Frequently Asked Questions

From LuxRender Wiki

General

Why an another unbiased renderer?

Commercial and freeware products already exist, but there is no unbiased, production-oriented free software renderer around (note: freeware and free software don't mean the same thing).

Choosing the free software way, has, in our opinion, several advantages:

• We hope to centralize contributions with an open-source development model: anyone can join the project and add improvements, find bugs, port the project to an unsupported platform or contribute with exporters development and testing. This could be much faster than a "one-man-band". If a lot of open source renderer developers would join forces, there could be a free rendering package with professional features, usability and support (exporters, presets, forum) very soon that could rival commercial ones. In the current state of affairs, there are a lot of small freeware and open source renderers that are used by narrow groups of enthusiasts, but don't find widespread use in the 3d mainstream world.
• It can't disappear: freeware developers could get bored and stop development, commercial ones may get bought off by other companies following economical goals or go bankrupt, stopping maintenance or even retiring the software. There are numerous examples of such situations. With LuxRender, GPL code always remains, even if all the original developers leave it, chances are high that when it is used and needed, there will be someone to take care of the code.
• Anyone interested can use it at no cost, without any restrictions, presently and in future versions. Free renderers are often used by Blender users. Perhaps because of the internal Blender renderer (no GI), because they love free software or just like experiments. Providing an unbiased GPL renderer allows tight integration between such tools (we hope for a full Blender integration) and guarantees that users will always have a free software choice.

Why fork PBRT?

• PBRT is a very robust foundation, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. It has a clean, extensible design, exceptional documentation (the book) and it's used in academic environments, so a lot of students know it.
• The goals of both project differ: PBRT is an academical research and educational tool, LuxRender is production and artist oriented: which creates differences in a lot of areas. In LuxRender speed optimization, removal of unnecessary features and adding practical ones (exporters, GUI, multithreading, file formats, MLT...) are the main goal. Design choices are made with the final user and artistic efficiency in mind.
• Our fork is authorized by the PBRT authors.

LuxBlend

LuXSI

I exported a simple scene and get an error while open it in LuxRender

• LuXSI doesn't perform a check yet if there is no light source or camera exported. Check you scene in XSI and see if the camera is hidden or the light source. You can switch on the "Export hidden objects/lights" box in LuXSI or unhide the things.

How to get smooth objects

• Select the object in XSI and change the subdivision level by clicking + on the num-pad or in the GeoApproximation menu