Luxus/Luxrender Issue
Lotharen
Posts: 282
Okay, this on has me rather stumped. I'm working on my first scene. Have Michael dressed and ready to pose then Ill flesh out the scene with tree's, ect.
I decided to do a test render in Luxrender....and it comes out very weird looking almost as if the materials didn't import?
Here are the pics of Carrara and Luxrender.
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Start here with some resources like a manual and shaders:
http://carraracafe.com/plugins/luxus-the-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-developmentdocumentation-blog/
I have looked at the manuel. Also, I rendered a test scene the other day and everything worked just fine. I didn't know if this was a 'quirk' of the interface/programs that more seasoned users might shed some light on.
Is the top-level of every shader on all the material zones of the clothing items that are not showing up set to Lux Surface? I think that's the right name but I can't check because I'm rendering something right now but I seem to remember having things appear as invisible because I forgot to set that and LuxRender couldn't "see" the item.
I'll have to check that when I render again. Thanks for the suggestion.
I think the issue is that many of the materials are converting to being reflective, and if the light reflects from the surface, it doesn't even get to the diffuse colors layer. This is usually because the specular comes into Carrara way too high. If you go through your shaders and reduce the specular values to in the range of maybe 0-15%, and see how it looks then. Of course this can be tedious when an object has a lot of shaders, which is where Fenric's Shader Doctor comes in, it can "Carrara-ize" a whole objects with a single click!
Which is weird because when I do a render using the Carrara native renderer they show up. I mean, even the landscape is blank. I'm looking at that Shader Doctor but the sample images looked like greek to me and I'm not sure I would understand how to use it at this level.
Here's the native renderer:
Could you post a screenshot of the shader room for the model ?
Okay, I think I got a sample of what you asked for. I was only able to do one item, I chose the Tunic. If there was a way to show all of them I am not yet aware of it.
The shader doctor goes through a shader tree and corrects a number of common problems with shaders that come from Poser.
- Texture Multiply
In older versions of Poser, it was very common to put a weird blue shade on top of the skin to correct for a tendency toward red/yellow in the system. This doesn't even work in Poser itself anymore, and those shaders just look weird (unless you *want* walking dead zombies). It will sometimes take away a multiply that really was intended, but 90%+ of the time it needs to go
- Alpha Channel Weirdness
This is a flat out bug, in my opinion: Carrara will put in a complicated sub-shader with left and right channels, multiplies, and all sorts of crap... when it should have just been a texture map.
- Highlight/Shininess at 100%/100%
In Carrara, setting the hightlight higher than 50% is not a good plan. Setting the shininess higher than 50% is almost never right. It resets these to 15%, which is far more reasonable (and is about what a Poser render looks like)
- No bump
Common vendor laziness, copy the texture to the bump and set it to 15%
- Optimize Shaders
Carrara works best with settings that aren't always what you would expect to do: the shader doctor runs a Carrara built-in function that converts what is in the shader to what works best for the renderer.
It also comes with the Skin Doctor, which sets things up better for Skin - from torso to inner mouth! It isn't perfect, but it's a great starting point and much easier to tweak from there than to start from scratch.
For both of these, you need to be sure you don't "consolidate shaders" before you run them, or things get surreal.
Note: The product was designed with Poser-compatible (I.E. NOT GENESIS) and the Carrara native renderer in mind. It does not set things up for Lux.
Are you sure this is the one ?
This one is a bright white shader and the instance list is empty.
Could you in the instance tab select the tunic model and click edit in the shader ?
I see what your talking about now! Here is the one you wanted.
@Fenric Got your Shader Doctor! Looking forward to putting it thought the paces :)
My understanding is that LuxusCore and Luxus doesn't work with the plants or trees system. I am working on a forest scene barely started for a book cover for my wife with snow. Had thought an unbiased render might be an option for getting a more realistic look (lacking Howies magic)
Being I barely startred I haven't checked out if you can export the plants, and import them back in as objs then put them in the replicator system, but my imagination would say that then Luxus would have to duplicate the geometry anyway for going to LuxRender.
Could you try to change the bump setting ?
Instead of having a multiply of the bump map by a value, try to remove the operator (using directly the bump map) and to use the bump amplitude setting in the top part of the shader.
Milo - Howie did a free winter scene, have you considered using the trees from that scene? They have snow I seem to recall.
The winter scene is great... :)
SphereicalLabs
First thank you for the Luxus plugin and the LuxCore looks like it is coming along great. I plan on getting the LuxCore plugin when released.
Do you have plans to implement Carrara Hair system since the new luxrenderer supports hair now? Also how about the Plant System.
I am willing to pay for a Luxus 2.0 so to speak upgrade or new. Or if its all going to be part of LuxCore to do both, just the replication system, hair / fur and the plant system would be fantastic.
Milo