Below are two render images I made this weekend, the one on the left is my luxrender attempt from the past 24 hrs, and the one on the right is the same scene in poser. I know the lighting is different; you have to use special lights for reality/luxrender for it to look good. The camera is also tilted a bit more in one image, but this was for the sake of lighting in luxrender.
The main problem here is that the one on the left has been rendering for over 12 hours (and still isn't really done yet) and it still looks pretty meh to me. (Karen kind of looks like a barbie doll to me in the left image >_<) The poser render on the right took around ten minutes and looks perfectly fine to me. In my opinion, the one on the right is a much better image overall, despite taking far less time and being done in a theoretically inferior render engine.
Now, it is totally possible that the luxrender image looks like crap because I have no clue what I'm doing yet. I actually really hope this is the case; because this is the only advanced render engine I can afford by myself anytime soon. The only other one I know of is Octane, (which looks AMAZING) but the license for that alone costs over $500. (That is for one machine only and I would almost certainly need a separate render machine too.) The only way I could really afford that is if I get enough Patreon support.
I will keep trying with luxrender, but I posted these here to prove that I tried and explain why I have no plans to use this for actual renders in the near future. The luxrender image here took over 12 hours to do, during that time I could have rendered a full quality 30 second animation in poser or even designed most of a new image set. Rendering makes my only good computer useless for anything else during that time, so this is off the table until something changes to make it viable/worth it.
In the mean time, keep voting in the two polls on the right of the blog here and you can also sign up for my Patreon to vote in those two polls. One is very open ended about what patrons want to see in the next Patreon set(s), and the other asks who should be the main heroine in my first VN attempt. So if you want to help support me and directly influence what I try to do in upcoming projects, my Patreon page is http://www.patreon.com/redleatherart. I also just posted a preview image on Patreon of the two new characters that I will use for the upcoming story, one of which is the first persistent male character I will have! (The other is female and also a persistent character.)
I may have something else ready by the end of the week, but there is no way to know yet, so keep checking back and spread the word about my work and the polls!
With Lux it's a matter of how much CPU power you can through at it. The more you have the faster it renders. Octane is great useing only one machine with top of the line graphics cards, it's GPU based. I use Lux myself and I have 4 machines with 28 cores to throw at mine. That cuts the time down. IT's a whole different animal useing Lux or even Octane with lighting. Keep at it it takes a bit of time to learn it. I'm still learning myself. I'm going to switch to Octane when I can afford it.
ReplyDeleteHey there. Thanks for the comparison info; if lux takes 4 machines and 28 cores to work well and/or in a timely manner, I am probably out of my league for now. I ran it with my overclocked i7 with 8 threads and hybrid gpu acceleration on a very simple scene and was less than impressed with the 12 hour results. I can pause and resume the renders in lux at the very least, so I can keep it going if I can get the renders to look good enough to justify it. I will keep trying to get it looking nice, hopefully something will work out.
ReplyDeleteYa, Octaine will cut the rendering time down. Pricey though. My ave rendering time with my set up is about 8 to 12 hours at 2k p/s. Keep playing with it. :)
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