader for it, the "path" to the texture does not show under the picture, when I bring up the image map node.
As a result, this also does not seem to export to Lux, as I am getting image not found for both Alpha and the Texture.
Anyone know why this may happen? (see attached) Also, since I know of know way to click to get to that referenced texture...I have no idea what it is named or where it is?
When theres no path in the image, this means that it is saved internally and Carrara dont need to search for it. Maybe its something that SphericalLabs will take a look in future builds.
You can save again the scene and set to save externally and Carrara will write the image in the disc for you... well it supossed to do that.
Hi,
Thanks for the suggestion, that worked. I also got some good looking replicated grass growing :)
This is a limited render time, just to see if it could be done. Very cool!
I was wondering if there was plans to add a "Portal" material (so we could apply it to a plane, and use it as shown in the wiki link below)? This would focus the Sun to the small plan of grass that I am trying to render, and I think it would greatly reduce the render time.
http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Portals
Thanks again, this is really cool so far!
(...and thanks for the serial number update link)
Hi All :)
This is where I am with skin shaders,.. this is V4's "Standard" low quality skin, using a lux Mattte translucent shader
the hardest part of working with luxus in carrara is the lack of visual feedback in the shaders and assembly room.
there needs to be some way to preview the shaders,. and show colours or textures in the scene,. ..anything is better than almost black.
also,. some pics of the hair shader settings
Its looking good, but with SSS try to add a light behind your subject to get a more subtle effect. Can you share your setup for the Matte Trans?
Other options will be added to Luxus soon. Here a render I am working now. I did the same with Carrara render and needed a lot of postwork to get the right light! No postwork now!
Carrara original image: http://www.euqfiz.com.br/smallplanets/
I am looking for something that helps me to get a complex scene rendered - The scene contains characters, Furniture, Glass and Reflective objects, two or four candle lights as only light source - or maybe a fireplace as light source.
Would Lux Render be a help here?
Currently, i am facing the problem that bulbs do not really provide a good looking candle light - at least not as only light source. The light is too hard, even with soft shadows and high fall-off active.
In the real world, candle light gives off a warm golden glow that illuminates the entire room. The more candles the brighter the room gets, but the illumination stays even and still soft. I would love to "imitate" this behavior in a more or less "complex scene" as described above. I tried GI... but most of you know how time consuming the render process becomes with GI.
Same goes for a pure moon-lit night scene. Does Luxrender help here as well?
In the real world, when you have full moon, it's bright enough to see almost everything in color. The light is balanced and you only have the shadows, cast by the moon light.
In Carrara I haven't really managed to get this done with only the moon light. I tried here GI, too - wasn't really that good.
Luxrender will do a good job on the things you mention, but Luxrender is time consuming, unless you have a really powerful machine. Some examples (more via google):
Candlelight: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9487
Moonlight with a candlelight: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/download/file.php?id=14096&mode=view
Luxrender will do a good job on the things you mention, but Luxrender is time consuming, unless you have a really powerful machine. Some examples (more via google):
Candlelight: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9487
Moonlight with a candlelight: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/download/file.php?id=14096&mode=view
Thank you for sharing. That's exactly what I am looking for.
Well, I hope 12 GB RAM and Intel Hexa Core Extreme (3,33 GHz) won't render in all eternity ^^
Hi,
new build online.
Spheric Labs writes:
"Changes:
-> Improve Autotranslation. V4 and M4 look halfway decent now.
-> The cone angle and angular falloff now work on spot light.
-> Build times out end of May."
Win64 -> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Mac64 -> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Mac64/Luxus.zip
rk.
Well I remember seeing a post on cgsociety by HowieFarkes on a scene with multiple candles done in Carrara. However the images don't seem to be coming up for his post :/ He did GI then went to AO but without the images it won't be very helpful. Maybe they will show up for you and I have Something set wrong.
First posting was here http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=185&t=395269&page=16&pp=15 (scroll down about halfwas #230) There is a followup on page 17, page 18 and page 19 he discusses his lighting setup (Post 274).
Something happend with the latest Mac build (15).
Can't create Luxrender lights. Screen capture attached.
Hi All
GK :)
here's the base shaders for V4 and M4. (19kb)
these should use the default texture maps,. when applied to a V4 or M4 figure.
EG: load a figure into the scene and apply the shader.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/4_Base_Lux.zip
feel free to put the zip on the cafe site if you want.
base pics:
Thanks 3DAge, I will take a look. I am working in a candle scene to post here also. Candles can be faked using bulb lights, but you need to control Range, that is the most important feature in any light source.
Ok, here is a candle scene. One bulb light (I animated the brightness channel also), theres no flame here, just to show how the light works. To render this scene in Luxus you will need to change some settings inside it, so you can control better the light, the secret is to use the Linear Tone Mapping and set the Film ISO ans shutter to a better values.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1437890/Candle_01.car
PS.: This render was in Carrara, not Luxrender.
Nice example candle GK :) ..and very helpful tips for setting that type of scene up in Luxus.
No lights in this scene,.. the Candle flame model is an "Area light" material.
I agree with this, at least for Carrara. I've seen simply amazing work that, to me, look better than most reality scenes, or at least rival them. Lux takes a long time to do the same job.
DS almost NEEDS a lux plug in to even come close, so to me it's a fair trade off. As far as Carr area goes: it handles itself well as-is. It'd be a great option, but it'd be more like a toy than a must have for realism.
This took about 2 horous to get a very good quality render! The problem is how do you setup your shaders and lights also.
I agree with this, at least for Carrara. I've seen simply amazing work that, to me, look better than most reality scenes, or at least rival them. Lux takes a long time to do the same job.
DS almost NEEDS a lux plug in to even come close, so to me it's a fair trade off. As far as Carr area goes: it handles itself well as-is. It'd be a great option, but it'd be more like a toy than a must have for realism.
LuxRender is a viable alternative to Carrara's GI which is not terribly robust and also takes forever to render at quality settings. I agree that learning to use lights and shaders is the key, but frankly if you go a little further with your lights and shaders you don't need GI at all....
imo, Carrara's GI isn't really useful without Digitalcarversguild.com's SHADERS PLUS plugin. It gives you control over individual shaders as light emitters. Without Shaders Plus you will have problems getting shader domains and complex shaders to emit enough light.
More messing around,
LuxRender is a viable alternative to Carrara's GI which is not terribly robust and also takes forever to render at quality settings. I agree that learning to use lights and shaders is the key, but frankly if you go a little further with your lights and shaders you don't need GI at all....
imo, Carrara's GI isn't really useful without Digitalcarversguild.com's SHADERS PLUS plugin. It gives you control over individual shaders as light emitters. Without Shaders Plus you will have problems getting shader domains and complex shaders to emit enough light.
Despite the quoted posts, this isn't directed at anyone specifically. I just quoted it for the context it adds to the discussion...
Choice is good. There's no denying that. I do hope the plugin is developed for those that wish to use it. I just get a little tired of the implication that because Carrara's renderer isn't un-biased, or is a Raytracer, it's somehow inadequate and makes Carrara somehow inferior. Carrara does have plenty of features that are clunky and need updating, including the GI portion of it's render engine. I will disagree that the standard non- GI renderer is somehow inadequate.
I posted this in the other thread, and I'll post it here for reference. My apologies, but I think it's somewhat relevant.
This image uses the standard renderer. No GI was used. Period. No Skylight. No Indirect Light. No Ambient Occlusion. This image has no postwork that changes the appearance of the lighting or exposure. I didn't even allow PS to do it's working space color profile thingy when working with the image. Full disclosure: I did paint out a collision artifact where the gray Knight's foot was poking through the horse' stirrup.
The scene has a sunlight. a distant light pointing up and excluding the terrain and ocean primitives (not visible form this angle), simulate reflected light form the ground. It has one distant light replicated to a dome 50 times to simulate the atmospheric refracted light. I think I achieved a very GI- like look to the image. The render time was very reasonable on my 10 year old single processor G5. Two hours and a few minutes as I recall. I suspect with a modern computer with multiple cores the time would decrease significantly. It's possible it could even be animation friendly.
Evil, that looks pretty good!
I think many users who come in here and spout off about Carrara's render engine are always referring to it's GI render capabilities. It always comes out eventually in their following comments, even if they didn't first state it.
Getting textures and lighting right is of primary importance in realistic CG. There are a couple fellows over in the Otoy forums for Octane Render, who do incredible renders with the direct light kernel which is closer to a biased raytracer. They have to for animations as pathtracing (full unbiased) is still too slow (even with really fast Octane) for getting animation done quickly for client deadlines. Their secret is using real, good textures and paying attention to their lighting, along with of course, their skill and talent. It looks as good as the unbiased stuff, though for some things you do need unbiased to work and they'll composite that in. But what they do is really treating the CUDA cores on their Nvidia card as a huge render farm if you were using Carrara to good advantage.
Where people fall in to trouble here is using horrible textures that some vendors sell. You really have to hunt around for real good looking textures. That's where many Reality/LuxRender images also fail... the original textures stink.
Agree about the textures. About half the textures in that image are straight-up procedural shaders. The other half are divided between straight texture maps, or procedural/texture hybrid shaders.
HI all :)
Great pic EP :)
I just wanted to say that I agree with what's being said here,. Carrara's own render engine, is good, and adding a Luxus or Octane plug-in will simply add another rendering option,.
I agree that DS needs a render plug-in more that Carrara., but by giving Carrara the same rendering options, then you can better match output from both programs into a final sequence,. and it also adds another reason to "why buy Carrara".
There have been several threads here,. enquiring about unbiased renderers, and when carrara will get one.
I'm guessing that most of those enquiries come from users who see these new render engines as a Short-cut to better quality images,. but the unfortunate reality is that it currently takes longer, and involves more work to create or convert shaders.
The advantage is that the rendering process is more independent of the program,
(for example)
When you're using Luxus for Carrara, you can set it rendering , then minimise the Luxus window, and continue using carrara,.
you can even set up another shot and render that through Luxus, or Carrara's own renderer.
So, you could have a couple of images rendering at the same time, ..while you're working on a scene. or doing something else.
In Octane for Poser,. you can shrink the rendering view, and move the camera around the scene, change lighting or shaders, and see the render being updated as you work., when you're happy, you can resize the render window to whatever size you want for your final image.
Also,.. (depending on the software) you can have real-time feedback when you're creating the shaders, so there's less guess, and spot render to check, then adjust the shader, then spot render to check....
I'd like to see those real-time feedback abilities being added to Carrara. ..with any render engine.
So,. I suppose I just wanted to say that I'm unbiased, and looking at all of the rendering options available,..
and I still like the quality and speed of Carrara's own render engine, and I don't see any replacement for it,
It wins on quality and speed over the unbiased render engines.
I bought Octane a while ago,. and I got the Octane for Poser plug-in recently. ..but I also have Reality, and Luxus for DS.
Personally,. there's a big difference between Octane and Lux render engines,. and Octane wins for speed and quality. (just my personal opinion)
But Luxus is using a different method which in my opinion is more accessible for all,.
it doesn't rely solely on the make of graphics card, or GPU Ram and CUDA cores,.
It can use those,. if they're available,. but can also work by using your CPU and ram..
it's Betamax and VHS all over again :)
Apologies for the long post :)
No need to apologize for the loong post Andy. It's good food for thought, and highlights some areas that I hadn't considered.
It's funny reading the sections of the forums for the unbiased render engines when people complain about their slowness (even Octane) or all the work in learning how to tweak shaders and setup lighting to work in the new render engines. You can see they haven't learned much about the software, what it can/can't do, etc.
I still say if we had better presets than what we currently have in Carrara, a lot of the criticisms would go away. It's amazing what Carrara can do and how fast it can do it when set up properly. The problem is getting it setup properly and some of the presets we have send people down the wrong path.
I think I've posted this before, but it shows how good and fast Carrara can be in this tute for setting up fake GI using a set with good textures and some distant lights and a basic sky (2 parts) from jt411 over at Rendo. He gets a good render in under a minute and these were done a few years ago, so with faster computers out now, or even the past year or so, that some here own, just think what could be done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_m95FqGM5A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR45MP66i5s
I've been meaning to try something similar with one of Howie's scenes in place of his sky dome to see if render time can be cut down. I hope I can find some time to try it.
Agree. That's the way to do it. Keeps Carrara looking sharp and pretty. And usually lots faster than 4k image maps
It's good points from 3dage, but you just made me realize how much I'd miss my procedural shaders.... That actually holds me back in Unity too. Once everything is a poly-photo moving around, it doesn't matter if you're using Poser or Unity or after effects...
Middleage street made in Blender.
People are alpha planes.
The first image is rendered in Carrara 8.5
The second is rendered in Luxrender by Luxus for Carrara