LuxRender 1.5 Release Candidate

The first release candidate of LuxRender 1.5 is ready!
For a fast overview of the new features have a look here:

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/images/f/f6/Pointiness_demo.png
New in 1.5

The official announcement:

Hi,

There has been a tremendous amount of work since the release of v1.4 and we are now very pleased to present you the first v1.5 release candidate. We’re moving along quite nicely towards LuxRender v2.0 and we hope you’ll enjoy that new release.
As for v1.4, LuxRender itself has not seen much changes but the new LuxCore rendering core has gained a lot of features and nearly matches classic LuxRender.
You can get a visual outlook of the new features in the wiki: major speed improvements, volume precedence, new materials and textures, volume emission, strands, better integration in Blender and 3DSMax to name just a few.
Paolo, Reality plugin author, has experimented more than 10x speed improvements with the new rendering modes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6fyJQOzfvU

If you find any issue please report them in the forum or in our bug tracker.

Thanks to all developers for their hard work and to the users for their feedback throughout the development process.

Please consider making a donation if you like our work and want to help us continue to improve LuxRender.

You can download packaged builds from our download area, or get the source from our mercurial repositories:
LuxCore: http://src.luxrender.net/luxrays/commits/tag/luxrender_v1.5RC1
LuxRender: http://src.luxrender.net/lux/commits/tag/v15RC1
LuxBlend: http://src.luxrender.net/luxblend25/commits/tag/v15RC1

You’ll find below the full change list since v1.4.

LuxCore new features since v1.4:

  • OpenCL micro kernels for improved performance and reduced pressure on OpenCL compilers
  • OpenCL tweaks suggested by nVidia to improve performance (general commonly accepted tweaks not specific to nVidia hardware)
  • new biased path render engine with more tuning knobs to trade between render speed and render accuracy
  • integration of Intel Embree technology for faster triangle intersection
  • vertex color interpolation for area lights
  • adaptive tile rendering with automatic stop condition
  • auto-linear tonemapping support
  • new irradiance pass with optional contour lines for lighting studies
  • accelerated Blender mesh convertion
  • add camera response support, metal2 fresnel parameter, blender procedurals in the built-in lxs parser
  • improved OpenCL Sobol sampler
  • new substract, blackbody, irregulardata, lampspectrum, fresnel (color, luxpop, sopra, preset), pointiness textures
  • image storage improvement to reduce memory pressure with large textures
  • new glossycoating material
  • new orthogonal camera
  • new volumetric cloud texture to simulate realistic clouds in the sky
  • add various interpolation modes to the band texture
  • new strand shape support
  • fixes to mix material
  • fixes to volumes
  • fixes to glass materials
  • fixes to lights handling
  • fixes to motion blur in OpenCL
  • remove hybrid CPU/GPU render engines

LuxRender new features since v1.4:

  • add new LuxCore features to the luxcore render engine
  • easier build on OSX and Windows
  • fix imagemap texture alignment (1 pixel offset in some circumstances)

LuxBlend new features since v1.4 (LuxCore API unless otherwise specified):

  • proxy support
  • alpha transparency support
  • improved real time material preview (correct mix material, volumes, … support)
  • light groups support
  • support for camera clipping planes
  • add support for hitpoint data textures
  • lots of improvements to the real time scene preview and editing
  • lots of UI improvements for consistency and robustness (a huge refactor of the code has been done for that)
  • improved imagemap handling
  • improved volumes texturing
  • improved motion blur support
  • add color ramps support
  • add particles motion blur support
  • fix visibility handling
  • fix camera shift support
  • add support for new LuxCore features (textures, materials, cameras, volumes, …)
  • fix border rendering
  • add support for volume emission

Jeanphi

I will add from my reading of the Luxrender forum that they got the idea of adding pointiness more or less directly from seeing it in Cycles. :slight_smile:

Good for them, I was starting to wonder what all was going on there development wise.

I started a thread about it after seeing the feature in Cycles, yes, and that led to it being implemented by Dade: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11560

However, while it is a great feature, its usefulness limited to high-poly geometry. A texture-based solution would be more flexible IMHO for the artists, both in Cycles and Lux (as I mention in the linked thread, Vray’s “Dirt” texture is probably the best solution).

The core devs are mostly working on porting features to the new LuxCore interface. I as a LuxBlend developer am working on the LuxCore mode in LuxBlend, trying to eliminate differences to classic export as well as implementing completely new features (like pointiness) that are now possible with the LuxCore interface (like the viewport render).
The guys working on the new 3ds Max plugin are also quite active.

Nice! Is the Embree accelerator automatically selected when using PATH/BIASEDPATH in NON-OPENCL modes from within luxblend?

Yes. Just leave the accelerator setting on “Auto”.

How fast is it?

Luxblend seems to require some love.
It looks like luxcore API(experimental) is not able to use material nodes, yet.

It is a pity. 3d viewport preview is in one mode and material nodes use is in another one.

I’m giving it love, don’t worry: https://bitbucket.org/luxrender/luxblend25/commits/all
Material nodes are one of the last missing big features, among smoke&fire export and some other stuff: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxBlend25_LuxCore#Missing_Features
As I’m currently in exam period development is a bit slower, but the next steps for me will be:

  • Fix memory leak bug
  • Fix particle bugs (rotation is sometimes off)
  • Implement material nodes

regards
Simon

Anyone else having trouble downloading and running the installer?

…Luxrender\1.5\LuxRender 1.5RC1 x64 OpenCL Setup.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

If lux keeps improving like this it will become the most versatile and powerful open source renderer around.

while looking at the futures of luxrender, i couldnt help notice that it has much things in common with Blender.
It even has support for pointines too. Since i think both projects are opensource, i was wondering is there code exchange between Lux team and Blender-Cycles team. And if so could we get such speed improvements in cycles too ?

Sorry for stupid question, but is LuxCore a pure GPU renderer, or does it work on CPU as well?

LuxCore has several so-called “engines”, some are CPU only, some are pure OpenCL (so they can be used on GPUs and CPUs as you like).
Take a look at the engine section here: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxBlend25_LuxCore#Render_Settings

I need the PAI 2.x but I don’t have it in the menu. My cards are Nvidia.

I don’t use this render engine, I wanted to test, but impossible to launch a GPU rendering.

Pointiness sucks. I realize it’s quick and easy to implement, but it depends on the geometry density. Even changing the number of subdivisions on a highpoly mesh can significantly mess up your shaders. Raytraced curvature would have been so much better.

Other than that the new Lux looks pretty hot! Congrats on the release!

Edit: Same problem as pitiwazou. No idea how to activate the 2.0 API for viewport rendering. It’s not selectable in the menu.

Are there error messages in Blender’s terminal window?
Window -> Toggle System Console in case you are using Windows. On Linux, start Blender from a terminal.

In Render Panel instead of Classic API, choose Luxcore API(Experimental).
Then in Luxrender Realtime Preview Settings, change CPU to OpenCL.
Then, in Luxrender Compute Settings Panel, clic on Update the OpenCL Device List.

That doesn’t work, the Classic API is the only available option.

Piotr
LuxBlend exporter is has some files missing. To fix it you need to download this old exporter:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26878362/LuxBlend.zip
And select all those dll, libs:


And copy to new luxrender exporter. Do not override old files, just copy missing ones. Here is how exporter files should look after copying missing dll, libs:

Now, when you install exporter to blender, and it should show api2.0. If not restart blender and enable exporter again.

There should be installed in Luxrender executable folder.
When you enable the addon, there is a line appearing under addon description in User Preferences to precise Luxrender Installation Path.
Then, you have to restart Blender to see updated menus.