Qt GUI Evolution

[Carbonflux]

Great work jens

[Abel]

I think it would be nice if the log would display some basic information about the scene that is being rendered, both to give the user some feedback and to make troubleshooting and bug reports easier.
How about:

LuxRender 0.7.1
path: C:\Program Files\LuxRender\luxrender.exe

loading scene files:
c:\LuxRender\testscenes\scene.lxs
c:\LuxRender\testscenes\scene.lxo
c:\LuxRender\testscenes\scene.lxv
scene files loaded succesfully

render settings:
resolution: 800x600px
threads: 8
display interval: 20 seconds
file save interval: 120 seconds
output path: C:\LuxRender\testscenes\scene.png (RGBA)
sampler: metropolis, mutation strength 0.6
integrator: bidirectional, 16 bounces
filter: mitchell, sharpness 0.333
tonemapping: Reinhard

processing geometry
building acceleration structures

Loading textures:
'/Users/abel/textures/wood_veneer/wood-034_scotch-pine-1_d.jpg'... (memory used: 35156KBytes)
'/Users/abel/textures/wood_veneer/wood-034_scotch-pine-1_r.jpg': (memory used:35156KBytes)
all textures loaded succesfully

processing materials
20 materials loaded

starting rendering
Preprocess thread uses seed 1381684370
Thread 0 uses seed 1381684371
Thread 1 uses seed 1381684372
Updating framebuffer

[jeanphi]

Hi,

This would have to be implemented in the core and add some verbosity to the modules processing.

Jeanphi

[Abel]

This would have to be implemented in the core and add some verbosity to the modules processing.

Does that mean it's better to wait until after 0.7 is out of the door? And should I add a Mantis task so this doesn't get forgotten?

[jeanphi]

Hi,

Such change doesn't need to wait till v0.7 is released and making a task in Mantis will help everybody to think about it
I've often thought that such a feature would be pretty useful to check what's going on.

Jeanphi

[Abel]

Feature request added to Mantis, next issue:

Sometimes the slider arrows adjust a value with a bigger increment than would seem practical, it would be nice if they could be tweaked a bit. Here is my proposal:

light groups
gain slider 0.1 (currently 0.01)
black body temperature 100 (ok)

tone mapping - reinhard
prescale 0.1 (currently 1)
postscale 0.1 (currently 1)
burn 0.1 (currently 1)

tone mapping - linear
The linear tone mapping defaults are odd when looking at it from a photography perspective as an exposure time of one second would usually result in seriously blurred imaged. Also 50ASA film is quite rare. I'd suggest sensitivity 200, exposure 0.04, fstop 2.8 as defaults.

sensitivity 100 (currently 10) - value should be rounded to whole numbers, not to 0.1 (would prefer a fixed range; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed ... ISO_system)
exposure 0.01 (currently 0.2)
Fstop 1 (ok) (would prefer a fixed range: 1.0 1.4 2 2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22 32 45 64)
gamma 0.2 (ok) - but this whole slider should be hidden/removed, see viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3112&hilit=linear+gamma#p27149

tone mapping - contrast
Ywa 1 (ok)

lens effects - bloom
amount 0.01 (currently 0.02)
radius 0.01 (currently 0.02)

lens effects - vignetting
amount 0.1 (ok) precision of 0.01 would suffice, currently 0.001

lens effects - chromatic aberration
amount 0.1 (ok) precision of 0.01 would suffice, currently 0.001

lens effects - glare
amount 0.01 (ok)
radius, threshold ok

color space
all white point and RGB sliders should use 0.01 increments

gamma
0.1 (ok)

noise reduction
iterations 1 (currently 0.5) - this should be an integer, right?
other values seem all right, but I have no experience with the noise reduction options

[Abel]

some more assorted issues:

time counting
Currently when pausing a rendering, the timer stops. When resuming, the counter jumps to a much bigger value, counting all time passed since the render was initially started. Instead, I would much prefer seeing the time the rendering has been running, so not counting the time when the rendering was paused. Jens mentioned that fixing this is not completely trivial as the timer may interact with rendering slaves

spelling
In the GUI, Lightgroups should be spalled "light groups", Colorspace "color space", Whitepoint "white point" and Tonemap "tone mapping". I'm not sure about "pre scale" and "post scale". I prefer lower case over capitals, but that's just my taste. Maybe panel titles could have capitals (like Tone Mapping, Lens Effects" while secondary words could be in lower case (like gain, burn, black body temperature). In any case things should be consistent; assuming no bigger changes are made "Black Body temperature" (in the light groups) should become "Black Body Temperature".

color space preset names
It took me a while before getting some understanding of what the color space presets do. By adding a short description in their title (in the drop down menu) it would get easier for people to pick the right one:
A - incandescent
B - sunlight
C - daylight
D50 - daylight, 5003K
D55 - daylight, 5503K
D65 - daylight, 6504K
D75 - daylight, 7504K
E - equal energy
F2 - standard fluorescent
F7 - broadband fluorescent
F11 - narrow threeband fluorescent

[jensverwiebe]

k

Spelling and additional colorspace ( pardon, Color Space ) information added.

Renderresolution is now shown, place is discussable.

resolution in GUI

Jens

[Abel]

Renderresolution is now shown, place is discussable.

For me it would be enough to show it in the log, but I can see people wanting it visible in the main view. In that case, I think it would be wise to have some kind of division in the interface in areas where user input is possible and areas that just provide feedback and/or statistics. Currently the side bar and the buttons in the top left accept user input, while the bottom bar is just for statistics. I think there are two sane places to put the resolution:

A. in the bottom bar
This area is getting cramped, even while in my opinion the "Statistics" field should be split, in which case things would require even more space. A possible solution would be to start using two horizontal rows of statistics, although this would reduce the space for the rendering view.

B. in the top right corner
There is a lot of space in the top right, so we could place some information there. It is far enough away from the side panel and the buttons to keep things reasonably structured.

As discussed on IRC, it would be nice to indicate the current zoom percentage as well.

[jeanphi]

Hi,

What about having a window to show additional information? You could put there the resolution, memory usage, source file name, ...

Jeanphi