LuxRender 0.5 released

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A new version of LuxRender, the unbiased open source render engine was released a few days ago. And this release presents a lot of new features.

Here is a word from Tim Suess, about the release and new features:

Just a quick head up to say that there’s a new version of LuxRender out!

Its V0.5!

The dev team has been working extremely hard to finalize this release for everyone.

And here it finally is after 5 months of development!

To recap for those people that don’t know what LuxRender is:

An unbiased (which now also supports traditional/biased techniques too) render engine that is GPL!

LuxRender supports Windows, Linux and MacOS X.

New features in this release:

  • Hierarchical 2D & 3D procedural material and texture system
  • Native support for all Blender procedural textures
  • Displacement mapping and engine level subdivision
  • Biased and Unbiased integrators
  • Full Spectral rendering
  • New Sampling Infrastructure
  • Distributed network rendering & network transparent API
  • New GUI
  • and much more…

There are too many new (and old) features for me to list them all here so I’ll point you at the release page!

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=767

And while you’re at it, take a quick peek at the LuxRender gallery!

http://www.luxrender.net/gallery/

So, if you want to download LuxRender and the script to use it with Blender, visit this link as well.

Have fun!

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    • ccherrett

      lux is awesome! I can’t wait to try out the new bias stuff

    • Ravetracer

      Very impressive, especially the caustics and organic textures… I love caustics :-D.

    • 4museman

      This is gonna be my favorite renderer for visualisations, I guess! It looks very promising! Great job, guys!!!

    • Artisten

      I have used the beta for some days, so I’m glad that it’s finally here!!
      I was so pleased by Lux that I use that instead of Indigo as an unbiased renderer.

      Great work, developers.

    • http://redbirdiii.blogspot.com RedBirdiii

      I’ve downloaded it three days ago.. it’s great..

      I’m a noob here, I can’t get clean rendered pictures.. how can I get rid of the dotted rendering?

    • 4museman

      to RedBirdiii: Wait a little longer. ;) This is incremental rendering.

    • bulb

      Wow, nice gallery!

      Will it work on OSX Tiger?

    • MarcoA

      Very nice!
      It’s a little annoyance to set the materials in the LuxBlend gui also. It would be so good if some properties (colors, reflection, specularity…) could be automatically imported from Blender, as it is in Blendigo.

      M.

    • http://muody.deviantart.com/ Muody

      it’s sooo slow… had to wait ~15 hrs for such level of noise (in interior, low MLT settings), as for 3-hour render in Indigo…
      situation is a lot better in exteriors
      nevertheless, the feature list is nice, keep up the good work and optimize it

    • http://www.luxrender.net radiance

      quote:

      Will it work on OSX Tiger?

      I did’nt make the mac packages so i’m not sure, give it a go and let us know with a post on the lux forums if it does’nt :)

      Radiance

      quote:

      Very nice!
      It’s a little annoyance to set the materials in the LuxBlend gui also. It would be so good if some properties (colors, reflection, specularity…) could be automatically imported from Blender, as it is in Blendigo.

      M.

      Hi,

      This functionality is in the exporter but disabled for v0.5 as it did’nt get finished in time,
      expect it in a new exporter release in 1-2 weeks…

      Radiance

      quote:

      it’s sooo slow… had to wait ~15 hrs for such level of noise (in interior, low MLT settings), as for 3-hour render in Indigo…
      situation is a lot better in exteriors
      nevertheless, the feature list is nice, keep up the good work and optimize it

      Hi,

      Can you please post your results on our forum so we can see what people are doing specifically and optimize ?
      Our default presets aren’t very adaptive neither.

      You can get compareable results if you set everything up properly at the moment :)

      thanks,
      Radiance

    • RNS

      Love the GUI render,wish blender had something like this in 2.50.however is a very nice render for architectural projects
      back drop building and etc.Nice I like it !!

    • MarcoA

      Radiance said:
      > This functionality is in the exporter but disabled for v0.5 as it did’nt get finished in time,
      > expect it in a new exporter release in 1-2 weeks…

      Good!
      Thanks.

      MarcoA

    • Þiðrekr

      A potentially stupid question…

      Can LuxRender be used for animations, or is it really only for still images? If it can be used for animations, are there any obvious limitations like with motion blur, for instance?

    • Aka

      @Þiðrekr – time. Still image can render for 50h. But if you really want to, try.

    • Christopher

      @Þiðrekr:

      Yes! It can be used for animations, and because of the biased modes and alternate configurations of the unbiased modes, you can get a decent result with a few minutes per frame.

    • Aka

      @Christopher – i forgot about new features. Sorry. xD

    • thanksGuys!

      Thank you so much for all your hard work, it is truly appreciated! It’s a shame that there aren’t more people using it. Maybe it’s because many people haven’t realized the full significance of a true GPL’ed unbiased renderer.

    • oin

      “Yes! It can be used for animations, and because of the biased modes and alternate configurations of the unbiased modes, you can get a decent result with a few minutes per frame.”

      Extremely interesting :) Kudos , again 8)

    • http://indiworks.wordpress.com/ indiworks

      This might be a really stupid question, but when following the Wiki instructions and downloading the x64 “Statically Linked tar archive” I just can’t see the “LuxBlend_0.1.py” file as described, what I get is a “bin” and a “test” folder and files like “luxconsole-gcc” etc. – I only just switched to Linux and this unfortunately does not tell me much. Did I miss anything or are there some other easy to follow instructions for how-to get it installed and working? This looks very interesting… Thanks!

    • http://gustavthemushroom.deviantart.com GustavTheMushroom

      @indiworks

      I beleive you still have to download the exporter separately.

    • Artisten

      @indiworks

      Inside the “bin” folder should there be a binary file named luxrender(or something). That is the actual program.

      The exporter is not included with the download file, you’ll find it in the wiki. Look after LuxBlend v0.5 in the wiki.

      After exporting a scene you can just open the “luxrender” file inside “bin”, and open the luxrender files from LuxRender, or have LuxBlend doing that automaticly.

    • Lucas Da Costa Dantas

      Another thing …
      Cool ,its better i focus on create something
      then try to understand how all it works .

      I guess not all of this is open source anyway .

    • leau2001

      I download, i paste the export luxrender.py on my script folder and nothing happend on my Import menu on blender 2.46 …

      something wrong ?

    • leau2001

      Export menu .. sorry

    • http://indiworks.wordpress.com/ indiworks

      @ Artisten

      Thansk for your answer! I guess I’ll need to put some more time into this to get it running, currently I get “Python script error: check console” when running the sript via copy/paste into blender’s text editor (I also tried to just copy/paste the part that says “luxExport class”). Also “luxrenderer-gcc” and “luxrenderer-icc-static” don’t seem to open when I double click them. (Maybe some really simple step by step instructions would be good to have at some point in the Wiki, I really only just switched to Ubuntu and have no idea how-to “compile a binary” etc.). But I’ll figure this out – sooner or later… Thanks!

    • http://gustavthemushroom.deviantart.com GustavTheMushroom

      @leau2001

      Check the export section maybe? Might also require a blender restart to show up.

    • Aka

      @indiworks – you don’t have to make your won build. But if you want to here’s the link: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php/Building_on_Linux . For me it works. And about errors, i think you should ask on Lux forum. It can be some issues with lights or camera settings. Just check Lux tutorials and how too setup this things.

    • http://home.deds.nl/~mp/ ysvry

      great, how does it compare with Kerkythea? especialy what intergration with Blender is concerened?

    • theLichKing

      what does “unbiased” mean?

    • Artisten

      @indiworks

      Information on installing the exporter can you find here:
      http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php/LuxBlend_tutorial:installing_LuxBlend

      And Installation Guide is here:

      http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php/Installation_guide

      Other useful information can be found on the main page of the wiki.

      http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

    • theLichKing

      i grabbed the 64-bit package and i tried the suzanne file and it says it need intel core 2 duo

    • theLichKing

      i grabbed the 64-bit package and i tried the suzanne file and it says it need intel core 2 duo..
      no support for amd 64??

    • theLichKing

      sorry for posting twice..
      never mind i compiled it.. runs fine now :P

    • Andrew

      From Muody:
      “it’s sooo slow… had to wait ~15 hrs for such level of noise (in interior, low MLT settings), as for 3-hour render in Indigo…”

      It renders five times slower than Indigo?? That’s just unethical.

      By all means keep at it guys. But at the moment I can’t see the need to switch renderers again.