Ok ofc for help it will be needed to have more information, i can imagine it is in the setup, first luxrender need to be selected ofc as render, then if you use the classic API ( not internal luxcore ) it will open then the exporter ( and new window ) the problem could be that it dont open the exporter ), if set as luxcore, it will open the window and the kernel will compile ( so you have allready the kernel time compilation, for OpenCL gpu’s, need to select path and OpenCL in the render windows ofc etc )
Yes untill i use HDri or my one light studio setup, i let autolinear as the sun is really to bright otherwise. this said it is a bit troubling as viewport result and render could be different with auto tonemapper .
Well, it is only my opinion - not more, BUT:
- Shadows are washed out and images are looks CG and flat because of it.
- 3/5 hours on GPU id very long, in cycles i can render such images but with normal lighting in 1/1.5 hours or even faster, exterior will render in about 40 mins in fullHD on CPU and in minutes on single GPU.
- Nodes are still not finished - so it is very hard to use one black and white texture with different color mixing for all wood finishes in the scene, etc. that makes luxrender unusable for commercial work (for archviz).
- with some tricks cycles can render indoor scenes in 7-10 mins on dual GPU.
So yes luxrender CAN render fast if we will compare it to previous versions of luxrender, but if we will compare it to other engines…
And yes i saw Andrew’s comparison of render engines but he took very simple scenes. I compared lux and cycles on a real archviz project and cycles is up to 3 times faster
First of all Thanks you so much for your honest point of view ! Just hope this answer can clarify some dark area.
1/ Shadows quality in this last pics i totally agree with you it is a little bit more flat than the other one : but that isn’t automatically a bad or unreallistics results.IF you pay attention a little bit you can see that shadows are not dark and deeper everyday it really depend to the sky and environnement (eg overcast and cloudy ).
some real photo :
http://ethnic-jewellery.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/modern-japan-house-of-creative-modern-japanese-architecture-u3-house-freshome.jpg
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.furniturefashion.com%2Fimage%2F2010%2F05%2Fcontemporary%2520japanese%2520residential%2520architecture.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.furniturefashion.com%2Fmodern_japanese_architecture_and_interior_design%2F&docid=JJyv87vIGJopPM&tbnid=HswCbgx7nMiNEM%3A&w=500&h=375&client=firefox-b-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjuzNSwpsjNAhUHPRoKHQjMDFw4ZBAzCDsoODA4&iact=mrc&uact=8&biw=1470&bih=669#h=375&w=500
but this was an experiment with an unfinished renderer and there is a little more thing i’ve to understand about it. (ex : bad reinhard setting can lead to those flat shadows or bad ligth groups settings ). but now i’am better in those area and there is a new project to show it.
2/ rendering time are really setting sensitive but i’am sure that in a fair comparison lux will perform better than cycles in both indoor and outdoor ! I’ve two workflow on two defferent rig one for cycles (with 2Xgtx titan black) and one for lux with (2xR9 390). in almost same condition lux beat cycles every time i test it. but some knowledge are needed to avoid fireflies and useless long render time with lux !
this give me idea to share a BMW benchmark for lux to compare with cycles !
3/ Yes this normal as lux is WIP and there are more to come. and as i tell you this is only to show the renderer potentialities.but it is where you can help as a blender user to help improve your community and tools.
A GOOD NEWS about luxcore node is an upcoming patch to fix it soon see here :
https://developer.blender.org/D113
4/ With same tricks or less lux will be faster it is math. lux have micro kernel metropolis support MIS Clamp. can you show me these render ?