About
LuxRender is a free and unbiased renderer. The program is the result of the dedication of a loosely nit team of passionate people around the world.
Licensed under the GPL and free for both personal or commercial use. The program runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Fully functional exporters are available for many popular 3D packages.
LuxRender comprises an interactive user interface and exporters for various 3D programs, including Blender, 3ds Max and XSI. Additionally, a command line tool is available. For developers we provide a C/C++ API that allows embedding LuxRender into third-party applications.
More than just a toy or an experimental sandbox, we want to create a robust and high-end production renderer, directly usable by artists, with the tools and features they need.
Goals
Our aim is to provide artists with a powerful tool to create extremely realistic and accurate images. While going through great lengths to make the program as easy to use and flexible as possible, we will not compromise on quality and physical correctness.
LuxRender is a physically correct, unbiased rendering engine. This means that LuxRender does not use tricks to imitate real world behaviour: all calculations are done according to mathematical models based on physical phenomena. In LuxRender we will always make the 'unbiased' design choices.
Philosophy
LuxRender is and will always remain free software. We are working on this program because we like doing so, because we enjoy seeing people use the program and because we consider freedom more valuable than money. Whether you're a starving artist or own a multi million company, we invite you to use this program and hope it will be useful to you.
Users are the center of the project: software without a community is an empty seashell. People that are using, testing, reporting bugs, proposing features or even simply commenting results are committing their time doing it. Their participation is essential as it forms the living heart of a project.
An undertaking like LuxRender is the sum of hundreds of people sharing their knowledge in computer graphics papers, books, websites, university courses etc. Here we are just playing with their ideas not seeking personal fame. Among all these people, LuxRender started particularly thanks to Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys and their excellent book and project. We are PBRT's child.
We hope LuxRender will be more than just a piece of software, but also a human adventure in creating positive scientific, artistic and friendship exchanges.