Free Converter for Luxrender?

Zeke42

Everyday I learn something new about DAZ. Today it's renderer software!

Now if I understand it correctly (so correct me if I am wrong) rather then render in DAZ some of you render in a program called Luxrender. But to do that you need to save the file in an LXS(?) format. But to do that you need a converter or bridge. The two most common I hear are Reality or Luxus. But they cost money while there was a free option called LuxRenderDS Plugin from a programmer named Tofusan. But his website no longer has the link to the program anymore and s/he doesn't appear to be active online.

TL;DR? Does anyone know where LuxRenderDS might still be found or is there another freeware alternative?

Thanks in advance.

Silver Dolphin

Free for daz means using Daz 3delight, Opengl, or Iray. If you want to use Lux render engine free download software from https://luxcorerender.org/download/ follow instructions and install in Blender and use that way. You will need Mcasual script to transfer daz stuff over to blender to render. Good luck

AllenArt

Luxus for DS is only 20 U.S. dollars. I'm not sure where you're from and what the exchange rate is, but as plugins go, that's pretty cheap.

Laurie

Platnumk

A couple of things to consider before making your mind up on wiether you want to give Luxrender a try,  1st of all the Luxus Plugin is out of date and hasn't been updated for nearly 5yrs, You will need to source a copy of Luxrender (as it doesn't come with it) which is also no longer available.  That then leads to the 2nd option, Purchasing the Reality Plug_in, Now that comes with everything, Including the last version of Luxrender (V1.6) to be developed.

Finally we come onto the new LuxCoreRender, at this time the only way to use this with daz is the way Silver Dolphin suggested and trasfer you daz scene over to blender.

fastbike1

Begs the question, have to tried to render in Iray or 3Delight within Studio?

Greymom

I have had some luck using the last version of Reality to set up and save the .lxs file, then loading with LuxCoreRender and rendering.  But that is kind of hit and miss too, and so far GPU rendering does not work with that method either.

Some of the recent GPU driver updates, which also update OpenCl, "broke" Luxrender for GPU rendering in some cases.  Trying to roll back drivers to the right version is kind of hit and miss.  So far, CPU-only rendering is working ok, but is of course much slower.  However, you can run Luxrender on as many computers as you want for free, even mixing OS's (i.e., if your workstation is Windows 7, you can add machines with Linux to your "farm").

Paolo at Pret-a-3D is going to post a timetable for updating Reality to work with the New LuxCoreRender sometime soon.

I have always liked Luxrender, so I am watching for updates.

There is a Reality forum on FB, and the folks there are very helpful.

 

gederix

The luxcore renderer is available for use in Reality and has been for a while (4.x I think). To be clear, there is no longer a separate install required for luxrender/luxcore, they are included with the Reality install.

To use luxcore you simply select 'CPU accelerated' in the Reality render settings tab, however it is still under development and for me fails once the scene gets too big (packed with stuff), so I use luxcore for test rendering and developing a scene but once it starts giving me trouble I switch back to CPU no acceleration, which uses classic luxrender, which never fails for me and can handle as much crap as I can throw at it, and I throw loads.

Greymom

gederix said:

The luxcore renderer is available for use in Reality and has been for a while (4.x I think). To be clear, there is no longer a separate install required for luxrender/luxcore, they are included with the Reality install.

To use luxcore you simply select 'CPU accelerated' in the Reality render settings tab, however it is still under development and for me fails once the scene gets too big (packed with stuff), so I use luxcore for test rendering and developing a scene but once it starts giving me trouble I switch back to CPU no acceleration, which uses classic luxrender, which never fails for me and can handle as much crap as I can throw at it, and I throw loads.

Yes, that is the original LuxCore there in accerated mode.  As you say, it is mainly good for previews, because it is buggy, and overall image quality suffers (sharpness, etc.).    For that package, only classic Lux has all the features.  Even the new LuxCoreRender does not have the bidirectional light path engine for GPU rendering, and they say it probably never will.

I am slowly working on building a small cluster with 6 Supermicro X8 server blades, 2x Xeon X5660 CPUs per blade and 24 GB RDIMM per CPU package.  A total of 72x I7 Westmere cores. Then I will not need to struggle with GPU rendering or VRAM, and I will be able to use it for any flavor of Lux, Carrarra Grid, Cycles, and the non-AVX version of VUE render.  Total cost was a bit over $2000 - not too bad.  About the same rendering power as a GTX 1060, but with 24 GB ram.

I had hoped to use that hardware with IRAY, and it took a while for me to realize that you could only use one copy of IRAY unless you paid the $300/yr for extra copies/licenses.

There is a new website for the reboot of Luxrender as Luxcorerender:  https://forums.luxcorerender.org/index.php

Version 2.1 Alpha 2 is now out.  Apparently the trick of loading .lxs files generated by the old Reality does not always work, and may not work at all for some versions.  I was using the Version 2.0 beta.

marble

If you are going the route of export to Blender (Diffeomorphic is another option for getting scenes into Blender, by the way) why not use Cycles? And Eevee is on the horizon too. I'm not speaking from experience, just wondering whether there is a big difference in render quality.

Silver Dolphin

Evee is really awsome!!!! I have looked at some of the demos and it does not do photo realism perfect but for a real time animation engine it is great. I will be installing the 2.8 version of blender and the mcjteleblender and Diffeomatic plugins to get some animation done in blender.

estaf1001

Silver Dolphin said:

Free for daz means using Daz 3delight, Opengl, or Iray. If you want to use Lux render engine free download software from https://luxcorerender.org/download/ follow instructions and install in Blender and use that way. You will need Mcasual script to transfer daz stuff over to blender to render. Good luck

There are loop links, that touch to each other. The one https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4 touch to https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4 page and link on that page touch to page https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjteleblender2. Page https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjteleblender2 touch to https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4 one with link to https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjteleblender2 again ))))

Therefore the Luxus and have a cost and not free one.