Blender 2.5 series exporter / LuxBlend future

[dougal2]

The code is not yet anywhere near complete. Even if you ran it you would only see the GUI panels; none of the buttons work and none of the export process has been written.

When there's something that works we won't hesistate to give instructions on how to use and run it, but for now there's not much to see.

[vimax]

What I'm thinking about is probably at least a year away but reachable (I hope) if the integration is done:

Once the integration works properly and only needs to be updated. (and images from luxrender can easily be sent to blender) wouldn't it be possible to make sort of a Luxrender Realtime?

A integration that continuously grabs the 3dview window camera information and if there is a change in the camera, geometry or materials it starts again. Ideally but kind of a long shot would be to only change the draw type but that would be a VERY deep integration I think and would not be viable.

I'm only mentioning this fancy desire because 2.5 is in full development and if there are a few things that can be requested now to make this a little more probable I think it would be best to ask them as soon as possible.

[dougal2]

Given the vast computation necessary to render within Lux, I wouldn't expect anything approaching 'real-time' for a while yet, even with GPU acceleration. That's not to say it won't be possible, i suspect that with sufficiently tuned rendering settings the GPU additions to Lux will enable remarkably quick renders. However, getting that ramped up to multiple or tens of frames per second is a different matter.

There is also the issue of being able to detect what's been changed in Blender in order to restart or update the Lux rendering. This issue is actually relevant to the integration currently being worked on, as it would be nice to see some changes made in Blender update the result immediately. I heard something about an event/notification system being put into Blender's UI API, but I've yet to fully discover what that actually means or how complete the implementation is going to be by the time we need it.

[vimax]

Really exciting news about the update in Luxrender from Blender. That would be useful because usually large models need several small tweaks that I usually do one at a time and which take a lot of time with the current exporter.

I wasn't talking about 10 frames/second I was hoping for 10 samples / frame / 3 seconds. (which would be about what one gets with vray RT) That would make it extremely helpful for those small material adjusts (of say, roughness and colour). Not to mention that the reported 200K samples/sec with 5870 and a decent i7 would translate into a pretty decent 480x300 preview window the way it is now. But the real cherry would be to have network rendering properly set-up and really take advantage of a nicely rendered view.

Also it would be very helpful for geometry and light adjusts so that you can control the sun/geometry in such a way that it reaches inside the room where you need it. (very useful in starting architecture projects that have to maximize use of sunlight in both heating and shading according to season). Now with the current exporter it's pretty much a guessing and hoping game.

[Abel]

Given the vast computation necessary to render within Lux, I wouldn't expect anything approaching 'real-time' for a while yet, even with GPU acceleration. That's not to say it won't be possible, i suspect that with sufficiently tuned rendering settings the GPU additions to Lux will enable remarkably quick renders. However, getting that ramped up to multiple or tens of frames per second is a different matter.

While waiting for computers to get fast enough for real time unbiased viewports, I'm now dreaming about an intermediate status. Instead of rendering in the 3d view directly, I'd like to have the option to dedicate one Blender window to LuxRender output while having another window open as the normal 3d window. Then whenever the user sees fit the Blender LuxRender viewport should start to render an image from the same camera angle as the main 3d window.

While this may not seem that different from the current situation with LuxRender and Blender running next to each other, not having to switch applications would make the process feel smoother. If the program could use the 3d window view instead of the active camera that would be a bonus as it would save another step in the process. Also it would be great if textures could stay in memory to save another few seconds of loading time.

[dougal2]

If you look at the way LuxBlend25 runs within Blender: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php?title=Blender25
And then you look closely at the render options, you will see that you can get the render image to be in a new window.

This is almost exactly what you propose, with the exception of the live-update/restart, which I think will be a possibility later this year

[vimax]

I saw that wiki page and actually that's what got me started in the first place. The line "Auto update: Started" in particular made me feel that this in not such a long shot anymore.

I can't tell you how much it would mean for my workflow if the autoupdated viewport became true. (And i'm sure for a LOT of people)

[dougal2]

The line "Auto update: Started" in particular made me feel that this in not such a long shot anymore.

That Auto Update means something else entirely.
I've written an online-update system to update the exporter code itself automatically

[m1j]

As anyone looked at first just setting up the export engine. At least that would get files out of blender2.5 so Lux could render them. Any tweaks to the materials could be done after export. Just a thought for the order of work.

[dougal2]

The LuxBlend2.5 'exporter' isn't going to export any files