Hello Carrara people.
I have been asked enough about a Luxus for Carrara, that it is time to answer. At this point I still cannot promise anything, but I have done some homework on this as I said I would.
Here are the major pieces to get this working well.
1) Geometry Pipeline. Or in other words, translation of geometry to LuxRender. This is done and was fairly straightforward.
2) Camera. This was fairly straightforward.
3) Global Render Settings. I see how to do it, it would be nice to have a better UI. Looks like McSketch is the way to make the UI better. This needs some work.
4) Auto Translation of built-in shaders. To do this well will take many hours.
5) Allowing users to setup custom LuxRender parameters/settings on materials and lights. I am still trying to work out how to best approach this.
What would be helpful to me is to know something about how people intend to use this.
1st) How important is "Auto Translation of builtin shaders". If most Carrara users would prefer to setup their LuxRender materials manually, then this would be less important. If most users see themselves just loading up their carrara scenes and hitting render, then auto translation is very important.
2nd) How important is it to you to build content that can be rendered with the Carrara renderer and the LuxRenderer? This comes into play when dealing with material settings. Ideally to me we would want a custom channel, like "displacement", and then custom LuxRender shader items that can plugin into that channel. You would also have the channels you are used to still there and working as expected. Or in other words, in one case Multi-Channel get another slot call LuxRender. In the other case, instead of the shader known now as Multi-Channel, you would change the Top-Shader to a "LuxRender" shader.
3rd) would people be OK with not doing LuxRender shader/material things in the Shader Room, but in some sort of custom dialog.
I get to it from the My Cafe on the upper right.
I am guessing some users are going to want to just do LuxRender stuff. In that case a dedicated "Lux Surface" is probably what will be wanted But some people are going to want to setup scenes that can be rendered in either, so in that case a "Carra / Lux" is probably wanted.
Some simple shader nodes can be used in both, likes texture map and color, even index of refraction, but most carrara shader nodes are going to be a foriegn language to LuxRender.
The other method would be an autotranslation, but that is being put off(for now) to get things into the hands of Carrara users faster.
Another Proof of concept build for Win64. This build will cease to work at the end of the month.
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Luxus.zip
Features (bold means new since last build)
---------------------------
Lux Surface
Lux Lights
- Sun Sky2
- Infinite (HDRI)
Lux Materials
- Matte
- Metal2 (partial)
- Glass2
- Area Light
Lux Volumes
- Clear
- Homogenous
The camera is still not right, but is a little closer. On the Infinite light, use forward slashes for setting the path to the map. HDR and EXR both work.
I am guessing some users are going to want to just do LuxRender stuff. In that case a dedicated "Lux Surface" is probably what will be wanted But some people are going to want to setup scenes that can be rendered in either, so in that case a "Carra / Lux" is probably wanted.
Yes. But I thought you were just talking about trying to make two Lux Surface things available. Nonetheless... Now that I know what you mean about the Auto-thing... I wouldn't worry about that. What you're doing now, with a full shader set-up... that's cool, I think.
Some simple shader nodes can be used in both, likes texture map and color, even index of refraction, but most carrara shader nodes are going to be a foriegn language to LuxRender.
Very cool. Hope to try this new release out tomorrow. Rather than quoting what you just wrote about the new version... Thank you. Looks like you've worked all day on it. Can hardly wait to try it... but it's 3am here now... better crash! 
Definitely look forward to trying this out!
blender users doens;t have anything against having to set up shaders from scratch once they turn on Cycles from the Blender Internal, Both engines are Blender native ones, so seriosuly, no one will have a problem by not having an autotranslation feature for a plug-in rendering engine. What matters is that it is happening, finally an additional rendering option which appears to be developing really fast!
Spheric Labs I am extremly happy for everyhting you do regarding this development!
News post about the new release:
http://carraracafe.com/luxus-luxrender-plugin-for-carrara-beta-released/
Thanks, updated the news post.
Tried the Hybrid renderer, it works. GPU powered rendering in Carrara, another important new function already working...
Fun feature, saving the scene with "Save scene preview" checked and Luxus chosen as Renderer, launches Luxrender to render a small preview.
Maybe not so fun if another Luxrender is already running, but unchecking "Save scene preview" fixes that.
The option of "slg" is not working, since the current Luxrender 1.21 does not support full GPU rendering via slg, think that it is scheduled for 1.3 though.
Tried latest 1.3 beta and FrankenLux, both failed, guess Luxrender/slg4 is not ready yet.
Amazing integration of all Luxrender materials/lights/renderers in Carrara, outstanding work by SphericLabs.
Stable too, no crashes after a few hours of working.
Yes, very fast, but need some help here. I set all MultiChannel to Lux Surface (didnt changed nothing in the shader at all, just the top option) but still get no texture at all.
I also saw that three new channels are in the Lux Surface: Interior, Exterior and Area Light. Those are suposed to turn object to light?
Can peiople give some help her eso I can create a video tutorial for the users??
Hi,
from the Luxrender site:
“SLG renderer
The SLG renderer branch has just been merged with mainline. This means from now on LuxRender has a full GPU accelerated render mode, it will be available in new development builds and in the forthcoming v1.3.”
http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/index
I have a little issue:
When I load a scene from the indoor presets and then I render, hangs both Carrara and Luxus. Other scene presets will work. Can test other this?
rk.
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