While we were finishing up LuxCoreRender v2.3, work on v2.4 had already started.
Here are some of the new features that are already available in latest builds:
One-time OpenCL kernel compilation
Like many other render engines, LuxCore now compiles OpenCL kernels only once after the installation. Note that currently, this happens for the final render and for the viewport render separately, but we plan to do both at once eventually.
Improved environment light cache
The env. light cache is LuxCore’s “Auto-portal” solution, which is now computed much faster and delivers more uniform results. It is now configured by a simple quality slider that represents a trade-off between preprocessing time and cache effectiveness.
You can read more here.
Replaced the Eevee lookdev (which required Cycles materials) with an albedo render mode that is intended as a fast texture preview for both Lux and Cycles node trees (not perfect yet, feedback is welcome)
CUDA image pipeline
LuxCore now supports CUDA for the imagepipeline. This in itself is not very useful, but it is a first step and proof-of-concept towards CUDA support for the main engine. More
If you have questions or want to give feedback, you can visit our forums or discord.
I barely scratched the surface with LuxCore but it looks great so far. I don’t use it enough but love the development progress and integration with Blender. There were some issues because not all nodes are supported. Especially for lighting but overall I really like this render.
What’s missing? I’m just starting out myself, and I have issues figuring out color temperature for lights. I’m assigning it through light groups, which is fine but awkward compared to what I’m used to. But I’m not able to rebalance, I have no idea how the camera white balance is supposed to work. I guess I can prep a lookup image for division based correction in post.
That said, it is an absolute blast to be able to work with physical sun & sky, lights with photometric units and camera based tone mapper. Some nice camera based utils there too, will need to check those out properly.
I couldn’t setup nodes for HDR lights. I try never to use lights as is and setup HDR lights for better realism. I tried it with LuxCore for Blender and if I remember it right got an error that LuxCore doesn’t support some nodes. Without it I couldn’t setup the lights as I wanted to.
Maybe there is another way but I didn’t have a chance to investigate further since I still don’t use LuxCore enough.
But caustic is magnificent in LuxCore . I would also love to see Node Wrangler support. It’s just so essential when working with nodes it’s hard not to have access to it.
I’m on the other fence - I use physical lights because they are more realistic I don’t do sun & sky lit interiors though, although I will check with sun & sky how much they will interfere with various “monitors”, and if those monitors will interfere with a projection screen. Which windows will need to be blinded off, all? How to arrange room lighting control to impose good viewing conditions? What kind of luminaries to use in order to provide adequate desk lighting at the same time not effecting viewing conditions. Unless you go to site and grab your own HDRI (for worst case scenario) and calbrate the exposure, there is no way to know. With Lux sun & sky (and sun position addon), combined with “monitors” in Candela/m2 (NIT) settings from manufacturer datasheet and reflectivity curves (gain) for projection screens and interior lights in photometric units - all this makes it “easy”. Cycles is an outright mess with its Watt system that nobody can give a decent explanation of how to set up properly. That said, I haven’t checked Lux for accuracy in this.
But disregard the color temperature question - I’m in the wrong thread, I should be in the 2.3 thread. Didn’t realize there were two threads. I’m just messing around right now, perhaps I should try 2.4 instead. Work is closed down anyway, if I even still have a work to get back to eventually - don’t really know.
About glass, perhaps separate roughness control for refraction and reflection? Like frosted film attachment, like this. I’m able to set it up using glass with no specular, fed into a glossy coating with its IOR driving it. It could have different bump too, so I’m wondering instead of the switches, a dropdown menu for how advanced the exposed controls are.
Cant find Lights nodes in v2.3 they are already implemented or they are v2.4 only ?
B.Y.O.B
(Node Preview and LuxCore Addon Developer)
12
They are available in v2.3.
However, in LuxCore only emissive materials (meshlights) can use textures, all other lights do not have texturable parameters. Blender area lights are just meshlights in Lux behind the scenes, so they can use textures. However I would recommend to just use a mesh object with emissive material instead, because area lights with node trees will miss some viewport updates when doing adjustments.
I removed 2.3 and installed 2.4 Linux 64 CPU version from zip. When I activate it, it just throws a bunch of error messages at me. Is the dailies only supported by certain versions of Blender? If not, where am I going wrong?
B.Y.O.B
(Node Preview and LuxCore Addon Developer)
14
I am only testing with Blender 2.82a, but it should work in all Blender versions using Python 3.7.
Please open an issue here, posting the error messages you get.
Can we expect Color Ramp node in LuxCore anytime soon? I find it really usefull to control the values for roughness, metalic and bump maps
1 Like
B.Y.O.B
(Node Preview and LuxCore Addon Developer)
16
This node is called “Band/Colorramp” in the Blender addon, you can find it in the Add Node > Utils menu.
Addons can’t use the Blender colorramp class, so the UI is handmade and a bit different.
This is a major milestone for the project and opens the door to a lot of CUDA specific features (RTX, out of core rendering, etc.). We do now support CPU and/or OpenCL and/or CUDA rendering.
Anyone know what the LuxCore calculation is for absorption parameter in various material shaders? The one I’ve setup in Cycles for myself is likely not correct. I’d rather have it with the simple one parameter (depth) that Lux does.
. I would also love to see Node Wrangler support. It’s just so essential when working with nodes it’s hard not to have access to it.
I don’t do sun & sky lit interiors though, although I will check with sun & sky how much they will interfere with various “monitors”, and if those monitors will interfere with a projection screen. Which windows will need to be blinded off, all? How to arrange room lighting control to impose good viewing conditions? What kind of luminaries to use in order to provide adequate desk lighting at the same time not effecting viewing conditions. Unless you go to site and grab your own HDRI (for worst case scenario) and calbrate the exposure, there is no way to know. With Lux sun & sky (and sun position addon), combined with “monitors” in Candela/m2 (NIT) settings from manufacturer datasheet and reflectivity curves (gain) for projection screens and interior lights in photometric units - all this makes it “easy”. Cycles is an outright mess with its Watt system that nobody can give a decent explanation of how to set up properly. That said, I haven’t checked Lux for accuracy in this.
