Unfortunately, all this cuda based development of cycles is so against development of cycles itself…
@michalis
I am not see anything that can be named “CUDA development”, do you mean GPU - focused constraints that hold rapid evolving Cycles to more features? I doubt there is any exist and hold development (sure, Brecht and other ppls know better, but that is my strong feel). Spectral sampling as example take another dimension that must be sampled (as motion time domain btw for motion blur) and in theory make render even longer, compare Cycles use ~8 random parameters, my crappy bi-dir raise it to 30, (doubled because 2 chains sampled instead of 1, and some extra for volume and other misc stuff). Spectral sampling will add 1 more. Obviously, noticeable for Cycles (and small enough for bi-dir, now at least it have something positive after all ^^).
As i understand, you mostly interesting in inertion-less real-time preview of very high poly models, I think current Cycles simple PT wiht BVH (meaning quick short inner loop, not “dumb”) already tuned for that scenario. Maybe some fine-tuning like near-assembler level hand writing of parts will accelerate it a bit, but in general it already optimized. If you waiting for something big, like in many commercial packages, it will be completely different renderer, not Cycles. Maybe cycles parts copy-paste to current sculpting module? Because you need to eliminate BVH building phase for update screen in sub-second interval. Or replace BVH by 2 instances, one that hold static data, other some quickly updated, and every time check ray to both BVH.
I am a newbie and I am trying to set up LuxRender.
Can anyone tell me how to install LuxRender into Blender 2.63?
The LuxRender Wiki only covers 2.4 and current files system isn’t working for me.
You will need to download the Luxblend25 script (in which a development version comes with each new Luxrender build). After you extract the files you would then go in, find the file labeled ‘Luxrender’, and copy/paste that into the Blender addons folder.
If you do it right (and you have a newer Blender build), you should be able to see it in the addons list.