luxrender

[Cayenne]

@ Froo , as far as I remember there is an exporter / render script for Lux that is available for blender , that could be used as reference alongside the indigo trueSpace script , there should be enough clues between your exporter and those scripts.

I think I did some tests with blender by importing either collada or obj from tS into blender and then using lux.

another render engine I also had a brief dabble with was Gelato , it can take rib format with a plugin , however using dribble ( I think) export and poser rib export it didnt work , another work around was to use UU3D its exporters are usually great at most formats and as far as I remember everything I exported from there worked in most renders , pixie , lux , gelato , delight , etc.

think with gelato is its not very user friendly , it is run using bat files and other text files to describe the scene and was too tedious for me to be enjoyable, even though the results and shaders are pretty good.
@ dribble I remember talking with SW he was planning to port the software to WS before he decided to drop it .

regards
Paul

[bitkar]

yes, luxrender is maybe one of the best renderer nowadays.
Clintonman: Iam happy you love to make the plugins that much :) Is it possible to integrate it into tS as the rsx package and have it for both model and workspace? with an options on the right panels as vray has? This is the best possible integration, I think and Luxrender is definatly worth it. Or the same way as the dribble is ;)

btw: thanks for putting your hands on it ;)

[DanX]

I might even start using 6.6 again if there was a plug-in for lux. I have been thinking of doing something with TS again at least when I start feeling nostalgic.

[DanX]

I guess you guys know about the luxrender plug-in for Daz studio? http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=11203

[Benji]

I've recently been able to have a better look at this renderer, and I'm impressed.

Gpu rendering is apparently coming, however you can already use it with online renderfarms, like this one. I don't think I could stomach the render times without a farm, so I might buy some hours and do some tests to see if it's viable.

An exporter for TS would be great.

[nigec]

SmallLuxGPU looks awesome in Blender
There used to be another plugin for Daz called Renderizer that could use renderman compliant renderers, but that was heavy on resources and very twitchy

[DanX]

The renderizer plug-in is not needed anymore I think. Well at least you have 3Delight built in to Daz studio 3. And as far as the reality plug-in for daz studio AKA Lux render plug-in. I have made a few test and came up with some pretty good renders although I don't seem to have the control over the Lux engine that the Blender plug has. But I haven't used blender and lux to render anything so that part is second hand info.

the largest problem I have with Daz and lux is that everything is glossy by default and I have not got enough experience with it to find an easy way to get the results I want and I havent tried a displacement mat for fur yet so I cant say much about that for daz.

Note: Daz scene files can be exported as OBJ and imported into Thea and then worked on to produce some nice renders. I really like the new interactive render in Thea. very nice and comparable to Octane. Although Octane is screaming fast on one Nvidia GTX 260!

This leads me to another question about the thea upgrades. Does thea require multiple video cards to be linked via an active SLI connection or does it utilize multiple cards that are not active SLI like Octane?

[nigec]

I don't think anything has been said about mutliple cards, currently there's no benifit with the CPU IR, there is talk about GPU/CPU and network.. it would be rendered yesterday if you had 3 i7's running lol.
TBH I haven't paid much attention to the GPU stuff, my card doesn't support it, I desperately need a new PC but "life" keeps throwing a spanner in

Daz stuff is a really good test for any render engine, over on the Daz forum I saw some Octane which looked very shiney, at the time clipping wasn't working so hair etc wasn't very nice

[DanX]

Wow you mean that the interactive render window is not GPU ? If so that is screaming fast for CPU but I can see now it is only a preview. I would say its close to Octane speed with one card. I do not have any newer Intel CPU's since I cant afford them. This machine is a AMD phenom II x 6 1090T. I think it runs at 3.2 GHz with all 6 cores at 100% but under lighter loads it will drop to 3 cores and it runs about 4Ghz without being overclocked. I have one phenom II x 4 under my desk as a slave and at the moment 3 available AMD core II duo's. I think that Thea only allows 2 render nodes without purchasing more but I could take advantage of more with Vue and even hook up 5 older single cores with Carrara and a few other apps. But in the past I have had trouble with so many comps running off of a standard router. because the 5th and any others have to run wireless so they sometimes drop out. I guess I could link several standard hubs together and wire all of them but my wife would probably get upset

Back to the Luxrender option. Lux does have a nice way to run other networked CPU's. I haven't tested it out other than seeing if it would recognize my Quad core as a slave.

[nigec]

I just installed the newest beta of Blender so I'm going to give Lux a try (assuming it works with the new beta! some massive scripting changes)

I render on a Vista to Linux network, both dual core machines but it makes a big difference. I think I'm the min spec tester for Thea, but I so used to long render times I don't know any different lol