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 Win64 build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Some Sample Shaders:
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Shaders.zip
Changes:
-> Fixed a non exporting bug when exporting the indoor preset scene.
-> Auto convert is changed and support shininess and reflection maps. Please provide feedback on if it's too much orite not enough.
-> Preview of Glass2 is now a semitransparent white. Preview of metal2 with color is the shade of the color.
-> Render Settings now includes the most common settings. Less common settings can be set through the extra settings field.
-> UI tweaks per user feedback
rk66 pointed out that extra information can be put on the Shaders so that there is a little more information when selecting one with the wizard.
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/LuxSampleShaders.zip
And another Win64 build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
This enables those the want to render animations. Rendering a movie will cause a series of files to be written using the format of name_001.xls, name_002.xls, etc. Luxus wil not autolaunch LuxRender in this case. You can then manually launch LuxRender and open the file sequence yourself and start your rendering epic.
Win32 build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win32/Luxus.zip
Great news, I also saw the new parameters in the render room. Need to learn a lot more now!
I now have two questions for you:
1 - The SSS effect is done with a color only or we can use a image to create variations? 3DAge created some examples that use only values and no volume and looks very good, but using the matte translucent, that isnt the correct to since skin is glossy. Still studing this now.
2 - When I load old scenes (I save all my scenes "internally" so I can render them later), a lot of textures simple dont work anymore in Luxus, and almost everything render as a blank plate, maybe due to internal save option?
Thanks for the faster development again!
If it lets you change the type from color to a texture map then you should be able to use it. In regards to Homogensous Volume -> absorption color and Scattering coefficents you probably want a Lux Textures -> Lux Scale so you can amp your TexutreMap or Color with a multiplier. I find this intuitive as a measure of density. The higher the value the more dense the particles are. For the absorption color, others like Lux ColorDepth(meaning if the light passes through this much of the volume, it will be this color).
I know some people's skin is glossy, but mine not so much. Also you can always wrap a glossy coating around any material.
Luxus cannot handle internally saved texture. I will try to workaround this limitation, but this is likely to stay. YOu can resave it and specify external textures, this does work. Be prepared to click.
Reading all this stuff about LuxRender for the first time and saw somewhere it is 10x longer rendertime than Carrara.
Is this correct and therefore not really suitable to render animations ?
In fact does it render animation .avi or .mov or any other format ?
Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I didn't find it.
Reading all this stuff about LuxRender for the first time and saw somewhere it is 10x longer rendertime than Carrara.
Is this correct and therefore not really suitable to render animations ?
I would agree with this, but some still want to render animations with it.
In fact does it render animation .avi or .mov or any other format ?
It renders an image per frame with the LuxRender GUI, then you would load an image compositing program, such as Final Cut Pro, to convert the image sequence to a movie.
New Win64 build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win64/Luxus.zip
Win32 build
-> http://sphericlabs.com/carrara/Win32/Luxus.zip
Changes:
-> Handle Internally saved textures.
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