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.
New Windows build
Win64 - http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Changes:
- Added Projection Light.
- Bump maps on all the materials that support one.
- UI elements for the lights.
- IES parameter on the AreaLight.
- Gain on AreaLight
- Users can now choose where LuxRender is.
- Fabric(Weave) option on Cloth
There was a comment I saw that implies that Lux will soon have it's own Hair functionality - it would be awesome to be able to convert Carrara hair to that for renders in Lux. Same with instancing - the ability to transfer replicated objects would be terrific. Great that this is being developed.
Here is another test! Men i have to broke all objects in pieces and now you already fixed? You ar emy hero!!!
A funny thing is that the linen is using default Anisotroppic Carrara shaders without convertion...
Here some tests with my scene.
1 - The first image is only a load and render test, just some adjustments in Luxrender at all.
2 - Second one is using some Luxrender shaders already with textures (not all scene, Vic dont have any change in shaders yet)
3 - Third is the same scene with an Infinite light (using HDRI image).
Look very very good so far, the only strange thing is those sparkles with HDRI, but I think is something with Luxrender that I need to understand. Note that the second and third images are the same I just turned off the Infinite light to get a image without have to restart everything again.
Some things that I really didnt know is about how Bump maps work in Lux, I see the Bump map slot but no slider to set the deeph. The same thing for Alpha channel, but I think is something that will be implemented later.
Now is time to people start to share theyr Lux shaders so we can studie more ways to work with this new feature!
For bumpmap scaling:
In the Lux Textures is a Lux Scale. Plug that into the bumpmap slot. Plug the bump map into one slot and a value(0 - 100%) into the other.
A spot/direct/arealight is going to converge faster than an Infinite light. You would have to let the Infinite run probably 4 times as long.
Meaning, the sparkes are(usually) a matter of things not rendering long enough.
Another WIn64 Build. I will update Mac end of week.
Win64 - http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Changes:
-> Normal Maps work. Plug a Carrara Normal map into the bumpmap channel(This is the way LuxRender does it). Want a bump and a normal map?, use a Lux Add texture or a Lux Mix texture to combine them.
-> Lux Blackbody now has a temperature for settings the color.
-> Lux Constant Color and Lux Constant Float. This solves the problem of "Some parameters values are too limited". You can use a Constant Color or Float for any spot where you need a much larger value/color or smaller value/color . Volumes are the most common case.
And another Win64 build
Win64 - http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Changes:
-> Carrara instances as LuxRender instances.
Men you are fast! Can you çpoint how to create Alpha maps in Lux? I couldnt find anywhere in the Wiki. A lot of my image suse lace and I cant find a way to use alphas. Thanks for the hard work!
Put a Lux Material -> Lux Mix into the material slot.
Use your regular material in the first slot of the Lux Mix.
Put Lux Null into the second slot of the Lux Mix
Plug a texture map into the amount slot of Lux Mix.
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