LuxBlend25 Engine Presets - Now in main repo!

[pablo]

Sorry, but where can I change the fact it doesn't export FLM, I have that option set on in the GUI but it doesn't do.

[J the Ninja]

Enable it in the film panel. For Internal mode, you will also need to check "write to disk"(render panel) (and possibly disable "integrated imaging workflow" in the camera panel) to get it to work. Otherwise, Internal doesn't write anything, it just hands the image back to Blender, so you can work like you would with BI.

If this combo doesn't get Internal to write FLMs, that's a bug, I think:

Write to disk = on
Write FLM = on
Integrated Imaging = off

[pablo]

Ehi, I don't find "Write to disk" anymore, I remember it was here…

Write FLM is on
Integrated Imaging is off

I'm on mac osx 10.7 Blender 2.58.1 (38129) Luxblend25 0.9.0 dev

[J the Ninja]

Update your LuxBlend25, your appears to be from the time it disappeared while we were rearranging the Engine Config panel for all the hybrid options (...it took like 6-8 commits between myself and BinaryCortex to get the whole thing right.... )a

[pablo]

Many, many thanks Jason, you and the others have all my esteem and gratitude for your great work!

pablo

Edit: Now with the last luxblend25 is all OK! And I see some new interesting features...

(Write to disk was actually disabled in that scene... )

Thanks again!

[J the Ninja]

Hi everybody. If you've been watching the lb25 changelog, you might notice I've been busy with the anim presets.

They've been overhauled a good bit. The "biased" and "unbiased" ones are now labeled "photon mapping" and "bidirectional" respectively, and there is a 3rd one for sppm. The sppm one doesn't work 100% like it should, since sppm currently doesn't increase radius if startk is higher than the photons gathered (the preset assumes it does), that will be changing eventually...I think. If not, we can always fix the preset.

Second of all, you might notice they all use luxconsole now, not internal/pylux. Pylux seems to have several issues with halting properly. For one, it stops immediately when it reaches haltspp, instead of letting the sampler finish, which creates issues with low discrepancy like black patches on images. Second, it doesn't seem to stop at all with SPPM, which is a bit of a problem. This change does mean that render farms will need to have a common path to the luxrender install directory. (lb25 automatically corrects for the Windows luxconsole having .exe after its name, and the OS X one being inside the .app bundle, so no need to worry about that).


Lastly, i also added support for calling lux with the --fixedseed flag. This will disable random seeding of the threads, and should help with noise control for animations. The anim presets automatically enable, the other presets automatically disable it. For more info, you can read this ancient thread (which apparently led to this flag first getting added) here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1353

Here is a sample from the 3 presets:

Photon Mapping:

Bidir:

SPPM:

[pablo]

Tonight, after your suggestion, I installed luxblend25-c18865b7ee15 and I tried the Animation-biased preset.
Hits halspp was to 132 while Pixel Samples was to 128, so the rendering never stopped.
I changed haltspp to 126 and all went ok.
Now I installed last luxblend25 (2d777dfa8a7a) and I see that Animation-biased has 63 and 64 for haltspp and Pixel Samples respectively. What is strange to me is that it needs the same time to reach the haltspp (63) then the previous version needs to reach the 126. Maybe other parameters changed I don't know, is it normal?
I have also to confirm that Ex-Photon Map fails exporting the light groups, while Bidirectional works.

pablo

Edit: Just noticed that not overwriting now works, very good, thanks! I was wrong, sorry.

[J the Ninja]

The expm one has some changed settings (not sure what the heck I was doing with maxdist and photonsused before). Before, the haltspp setting was a little higher than pixel samples, to account from the issues pylux has stopping. I got sick of trying to work around those and changed the anim presets to use luxconsole instead. So now haltspp is slightly lower than pixel samples, so the renderer starts looking for a safe stop just before it gets one. Then the pass finishes, and your render ends. (which is how its supposed to work, but pylux doesn't do it right for some reason).

I also lowered the spp that the presets use, since they're meant for frames that will be strung together in a sequence. Finally, there is a new checkbox "Use fixed seeds". This is on for the anim presets by default, since it helps with actual animations. Turn it OFF for motion-blurred stills though, or else the frames won't merge well.

[B.Y.O.B.]

I have also to confirm that Ex-Photon Map fails exporting the light groups, while Bidirectional works.

This doesn't have to do anything with the exporter, it seems to be an exphotonmap issue (it's the same if you render stills).

[pablo]

Thanks J the Ninja,
pylux here is working good, providing haltspp higher than pixel sampler.

Use fixed seed set on, very useful
Object and camera Motion blur set off

I have also to confirm that Ex-Photon Map fails exporting the light groups, while Bidirectional works.

This doesn't have to do anything with the exporter, it seems to be an exphotonmap issue (it's the same if you render stills).

I'm actually rendering stills, for testing.
Just a thought: could not be it derived from the annoying "Unable to store enough photons in the indirect photonmap. Unable to render the image." error? This maybe halts the managing of light groups, And yet it renders correctly…

pablo