Due to some internal issues, Radiance has left the Luxrender development team and is in the process of taking down the website. The other developers are working on establishing a new Luxrender website, so please be patient as www.luxrender.net undergoes…changes.
As far as I know, work will continue and version 0.6 is still right around the corner. There was a memory leak bug that has been squashed which should pave the way for 0.6 shortly.
Well, that is great news… WHAT???
That’s terrible news! i’m left wanting ti know more and am saddened that such a great project is in such limbo…
Yeah…I’m heartbroken too. It sounded like the devs were working hard to back up the website and were going to set up shop at another host. They were working hard to communicate this on the forums but they are now down.
But why did he leave? And couldn’t he at least let you backup the site? the whole thing smells…
That’s really bizarre…
Since when were there problems within the Luxrender developent group? They had seemed like a pretty tight group, and Radiance seemed like a really easy to get get along with, outgoing type of person.
I wonder if this was a conflict between the project and his job…
This does not bode well… :no:
After seeing Bryce turned into a doll renderer, Toxic bloom and die, two high profile free renderers go commercial and now Lux going away for who knows how long I have to hand it to the Blender team. They have been steadfastly improving Blender for years now without succumbing to internal issues and reliance on external programs. I do hope the Lux team can overcome whatever reason there is to remove their website and program links. Lux is (was) a great piece of work but this does at least signal to me that I need to spend more time with the internal renderer, nodes and lighting to improve my skills and wait patiently as 2.5 and renderer improvements are released via the long term team; Team Blender!
… and if I do stray I should probably do so with Yafaray, It appears they have the staying power that will see them through…
Interesting news, sounds like a lot of politics on the back-end. I think one of the greatest assets of Blender is the strong leadership and long-term vision of Ton. Also, establishing the Blender Foundation was a very smart move as it institutionalized the vision of Ton, making it even more stable.
If Luxrender survives this, they might want to take the time to really build a solid business-oriented foundation to build upon. I think we’ve all seen too many open source efforts fail because they refuse to graft in the good practices of the commercial world.
I hope they can work it out.
Speaking of Ton’s leadership role this was in the last Sunday Meeting
- Roadmap proposal… Ton still tries to get the big picture, to make a
roadmap for the 2.5x series. All devs are invited to make sure they
communicate their own roadmaps to this list and/or in wiki a.s.a.p.
Seems like Ton is trying to get a lot of focus on where 2.5 is headed next along with the roadmaps of the individual devs. and Project Durian. I thought he was going to work on keymap saving next and perhaps bringing knife and loopcut back?
Judging from the thread here it seems that Blender Internal is the only free render engine with consistant, if not slower at times, development throughout many years, though major new features like the volume renderer, raytrace overhaul, and photon mapping are either already in, due to come in, or being worked on.
Sad news indeed. 
I know the Lux devs are doing everything in their power to get things up & running again.
It is a very difficult time for them atm, so please offer your support & kind words.
The Lux site is down now, so give the team some time to set up the new site & organize their thoughts.
Please do not go fishing for answers to what happened.
I see this happening already & think it’s rude.
It’s a very upsetting time for all involved, so Please, give the team a chance to regroup.
Good Luck & Best Wishes to the Luxrender team!
How unthoughtful. It is in the spirit of open source that if you should step down, you do it as quiet and smooth as possible. Taking down project assets like that is just awful.
aside from the website shenanigans, Id be interested to know if the software dev side will be picked up by some of the other active devs
https://www.ohloh.net/p/luxrender/contributors
Oh no… this is really bad news.
that’s badnews just last night i was surfing luxrender.net , but I really hope. the others can pick it up, release 0.6 (seems to be around the corner) get a new site up and going.
Maybe new luxrender site should be more like a blog on wordpress? so more of the internal stuf get on the exterior and it’s easier to follow the development etc etc.
What? This sounds bad.
MfG
sk2k
this is really bad news I dig lux render. Hopefully when the new site is up and running people can rally behind the Lux team this such a nice render engine. I just hope they can ride the storm through like the Yafaray team did.
It is a great renderer, the blender exporter is one of the most feature rich expoters out there for going from blender to an external renderer…what an unproffesional shame…on the other hand, I am not privy to the circumstances…he may have been doing the right thing…I doubt it, but I also…do not have a clue…
Hi everybody,
This is indeed sad news, but we’re working hard to set up a temporary hosting. If all goes well it should be ready soon.
This all went quite sudenly and unexpectedly, but you can be assured that we won’t let the project die. We were to release v0.6RC6, and even if it’s delayed for a few days due to the current situation, it should go out in the coming week and could become v0.6 final before the end of the month.
We all hope that luxrender will continue to allow you to make great artistic works.
Jeanphi (new project coordinator)
No worries folks …we´ll go on straight.
Jens