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This is another experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I used the surface replicator on a bunch of mesh lights.
This is another quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I played with adding a sky dome and lava from Stonemason's Planet Lava along with a few millennium Sub-Dragon's
Click here to view the stereoscopic 3D version at 3dLive
I've got to say, you're turning out stellar work Joe, very very good stuff!
Thanks Jon,
This is another quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I played with the LUX skin settings on a few millennium Sub-Dragon's and using a depth map multi-pass render.
I also tried using Luxus for Carrara Resource Pack's Smoke shader, but I don't think I used it right. Is there a good way to use it? I just seem to get a black blob.
What do you call a group of dragons? Flock? Clutch? Herd? Murder? Pride? Pod?
Click here to view the stereoscopic 3D version at 3dLive
This is another experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I was playing with the LUX shaders and Cyborg Model 4 and one spot light.
Thanks for looking.
Wicked! Love it, and a cool Matrix background too :)
Thanks, sometimes these experiments create unexpected results.
This is another experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I was playing with the settings from yesterdays experiment.
Thanks for looking.
What do you call a group of dragons? Flock? Clutch? Herd? Murder? Pride? Pod?
A "dragoon" of dagons sounds right to me !!!!!
Joe - What are you seeing in these luxus renders that you wouldn't get in Carrara ?
or is it a case of " ease of use in applying the settings'
Luxus has it's own set of shaders right ?
Which are extra cool right ?
Or is it modifying the Carrara shaders ?
I guess i'm looking for a reason to buy luxus.
Carrara's native render is a biased renderer and Lux is an un-biased renderer. Un-biased renderers are supposed to me more physically accurate in how they treat light and materials. Lux and other un-biased renderers, due to the complexity of the calculations can take a long time to render.
Personally, biased or un-biased, they're still just simulations. My opinion is that it is the artist, not the tool that makes a compelling image. Joe is a great example of what can be done with this plugin because he has the talent to produce compelling images. I have no doubt he could do just as well using the native renderer.
This was done with Carrara's native renderer. I didn't use full indirect light, but just the Skylight, an HDRI and two spot lights for key lights and rim lights. I faked Subsurface Scattering by using a spec. map and color map with a multiplier in the glow channel. I would put it up against an unbiased renderer any day.
evilproducer brings up great points about the differences between Carrara's render engine and Luxus.
All the experiments in this thread are just experiments to learn LUXUS. It started with a question about a way to get good eyes in LUXUS and went off in some strange directions from there. Jonstark’s great thread [ http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/29998/ ] led me to a greater understanding of skin materials in LUX. PhilW's shaders for LUXUS also helped a ton in learning how things worked. Plus they sped up production immensely.
I resisted purchasing LUXUS for a long time when I switched to using Carrara for most of my work. Carrara's render engine provides great results and is very fast, making it ideal for animation. Then I had a project that the client wanted a more realistic render, so I broke down and bought LUXUS to try to get something more like Reality 2's results. It's amazing the result other are getting with REALITY 2 and LUX. LUXUS for Carrara was on sale, so i made the leap. The client was happy with the results, so I was happy.
The benefits of LUX seems to be in it materials (especially the glass, metal and cloth) and the quality of the light. The drawbacks are that it is slow and doesn't support many of Carrara's objects (ie. clouds, fire, hair) and materials. These experiments have led me to the conclusion that I get better results by combining the two render engines.
It really comes down to if you think it worth the purchase. I find it fun and another tool to add to the arsenal. I'd love to hear other people experience and thoughts.
Great points Joe.
The main ones that stand out for me, being that it is another tool to use and that you can combine the two renders to make up for shortcomings in both engines.
Right it's just another tool.
I am wanting to try the new octane plug in. It's suppose to be very fast and the renders I have seen are amazing. But I can't seem to get over octane's price. It is more than the cost of carrara and luxus combined. :)
Evil
That's truly a very nice image - and I'm not talking about your model by the way !!!
My preferred interest is animation so anything that slows down rendering is not going to be worth it so your comments along with joe's have helped me decide I should leave luxus alone - strange how we always think we might be missing out on something and start dabbling.
Octane is too highly priced for me too so I wont dabble with that either.
Thankyou for your replies guys,
It appears a demo version of the OR4C plugin will be released over the weekend, that should make it possible to learn and experiment with Octane in Carrara while looking for the money to buy, so I hope it works out.
Enjoying your experiments, looking forward to more animation experiments, and of course, what you will do with Octane.
Well said!
It's really all just different math solving the same problem of how light will bounce through the scene. Both biased and unbiased engines can make really realistic results, as we've seen, which makes sense because whether your equasion is 1+3 = 4 or 2X2+5-3-2 = 4 the math should lead to the same results. For biased engines, they do a limited number of calculations, like solving Pi to 7 places, while unbiased theoretically do unlimited calculations (which is why they can render forever), like solving Pi to infinity.
I've been astonished by some of the Carrara renders lately and how realistic they are, but I really shouldn't be, because Carrara has a *very* good biased engine (to complete the metaphor it's like the math Carrara uses can solve Pi to 25 places, which is plenty good enough to pass as realistic to human eyes in my opinion. Just because there are awesome unbiased render engines out there we can make use of like Lux, Octane, Thea, Arion, etc, This doesn't discount Carrara's native render engine, which is quite frankly one of the best biased renderers around, IMO, and very capable of turning out extremely realistic results.
Joe has done and continues to do stellar and surprisingly awesome renders with Luxus throughout this thread, there is no doubt that it is a formidable tool and well worth adding to anyone's render toolbox. One glance at the renders he's added to this thread tells me he's greatly talented, and is developing formidable mastery of his toolset. Kudos Joe!
I keep coming back to the render at the top of the prior page. Just gorgeous work!
Thanks for the info DADA_universe
Great points JonStark
Thanks for the kind words
This is another quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I was playing with the LUX shaders and materials.
Click here to view the stereoscopic 3D version at 3dLive
Someone needs to write a Luxus tutorial for idiots. My endeavors have been fruitless thus far.
Joeping is nearly a savant with Luxus, all throughout this thread he's posted simply brilliant renders. That latest one with the Jack Daniels and the gun looks like a freakin' photo. Just incredible work.
Thanks for the kind words,
All my experiments are based off Jonstark's Luxus settings at http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/29998/ and playing with PhilW's Luxus for Carrara Resource Pack [ http://www.daz3d.com/luxus-for-carrara-resource-pack ].
Jon's settings saved me tons of time on figuring out skin settings. He found some great settings that work very well for any figure. I use them on Genesis figures and save them as objects so that I can start new images with them as the base.
PhilW's Luxus for Carrara Resource Pack is a must have for Luxus users. His expertise saves tons of time and provides a great base for learning LUXUS. Plus his props and materials are so useful. You could recreate them, but he's already done the hard stuff. Also you can go in a tweak them and experiment to see how they work.
The technique I used on the bottle and gun image are just PhilW's LUXUS materials applied to products I bought on DAZ. The bottle and glass are crystal materials, the gun and bullets are metal2 materials. The lights are 3 of PhilW's mesh lights set up in a three point lighting configuration.
Design Acrobat, the only real trick I have discovered in all these experiments is that the shaders work best if they are converted to LUX materials. The same technique applied to using Reality 2 for DAZ Studio.
The other key could be lighting. Since it's a physics based renderer, the lighting techniques of photographers work best. There are many great books that explain them. Lighting can mean the difference between a bad render and a better one. I have a greater appreciation for the skill of how a product photographer are such a specialists in lighting.
I hope this helps some. :)
http://carraracafe.com/plugins/luxus-the-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-developmentdocumentation-blog/
rk.
I got the package from Phil, but after letting luxus render over night, all I got was a white sphere (had put car material on it). Used the Luxus lights, material and nothing.
I guess since I'm not a DAZ studio user and they have more established methods, I'm missing some key element.
I'm a list kind of guy. Give me a list to follow so I can do it. Give me several reference sources, then I start looking at what generality has to do with specifics.
I should really chime in and say how impressed I am.
- Very impressed with how well Luxus for Carrara has been received.
- VERY impressed with people abilities to make awesome art using Luxus.
- Very impressed with how Carrara's shader tree is very conducive to Lux Render materials and textures.
- And very impressed with Carrara itself.
SphericLabs- Thanks for creating this impressive plug in. =)
Design Acrobat - I'm not sure why you only get a white sphere. I normally just drag PhilW's materials on to the object and his lights into the scene.
What I like about LUXUS is that I can preview my overall render very quickly after only a few samples. Then I make changes based on what I am seeing. Once I get a rough version that I like, then I let LUX render the longer final version.
Well, I found a room with no corners or sharp edges. Called out the random keyboard striking primate and opened a W.I.P. scene of an old baritone player to play with. Used the materials and for some reason - then monkey stood up and sang, colors appeared and it was the first successful attempt by the novice assistant flunky rookie luxus trainee.
Still needs a lot of work, but that requires more roller derby on the walls.
Hi,
LuxRender 1.4 RC1 online:
http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11307
rk.
TY TY
It works faster for me for some reason.
Thanks for letting us know about the update.
This is another quick experiment with Carrara 8.5 Pro and LUXUS for Carrara. This time I was playing with the LUX materials, the surface replicator and the new LuxRender 1.4 RC1 luxrender engine. It seems much faster, this was just a 1 hour render.
Click here to view the stereoscopic 3D version at 3dLive
Very nice render(s) all.
It's great to see Carrara support listed right on the home pages of both LuxRender and Octane. Now if we can get the DAZ developers back on track for C9,...perhaps with more awesome content renders. :)
Q: Is Luxus and/or LuxRender now compatible with GPU rendering? I wanted to know if one or both supports my GPU(AMD R250 2Gb). I might try LuxRender over the weekend anyway, but just wanted to know about any issues I might run into.