LuxBlend25 Render Panel

From LuxRender Wiki

This page describes functionality that can be accessed through Blender's render panel when LuxBlend25 is activated. For more general information about using LuxBlend25, please visit the LuxBlend25 Manual page.

Contents 1 Render 1.1 Image 1.2 Animation 1.3 Display 1.3.1 Keep UI 1.3.2 New Window 1.3.3 Image Editor 1.3.4 Full Screen 2 Dimensions 2.1 Render Presets 2.2 Resolution 2.3 Aspect Ratio 2.4 Frame Range 2.5 Border 2.6 Crop 2.7 Frame Rate 2.8 Time Remapping 3 LuxRender Engine Configuration 3.1 LuxRender Engine Presets 3.2 Render Mode 3.3 Renderer 3.4 External type 3.5 Export Smoke 3.6 Embed File data 3.7 Run Renderer 3.8 Path to LuxRender 3.9 Monitor External 3.10 Auto Threads 3.11 Log Verbosity 4 Sampler 5 Surface Integrator, Volume Integrator, Filter, Accelerator 6 LuxRender Networking 7 Output

Render

Image

This either starts a rendering or exports the scene in LuxRender's file format, depending on the settings in the LuxRender Engine Configuration panel.

Animation

This exports a LuxRender scene file for every frame of an animation. There are several options to make LuxRender render all the frames of an animation:

1. use the Internal Rendering Mode
2. deselect "Run Renderer", start LuxRender and load all the frames into its queue
3. deselect "Run Renderer" and render the frames using luxconsole on the command line

Display

This defines how the rendered image will be shown within Blender:

Keep UI

The current view will stay as it is; you can see the image in LuxRender (external) or open a Blender UV/Image Editor window to see the rendered result.

New Window

This will show the rendered result in a secondary Blender window.

Image Editor

This will change one of Blender's windows into a UV/Image Editor window and show the rendered result there.

Full Screen

The whole Blender interface will be replaced by a single UV/Image Editor, showing the rendered result.

Dimensions

Render Presets

This dropdown menu contains presets of render resolutions in combinations with frame rates. One can add and remove presets from the list.

Resolution

The resolution of the image or animation that will be rendered. The X and Y values will be multiplied with the percentage that is listed below them.

Aspect Ratio

This value is not used by LuxRender.

Frame Range

Defines the frames to be rendered when creating an animation, where Start and End define the range. The Step value defines if all frames are being rendered or if only one in every so many will be rendered. For example with a Step value of 5 and starting at frame one, the frames that will be rendered are 1, 6, 11, 16, 21 etc.

Border

When setting up a render border with Shift-B, this box will be ticked and LuxRender will only render the area within the border.

Crop

This button is not currently used by LuxRender.

Frame Rate

This defines the frame rate if the animation is saved into a movie file format directly. It doesn't have any influence if you're rendering single frames.

Time Remapping

This setting is not used by LuxRender

LuxRender Engine Configuration

LuxRender Engine Presets

This dropdown menu contains presets for LuxRender's rendering settings. You can add and remove presets using the + and - buttons.

Render Mode

• internal: this will render the scene within Blender, while using the LuxRender engine behind the scenes. Amongst others, this is suitable for animations.
• external: this will launch LuxRender whenever a scene is being rendered, so that all LuxRender's controls will be available

Renderer

• Sampler (traditional CPU) is LuxRender's standard rendering mode
• Hybrid (CPU+GPU) is LuxRender's experimental rendering mode that uses the graphics card in addition to the processor - it can be faster but is less stable and not all features are supported. This mode requires OpenCL drivers to be installed.

External type

• LuxRender GUI will launch LuxRender with its graphical interface, so that all controls are accessible.
• LuxConsole will launch luxconsole, which doesn't have a graphical interface. This option is somewhat faster and is useful for animations.

Export Smoke

This switch will enable or disable exporting smoke simulations. These can take time to export, so this option allows you to skip them for test renders.

Embed File data

This option will include all used resources in LuxRender's scene files, including image textures.

Run Renderer

When this option is selected, LuxRender will start when the Render > Image or Render > Animation buttons are pushed. Otherwise, LuxBlend will just write the scene files to disk.

Path to LuxRender

This defines the place where LuxBlend will look for the LuxRender program when starting a rendering. The icon on the right of the text field can be used to navigate to the right location:

• on Windows, the path is probably something like C:\Program Files\LuxRender08\luxrender.exe
• on OS X, the path should be /Applications/LuxRender/ (not luxrender.app or MacOS/luxrender)
• on Linux, the path should point to wherever you put the LuxRender executable

Monitor External

When using external rendering, this option defines whether the render result should be displayed in Blender's UV/Image Editor window. Note that only one instance of LuxRender can be monitored; consequently LuxBlend will not start a new rendering unless the one that is being monitored has quit.

Auto Threads

When using this option, the rendering process will as many rendering threads as there are processor cores available on the processor (or double the amount, if hyperthreading is available). When this option is not selected, you can specify the number of threads manually.

Log Verbosity

This defines which message types will be shown in LuxRender's log tab:

• Very Quiet: hardly anything will be written to the log
• Quiet: very few events will be written to the log
• Default: most events will be written to the log, including framebuffer updates and files written
• Verbose: all relevant events will be written to the log, including debugging information

Sampler

• HaltSPP defines at what quality (in samples per pixel) a rendering will be stopped
• Halt time defines at what time a rendering will be stopped

Whichever of these two happens first will cause the rendering to stop. If both are left at their default value of zero, a rendering will continue forever.

For other Sampler settings, please check the LuxRender Render settings page.

Surface Integrator, Volume Integrator, Filter, Accelerator

For these settings, please see the LuxRender Render settings page.

LuxRender Networking

When activating LuxRender Networking, LuxBlend will pass on the address of a render server to LuxRender, which will then be connected when LuxRender loads the file. The render server is assumed to already running luxconsole.

Upload interval is the time interval at which contributions from the render server are being sent back; for example an interval of 180 will make the server send back its contributions every three minutes.

Output

The output section defines in which file format the rendered image or animation will be saved when using internal rendering. For external rendering, file output options are set on the camera tab. In both cases, the output file path defines where LuxRender's scene files will be saved.

For most image formats, there is a choice between the following options:

• BW will write a grayscale image
• RGB will write an RGB (color) image
• RGBA will write a RGB image with alpha channel

The File Extensions option will automatically add the file format's extension to the file name, for example .png or .jpg.

With the Overwrite option checked, Blender will overwrite existing files without asking.

The Placeholders option will create an empty image file once the rendering starts. If this option is unchecked, LuxRender will only write an image file after some initial rendering progress.