Category: luxrender

Fake lighting tests

Palette

I started a project which I had in my mind for quite some time now. Triggered by an article about product visualization, which uses fake lighting, I decided to finally give it a try myself.

I created a thread in blenderartists to show the various stages of my progress and will probably post a tutorial, if anything useful come out of this.

Right now this technique seems only applicable for studio setups and animations, where no camera movement is involved, but maybe I can come up with extended applications.

Here is a quick animation to show the technique

Fake Lighting Test from loramel on Vimeo.

Material Breakdown – Pearl

pearl_final

I will start a series of material breakdowns, where I show  step by step the principles of how I created the materials from the Austrian Imperial Crown.

This is by no means an absolute guide to the lux material system, but rather an insight into how I use the options given to me by lux.

Lets start with a pearl material.

Continue reading “Material Breakdown – Pearl”

Austrian Imperial Crown finished

Its finally done.

This project took me the better part of the last 3 weeks to finish in my spare time. It was an exercise in modeling and an  exploration into the possibilities of luxrender, especially now as the new version 0.6 is almost there.

This project will form now the base for some upcoming breakdowns of several aspects mainly aimed at luxrenders material system. So stay tuned …

As always the project files are all downloadable from my 3D showroom. But one word of caution. This is a huge project in terms of needed resources during rendering. It will use up to 3.7 Gb of memory when rendered in full resolution ( 1600×2000 ). The mesh setup alone takes 1.2 Gb. This means that you must have a 64bit version of lux running to be able to actually rerender it. Just browsing it in blender should be fine with a 32 bit version as well.

Luxrender observations – part III – postponed

During preparation of the final part of my luxrender observations I found out, that I had to learn quite some more about luxrender before continuing in a sensible way.

So I postpone the final part and use my current project ( luxrender forum wip, blender artists forum wip) to learn more about the material system and render options lux has to offer. By then version 0.6 should be ready.

So stay tuned …

Luxrender observations – part II

This is the second part of my obervations on luxrender made during my last project.

Materials

This is the area where I spent most of my time in getting the blender scene transferred to lux. The material system is quite different from blender’s and I had to try various approaches to get the look I had in mind. This process is by far not finished, as I am currently just scraping at the surface. But some general findings can be shared.

Continue reading “Luxrender observations – part II”

Luxrender observations – part I

As previously announced, here is my report on the use of luxrender during my project ‘The other day in the forest’.

This is more a description of the things noticed and done during the process than a real tutorial. I have come to recognize, that I still have a lot lot to learn and explore before I am entitled to do a real howto/tutorial.

Using the forest project, I will try to highlight some of the areas and give some general thoughts and examples.

At the time of this writing I a referring to the actual CVS version both of luxrender and luxblend, which will closely resemble the upcoming 0.6 release.

So lets start with some introductory statements.

Continue reading “Luxrender observations – part I”

New Project: Blender vs. Luxrender

I have started a new project with the goal to have the same scene rendered in blender internal and luxrender.

I hope to get some insight how much additional work has to be done to get the luxrender image done. Furthermore it should be interesting to see how the workflow differs and how to map certain blender goodies ( SSS, multiple materials etc ) to the luxrender world ( if at all possible )

I am still in the process of setting up the scene in blender and will open a WIP thread at blenderartists as well as on the luxrender forum. You can see above a very preliminary preview of how the scene will be composed.

stay tuned …

Luxrender splash screen competition – entry submitted

I have now submitted my final entry to the luxrender v 0.6 splash screen competition. I did not change any things regarding composition, but tweaked the material settings of the bubbles and background a little bit.

The entries are not many, but very diverse. I will be interesting to see, which one will be used as splash.

My final entry can be seen in my 3d showroom.