reality users guide for poser

for Poser

Version 3.0

Contents

Contents i

List of Figures iv

1 Welcome 2

2 INSTALLING REALITY 52.1 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.2 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.3 Installing LuxRender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.4 Registering Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.5 Automatic Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.6 Manual registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.7 Unregistering Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.8 Configuring Reality to use Lux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102.9 Re-download Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3 USING REALITY 123.1 Quick-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123.2 Rendering workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133.3 The Refine Brush tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.4 The Reality Add-ons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173.5 The render never stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193.6 When is the right time to stop Lux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193.7 The exported scene files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193.8 Best practices for exporting your scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.9 Saving your Reality settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.10 Tonemapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.11 AutoLinear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.12 Linear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.13 Converting from AutoLinear to Linear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.14 Stopping and resuming renders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4 THE REALITY USER INTERFACE 254.1 The material editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254.2 Material types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254.3 Reality materials are independent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.4 Material sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

i

CONTENTS ii

4.5 Converting materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304.6 The Light Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314.7 The Camera Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314.8 The Volumes Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314.9 Advanced settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324.10 The dockable panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5 POSER LIGHTING PRACTICES 355.1 Careful with those light sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

6 KEY CONCEPTS 366.1 Unbiased vs. biased renderers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366.2 Creating soft shadows with Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366.3 Lights are visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

7 REALITY’S MATERIALS 397.1 The Material Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397.2 Editing materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397.3 Changing multiple materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407.4 Finding the right material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417.5 Multi-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417.6 Save your Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417.7 Reality materials are simpler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417.8 See before you render: The Material Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417.9 Resetting materials to the original state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427.10 Reality material reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427.11 Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

8 RENDER OPTIONS 528.1 Render options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528.2 Scene type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548.3 Frame numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

9 LIGHT CONTROL 579.1 Light types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589.2 Converting materials to lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609.3 IES lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

10 CAMERA CONTROL 6410.1 Selecting the rendering camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6410.2 Shallow depth of field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6410.3 Exposure controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6410.4 Film Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

11 Reality’s log files 66

12 How to contact us 67

13 Updating Lux 68

CONTENTS iii

14 Known issues 69

15 Acknowledgements 70

16 More Reality resources 72

A Network rendering 73

B Fireflies and render noise 74

C Reality plug-in software license 75

List of Figures

2.1 Calling Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.2 The Registration window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.3 The Manual registration window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.4 Location of LuxRender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.1 Sun Vertical in the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.2 Vertical Sun - Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.3 Horizontal Sun in the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153.4 Horizontal Sun - result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.5 The Reality lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.6 Mesh Light adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.7 Conversion to Linear without exposure adjustment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.8 Reducing the shutter time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233.9 Closing the iris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233.10 Adjusting the film sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.1 The Material Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264.2 The Texture Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274.3 Changing the type of texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274.4 The Gear menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.5 Image map loaded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294.6 Rock texture applied to the sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304.7 The Reality Dockable Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

7.1 Material Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397.2 The Modifiers tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407.3 A glass sphere without thin-film coating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467.4 Glass sphere with thin film coating. Thickness at 200nm, IOR at 1.5 . . . . 467.5 Normal map flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

9.1 Simple lighting with top mesh light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579.2 Adding reflectors to bounce the light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589.3 More details visible without adding lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

iv

LIST OF FIGURES 1

Chapter 1

Welcome

2

CHAPTER 1. WELCOME 3

Thank you for purchasing Reality for Poser; we hope that you will have fun using it.

Reality is a plug-in for Poser that connects Poser with LuxRender, the Open Source physically-based, unbiased rendering engine. This makes it possible for Poser artists to use an incrediblearray of features from Lux that can bring very high levels of realism to your scenes.

Reality is designed to not just export your Poser scene to Lux but to enhance and simplifythe conversion in several ways.

Reality has intelligent conversion of skin materials to provide a zero-click SubSurface Scat-tering (SSS) configuration even for Poser materials that don’t include SSS. Reality’s skinmaterial gives you incredibly realistic skin without the washed-out side-effects of other con-verters.

The Reality Material Editor is a fully-featured shader editor that provides all the power ofa professional shader editor without using a node system. Its interface is based on a modernUser Interface design that promotes productivity and artist-oriented workflow.

Reality 3 features at a glance:

• A wide selection of physically-based materials like: Skin, Water, Glass, Velvet, Glossy,Metal, Fog, Mirror, etc. These materials are adjustable within the Reality User Inter-face (UI) to create an infinite variety of materials.

• Single-light, physically-based Sun light with indirect lighting, caustics, etc.

• Spotlights, mesh-based lights, and point lights that can be used to simulate any real-life lighting fixture.

• Image Based Lighting that uses real HDR images.

• GPU Acceleration.

• Lighting can be changed while the image is rendering. Render status is saved auto-matically and can be stopped and resumed at a later time.

• Material preview right inside the Reality UI. For some materials, such as V4’s Lipsand Eyes, a special “shape” preview is provided that gives a more accurate version ofthe final result.

• Automatic conversion of Poser’s materials to Reality/Lux.

• Volumetric fog.

• Network rendering. Render nodes can be running Mac OS, Windows or Linux, makingit possible to create low-cost renderfarms.

• Rendering runs independently from Poser. You can continue working on your scenewhile the rendering runs.

• Multi-core support, 32 and 64 bit support for Mac OS and Windows.

CHAPTER 1. WELCOME 4

• Presets for dozens of materials from real-life measured data. For example, Realityincludes all the Index Of Refraction presets from real glass, water at different temper-atures, the human cornea, gemstones, gasses, and others. These presets can be usedto create realistic effects of light passing through, for example, a ruby or a diamond.

Chapter 2

INSTALLING REALITY

2.1 Requirements

To use Reality for Poser you must have Poser 9 or Poser Pro 2012 with the Service Release 3(SR3) installed. If you have Poser 9/Pro 2012, but you don’t have the SR3 update installedplease go to the Smith Micro’s website and download that update. Without the SR3 updateReality cannot run.

Reality does all the conversion and editing of materials and light parameters. When it’stime to render, that task is performed by LuxRender. Before using Reality for the first timeyou need to download and install LuxRender. LuxRender is Open Source Software and itcan be downloaded from the LuxRender website1.

2.2 Installation

Reality runs on both Mac OS and Windows (32 and 64 bit versions). When you purchaseReality you will receive a zipfile that contains the program, ready to be installed. You willalso received a serial number to register and activate Reality.

In the zipfile you will also find the Readme document.

Installation of Reality is simple:

• Unzip the zipfile for your OS. This is how to select the right one:

– Reality_3_for_Poser_Mac.zip is the Macintosh version. It has a universal appthat runs either at 32 or 64 bits, depending on what version of Mac OS you have.

– Reality_3_for_Poser_w32.zip is the version that works with Windows at 32bits.

– Reality_3_for_Poser_w64.zip is the version that works with Windows at 64bits.

1http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download

5

http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download

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CHAPTER 2. INSTALLING REALITY 6

• Once the archive is unzipped you will find a folder called Reality in the folder whereyou unzipped the archive.

• Copy that folder into the addons folder of Poser. The location of the addons folder is:

– For Mac OS: [Folder where you have Poser installed]/Runtime/Python/addons– For Windows: [Folder where you have Poser installed]\Runtime\Python\addons

For example, on a Mac you should have, after the copy, “/Applications/Poser Pro 2012/Runtime/Python/addons/Reality”, if Poser is installed in the “/Applications/Poser Pro2012” folder

The following two videos show how to install Reality on your computer. For the Macintoshinstallations click here2. For the Windows installation click here3.

After the installation of the main program is done you will need to install the Reality Lightsand Props, also know as the Reality add-ons.

The Reality add-ons are a series of lights and props made to help you get the most out ofReality and LuxRender. You can install the Reality add-ons like any other Poser Runtimeaddition, either by merging it with your existing Runtime or by saving it in a separatedirectory and then adding that directory to your Poser library.

2.3 Installing LuxRender

Reality is the connection between Poser and LuxRender, the renderer used to render photo-realistic scenes. Therefore you need to install LuxRender before you can work with Reality.

LuxRender is Open Source, which means that it doesn’t cost you anything. You can down-load LuxRender from:

[http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download](http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download)

There are versions for both Mac OS and Windows. The Macintosh version is delivered as auniversal binary which runs on both 32 and 64 bit systems. If you use Windows you havethe choice of selecting either the 32-bit or 64-bit version. In addition you can select eitherthe OpenCL (please note that this is not OpenGL) or the non-OpenCL version.

OpenCL is a technology that allows a program to use the GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)to execute instructions in parallel. This technology can dramatically speed up rendering.To know if you have an OpenCL-enabled GPU please contact the GPU manufacturer.

The Macintosh has OpenCL support built into the Operating System.2http://youtu.be/Ax7yAcnkemc3http://youtu.be/UQIs5g-8-U8

http://youtu.be/Ax7yAcnkemc

http://youtu.be/UQIs5g-8-U8

http://youtu.be/Ax7yAcnkemc

http://youtu.be/UQIs5g-8-U8


Please note: the Windows installer of LuxRender might mention some installable scripts.Unless you use Blender 3D, a 3D modeling application, you must uncheck the installationof these scripts. These files are not related to Reality or Poser.

2.4 Registering Reality

Reality must be registered before using it. This process is simple, quick, and it will take justa minute of your time. Once it’s done the program will work without further requirements.

You call Reality from inside Poser, using the Render menu. Click on the Render | Reality

Render Editor menu to call the program.

Figure 2.1: Calling Reality

We have done our best to make the registration system as easy as possible. Here’s how itworks.

The first time that you run Reality you will be prompted to register the program. Theregistration requires four elements to be entered:

• Your first name

• Your last name

• Your order number

• Your serial number

Some of our distributors might call the serial number a “license code.” It’s the same thing.If you have purchased Reality via the Prêt-à–3D website you will need to enter the samename as reported in the email that you have received after the purchase.


2.5 Automatic Registration

The easiest way to complete the registration is to use the Automatic mode, which sendsthe registration data via Internet. Please note that there is no requirement for Reality tohave an Internet connection in order to work normally. The Internet connection is just foryour convenience, to make the registration simple and quick.

So, with your Internet-connected computer you can enter the four pieces of data describedabove plus your email address. You can decide to also receive notifications from Prêt-à–3Dabout updates for Reality or other relevant information. Please note that we don’t spamour customers and we keep our mailing list strictly confidential.

This is the registration window:

Figure 2.2: The Registration window

Please note that the name must appear exactly how it is in your invoice or the registrationprocess will fail. Rest assured that the information given is kept strictly confidential and isnot shared with anybody.

2.6 Manual registration

If, for any reason, you cannot use a computer with Internet connection available then there isan alternative system for registering your copy of Reality. You need to fill out the form aboveas usual and then press the Manual button. Another page will show you the instructionson how to complete the registration manually.

You will need to go to a web page using another computer, smartphone or tablet. The URL


for the page is shown on the screen. The page provides a form to enter exactly the samedata that you have in the registration window of Reality. Once that is done you will receivean activation code via email. Enter the activation code in the window:

Figure 2.3: The Manual registration window

After that you just need to press the Save button and you will get a confirmation messageabout the registration. If anything happens that prevents the registration to finish success-fully please send an email to [email protected] with a screenshot of your registrationwindow. We take care of any issue generally in a few minutes after we read the email.

2.7 Unregistering Reality

If, for any reason, you need to remove the registration for your copy of Reality you can dothat from the Help menu. This is how it’s done:

• Run Reality

• From the Help menu of the program select “Unregister Reality”

• You will be asked to confirm the operation

• If you confirm the unregistering of Reality the program will erase its registrationinformation and then close


2.8 Configuring Reality to use Lux

Since Reality has to call LuxRender to do the actual rendering it’s important that thelocation for Lux is configured correctly. Lux is included in the installer for Reality but ifyou have it already installed on your system, or you installed it in a custom location, youneed to tell Reality where the renderer is. First, check that LuxRender runs correctly onyour system. To do this, locate in which directory it is installed and run the program calledLuxRender (on Mac OS) or luxrender.exe (on Windows). If the program starts, close itand take note of the location. If there is a problem, check your installation and possiblyre-install Lux.

Important!

Note that Reality requires LuxRender version 1.2 or higher. Older versions are not supportedand will cause problems.

• From inside Poser use the menu Render|Reality Render Editor to call Reality.

In the Render tab click on the Renderer option and set the location of LuxRender by clickingon the “Change” button and navigating to the directory where LuxRender is installed. Theversion of Lux is verified and displayed above the LuxRender path.

Figure 2.4: Location of LuxRender

2.9 Re-download Reality

You can download Reality at any time by using the “Support” menu of our website4

4http://www.preta3d.com

http://www.preta3d.com



If you ever need to re-download the program you will need your serial number, so make sureto have that information handy.

Chapter 3

USING REALITY

3.1 Quick-start

When using a new program we are always eager to see what it can do quickly, withoutspending time reading long documentation. Follow these simple steps to get a sample ofhow to use Reality and obtain your first great render with Lux.

• Make sure that you have installed and registered Reality as explained in the instruc-tions.

• Make sure that you have installed LuxRender and configured Reality to find it.

Here is a video that shows how to get started with Reality and Lux: Getting Started withReality 31

You can follow this workflow to create your first scene with Reality:

• Create a simple scene in Poser with one character posed.

• Add the Reality Mesh Light to the scene.

• In the Lights tab of Reality disable all lights except for the Mesh Light.

• From the Poser menu select Render | Reality Render Editor. The Reality pro-gram will be launched. Reality is a stand-alone program which communicates withPoser. You can leave Reality running and switch back to Poser to continue editingyour scene. At any time you can switch back to Reality using the OS task switcher orby clicking on the Render menu option again. If Reality is already running the menuaction will bring the program in foreground.

• Make sure that you don’t use GPU acceleration.

• Important: do not enter any value in the “Max Samples” field. That is only foranimation purpose. Leave at 0.

1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKexUCXY53M

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CHAPTER 3. USING REALITY 13

• Click on the Render tab and click on the “Render Frame” button.

• Watch as your scene is rendered by Lux. Lux does not stop automatically; it con-tinuously refines the image until you decide to stop it. When you decided that thequality of the image is satisfactory you simply close Lux. The image will be saved inthe location specified in the Output options. By default the image is rendered to afile called reality_scene.png which is saved in your Documents folder.

Now that you have done your first render you can explore all the other great features offeredby Reality.

3.2 Rendering workflow

The workflow for using Reality is simple. The basic steps are:

• Create the scene. First you create your scene in Poser as you would normally.Don’t spend too much time setting the materials in Poser as you will be doing all thefine-tuning in Reality. Setting the basic textures for characters and props is generallyall that you have to do.

• Add your lighting. While you become familiar with the Reality way of working,use one or more Mesh Lights. The Mesh Light is provided in the “Reality Add-ons”archive that you received with the program. It should have been installed as anyRuntime addition. Once the add-ons are installed you should find them in the PoserLibrary. Click on the Light selector and find the Reality folder. In there is the MeshLights light. Double click to add it to your scene. A mesh light generally provides avery nice, diffuse light that projects soft shadows. It produces a pleasant result withvery little of work. Please note that Poser will not recognize the Reality mesh lightas a light so you will not see the effect of it in the Poser preview. Simply orient thefront of the Mesh light to point in the direction you want the light to shine. If youneed sunlight simply add the Sun light provided with Reality.

• Run Reality. After you’re done setting up the lights, launch Reality. You can launchReality by clicking on the Reality Render Editor option in Poser’s Render menu.When invoked, Reality will recognize the lighting you added. For example if youadded the Sun light, it will configure a lighting system for Lux that includes the Sunlight and the sky. Keep in mind that the angle of the sunlight will determine its look.For example, if the sun is directly overhead (zero degrees), is down at a sharp angle(between 0 to 30 degrees), it will be interpreted as midday sun. On the other hand,if you make the sunlight almost horizontal (60 to 90 degrees), Lux will interpret itas the sun at sunrise or sunset, and therefore the light will have a distinctive orangeshift.

Figure 4.1 shows a scene with a temple and the sun, a Poser Infinite Light, positioned almostvertically.


Figure 3.1: Sun Vertical in the scene

Figure 3.2: Vertical Sun - Result


And we can see the result in figure 4.2.

Now, we can simply rotate the Sun light to be almost horizontal. See figure 4.3.

Figure 3.3: Horizontal Sun in the scene

By doing that we not only get a different angle in the light, but also a different quality ofthe light, it shifts to orange, as you would expect to see at sunset or sunrise, when the sunis closer to the horizon. Figure 4.4 shows the result.

• Modify. The Reality UI provides full control over the final result of the render. Youcan modify the type of materials used for each material zone defined in Poser andfine-tune all the parameters involved.

• Render. For your first render simply click on the “Render frame” button. When youdo that Reality exports the Poser scene to a series of files on disk using the LuxRenderformat and then calls Lux to render that scene (see the Render tab for setting the filenames for the LuxRender scene and for the image file). In just a few seconds you willsee the LuxRender window appear.

Lux renders a scene in a different fashion than the Poser built-in renderer. Instead of startingfrom the first line at the top and then progressing toward the bottom of the image, Luxrenders the whole image in one pass, which usually takes a few seconds. This first renderis very coarse but it gives an overall idea of the result. In a few seconds Lux will refine theimage and the cycle continues until you quit Lux. Lux saves your file automatically todisk, using the PNG format by default. You can change the location and name of the file


Figure 3.4: Horizontal Sun - result

in the Reality Render tab. Lux saves the file at intervals established in the Advanced tab ofReality. When you quit the program the latest version of the render is saved automatically.

3.3 The Refine Brush tool

Occasionally there can be scenes that have areas that take longer than others to be free of“noise”. This is usually happening in parts of the scene where there is low light or wherethe light’s path can be obstructed. For those situations LuxRender has a handy tool: therefine brush.

If you want to instruct LuxRender to focus on areas of the image that have higher levels ofnoise follow these simple steps:

• In LuxRender click on the Refine Brush tab

• The image is shown with the white overlay. You can increase the transparency of thatoverlay with the Overlay opacity slider.

• Paint with your cursor over the areas that have noise. Be conservative in your paint.

• Click on the Apply button

• Click back on the Imaging tab


This procedure will instruct LuxRender to spend more time refining the painted areasinstead of equally sampling all pixels in the scene. Once those areas have caught up withthe rest of the scene it’s a good idea to go back to the Refine Brush tab and click on theReset button.

3.4 The Reality Add-ons

Reality comes with a set of lights and props to help you get the most out of your scenes.

Mesh Lights

Mesh lights are the most flattering and flexible lights that you can use with LuxRender. Forthis reason Reality includes a great Mesh Light prop that is designed to give you excellentcontrol on the quality and position of the light.

In the Lights section of the Poser Library you can find the Reality lights. There are twoMesh Lights: one that is positioned by default in a position suitable for portraits. The otheris automatically placed on top of the default location for figures.

The Reality Mesh Light has controls to set its softness with ease. Simply select the lightin the scene and look in the Parameters tab. You can turn the light sharp by setting theSharp dial to 1. Or you can make the light very soft with the, aptly named, VerySoft dial.The light comes in the scene by default set as Soft. This gives you a very pleasant lightthat has visible soft shadows.

The Pan, Tilt and Roll dials rotate the light along its axes and they help you in setting thedirection of the light very easily. The Reality Mesh Lights work well with the “Point at”function of Poser.

Sun light

Reality also includes a Sun light. Unlike the mesh lights, when you add the Sun light it willreplace all the Poser lights in the scene, if you double-click on the icon. The exceptions arethe Reality mesh lights since they are actual props and not Poser lights. If you want to addthe sun without removing previous lights drag and drop the light into your scene, insteadof double-click on it.

The Sun is a physically-accurate Sun light that also produces a sky. Reality exports theSun and the sky as separate lights that can be adjusted in Lux while rendering the image.

Studio Cubed

Studio Cubed is a model that simulates a photographer’s studio. This model has beendeveloped by John Hinton, aka Dumor3d at Dumor3D.com2 and kindly provided to Realityartists for free (Thank you John for letting us include this great prop in Reality!)

2Dumor3D.com

Dumor3D.com

Dumor3D.com


Figure 3.5: The Reality lights

Figure 3.6: Mesh Light adjustments


The advantage of using Studio Cubed is immediately having an enclosed environment thatbounces light in a very flattering and realistic way. The walls of Studio Cubed are UV-mapped and identified by separate materials so you can apply any photo or image to creategreat backgrounds with ease.

In the Materials category of the Poser Library you can find a series of materials to hide orshow sections of Studio Cubed.

3.5 The render never stops

If you are not familiar with Lux, the above heading might seem a bit odd. Lux works bycollecting light samples in a endless cycle. The renderer doesn’t make the decision for youabout when to stop; you stop the renderer when you are satisfied with the image. Manydifferent factors can determine the time required for a satisfactory render. When you closeLux, the rendered image is saved on disk, in the image file that you have specified in theOutput tab of Reality. In addition, Lux automatically saves the image every three minuteswhile rendering.

3.6 When is the right time to stop Lux?

Given that Lux doesn’t stop automatically at an arbitrary point, you might wonder whenit is the right time to stop the render. The short answer is “when it’s good enough foryou.” Until you gain more practice with Lux it’s impossible to give an answer to what is theacceptable level of quality, expressed in time. Each pass in the rendering process doesn’tjust refine the “grain” of the image but it adds quality to the light that is simulated. Forexample, glass reflections will look more realistic, and subtle sheens in the materials willcatch elements from the surrounding objects.

The status bar of Lux provides some good metrics to judge the render. The section marked“Statistics” lists a series of numbers. Look at the one labeled “S/px”, as in “2422 S/px.”That is the number of “samples per pixel” and it’s a good indicator of the overall quality ofthe image. Depending on the scene the image might be considered finished at 500 spx orat higher values, like around 2,000–3,000 samples per pixel. Experience will show you theright value. Keep in mind that even when the image is free of noise the longer you let itrender the better it becomes, because Lux adds subtle reflections and light effects that addrealism beyond the simple clarity of image.

3.7 The exported scene files

Reality performs its task by reading all the information about the Poser scene and thengenerating a scene file using the Lux language. After the scene file is created, Reality then


calls Lux and points the program to the scene file generated. Rendering starts as soon asthe scene file is read, the rendering image will appear on screen, and this image will beautomatically saved to disk.

The location and name of the scene file, ending in extension .lxs, is specified in the Outputtab. You can change the name and the location to anything you want. By default Reality willplace the file in your Desktop folder and will call the generated scene file reality_scene.lxs.The image rendered by Lux is saved automatically to a PNG file, by default, and the nameand location of that file is also specified in the Output tab, just below the name of the scenefile.

By default the image file is also placed in the Desktop folder and it’s called reality_scene.png.Please note that the extension is not specified in the name because it is defined by the filetype. You can save a rendered image in PNG, OpenEXR (.exr) or Targa Format (.tga).

3.8 Best practices for exporting your scene

Hide what you don’t see

LuxRender performs very demanding operations because it uses real-world mathematicalmodels for calculating the effects of light and the behavior of materials. While often it’s agood idea to render off-camera objects, many times you will save a considerable amount oftime and memory by not exporting part of your scene.

For example, many scenes that use the DAZ human figures, like Victoria or Michael, posethe models with their mouths closed. In that situation hiding the teeth, tongue and gumssaves you hundreds of polygons during the export, polygons that will not be rendered butthat will require memory for the geometry, the materials, the UV maps, etc. Save yourselfsome render time by hiding them before rendering.

Keep it simple

After you use Reality and Lux for a while you will get a sense of how things work and whatto expect. Until you get there, keep your scene simple. Load a simple scene, a few props, anda human figure. Add just one mesh light. Render the scene at a low resolution, somethingaround 800x450. This will likely give you a very quick result and a way of checking thatyour system works with Reality and Lux. From there increase the complexity gradually. Ina short amount of time you will develop the skills to recognize the different scenarios andhow to optimize Reality for them.

3.9 Saving your Reality settings

Reality saves all your material configurations and other settings inside your Poser sceneautomatically. Once you save the Poser file your Reality configuration is saved. When youreload that scene in Poser all the Reality settings will be loaded automatically.


3.10 Tonemapping

After you play with Lux a little bit you will notice some controls in the main render window.The topmost is called “Tonemapping.” Tonemapping is very important in making thingswork the way you want, and in achieving the look that you desire.

Unlike Firefly and many other renderers, Lux calculates the light values using full spectra.This means that when it calculates the light amount for a given pixel Lux has the real valueand not some number that has been clamped down to stay in the RGB limits of what ourmonitors can show. Light in the real world has wavelengths that go beyond what the humaneye can see. Photographic film has a more limited ability to capture light values than whatour eyes can see. Computer monitors have an even more limited range of light values thatthey can display.

If Lux was going to render a light value that was based on what your monitor can “see”then the fidelity of the information would be seriously compromised. Instead, Lux usesthe full spectrum of light, and the tonemapper uses an algorithm to convert those internallight values to what we can see on the computer. As it turns out there are a few differenttonemapping possibilities, but for Reality we will focus on just two: AutoLinear and Linear.

3.11 AutoLinear

Think of your scene as something that you can capture with a photographic camera. As youdecide what camera you should use you have two choices: point-and-shoot “all automatic,”or state-of-the-art DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) with full manual control.

Point-and-shoot cameras nowadays are pretty good and deliver nice pictures. You point thecamera at the scene, click the button, and you get a nice picture that is correctly exposed, infocus, and with good colors. However, if you tried to take a picture of somebody in front ofa window you know that there are limitations to what those cameras can do. Neverthelessthey get the job done in a very good way and without your involvement in things like shutterspeed, film ISO and aperture.

AutoLinear is your point-and-shoot camera. It works well for many situations, includingscenes that have sun and spotlights, but it averages the light intensity in the scene in orderto find a good balance, and consequently things are not always exposed correctly. If a lightis visible in the scene Autolinear will seriously underexpose the scene and you might evenend up with a pitch black image with a bright spot, the light, in it. If that happens thenit’s time to switch to Linear.

3.12 Linear

Linear is the best tonemapper and it gives you full control over the final aspect of theimage. You can dynamically change the exposure to achieve overexposed/underexposedeffects without re-rendering your scene, and the result is usually shown in a second or less.Linear works like a manual camera. The parameters to adjust are:


• Film ISO. This is also known as film speed. Higher values mean faster film, faster filmmeans that the “film” is more sensitive to light. If your scene looks dark then changethis parameter first and see if you gain some definition. Lux sets Sensitivity to 50 bydefault while Reality changes it to 200 when using mesh lights.

• Exposure. This is equivalent to the speed of the “shutter” of a camera, and is usuallyexpressed in a fraction of a second. 1/60, 1/125 or 1/250 of a second are normalvalues. For a night scene with very faint light you might want to try an exposure of1 full second.

• f-stop. This is the aperture of the “iris” in your camera. Lower numbers mean wideraperture and more light hitting the “film.” Generally each f-stop number is half thelight of the previous one. For example f4.0 gives you half the light of f2.8.

[Expand][Provide more examples of how to set up the exposure ]

3.13 Converting from AutoLinear to Linear

When you change a tonemapper from AutoLinear to Linear, it can sometimes seem thatyou have done something wrong. Where did the image go?

Figure 3.7: Conversion to Linear without exposure adjustment

If you look at the tonemapper parameters, in this example, you’ll see that we have a fullexposure of 1 second and the iris wide open at f2.8. The scene that I’m trying to renderis a daylight scene and if you used that kind of aperture and exposure with a real camerayou would end up with something overexposed like that as well. So, lets first change theexposure to something more reasonable like 1/250 of a second. Even with the aperture atf2.8 we can immediately see the difference. See fig. 4.8.

OK, we are on the right path. Next let’s change the aperture (f/stop) to something a littlemore appropriate. See fig. 4.9


Figure 3.8: Reducing the shutter time

Figure 3.9: Closing the iris


At f8.0 we have 1/8 of the light that we were getting before and now almost everythingis exposed correctly. Just for the heck of it, let’s see what happens when we increase thesensitivity to 80. See fig. 4.10.

Figure 3.10: Adjusting the film sensitivity

That looks good. Even though a couple of spots might be a tad overexposed, I can adjustthe textures to compensate for that.

3.14 Stopping and resuming renders

Lux allows you to stop and resume your renders at any time. This is an optional featurewhich is disabled by default in Lux but Reality enables it for all scenes that it generates.The feature is based on the creation of a “film” file, a file that keeps track of the status ofLux at any point in the process. The file has the same name of your image file but withthe extension “.flm”. You can stop a Reality-created render at any time, and close Lux. Torestart the render from where it stopped:

• Launch Lux directly, outside Reality.

• Select the File/Resume FLM menu option.

• Lux will first ask you for the .lxs file. Select the scene file.

• Lux then will ask you for the .flm file, and again make your selection.

• In a few seconds you will see the render resume from where it was stopped and continuethe refining process.

Chapter 4

THE REALITY USER INTERFACE

4.1 The material editor

The heart of Reality is its material editor. With it you can modify the type and definitionof all materials recognized by Reality. This can be used to optimize the desired result or tocreate new materials from scratch.

The Reality material editor has been designed to be flexible, powerful and easy to use.It provides the same power that you can have from a node-based editor, but without thecomplexity of using nodes.

4.2 Material types

Every material in Reality has a specific type. The types available are:

• Skin

• Glossy

• Matte

• Glass

• Metal

• Velvet

• Cloth

• Null

• Mirror

• Water

Right at this point we can see already how Reality makes things easier from the start. Whenmaterials are of a given type there is no confusion about what to expect. A Metal material

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CHAPTER 4. THE REALITY USER INTERFACE 26

cannot have settings related to skin. A glass material will not have parameters that belongto metal or velvet.

Materials with types make it much easier to work and find the relevant parameters.

Channels

Each material is defined by channels and properties. A channel is where we attache textures.For example, the Glossy material has a Diffuse channel which defines the surface of thematerial. If we attach an image (aka image map) to that channel then the surface of thatmaterial will show that image.

Figure 4.1: The Material Editor

In the above image we can see the Diffuse, Specular, Top Coat, and Translucency channels.Each channel has a texture of type Color. The groups of three numbers are the RGB valuesfor the color selected in each texture.

We can edit the value of the texture or we can change the type of the texture altogether.For example, if we want to have an image for the diffuse channel, instead of a solid color,here is the simple procedure to do that:

Click on the color swatch in the Diffuse channel. The texture editor will show in the rightside of the window.

From the drop-down menu labelled “Texture type” select “Image Map”.


Figure 4.2: The Texture Editor

Figure 4.3: Changing the type of texture


The texture has been changed from Color to Image Map. Now we can select an image ofour liking. Now Click on the gear menu to show a menu that gives us the choice to Selecta new file.

Figure 4.4: The Gear menu

Navigate to an image file of your choice and confirm the selection. Once you do that youwill see the file in the preview field, below the name. You can also see the dimension, inpixels, of the file just below its preview.

If we run a render now we will see the the object attached to that material, in this case thestandard Poser sphere primitive, renders with a rocky surface. It’s not very credible butthis is just to show the workflow in modifying materials.

In Reality you don’t disconnect/reconnect nodes, you simply convert from one texture typeto another and Reality will carry over the relevant information.

4.3 Reality materials are independent

One of the great advantages of Reality is that it creates its own copies of materials distinctfrom Poser’s. In this way you can change types of material, and you can completely changethe properties of that material, without having to worry how that will affect your basematerials in Poser. This level of freedom, coupled with the simpler material editor, is veryconducive to creativity and experimentation.

For example, let’s say that you see some buttons on a garment and you are wondering ifthose would look good if they were turned to glass. You can convert the material to Reality’sGlass and do a quick render. If the result is not satisfactory then you can simply right-clickon the material and convert it back to the original. Like it never happened!


Figure 4.5: Image map loaded

4.4 Material sections

The Reality material editor groups properties of a material in a logical way to help youwork faster and with ease. These groups are handled by four tabs:

• The Material tab handles all the main properties of a material.

• The Alpha Channel tab handles the data that defines the Alpha Channel, also knownas the transparency.

• The Volumes tab is enabled for materials that can handle volumes. They are: Skin,Null, and Water. In that tab we can define the inner and outer volume for the material.See the section on Volumes (section 7.11) for more information.

• The Modifiers tab handles the use of Bump maps, Normals maps and Displacementmaps. It also manages the definition of subdivision, which is strictly connected withdisplacement.


Figure 4.6: Rock texture applied to the sphere

4.5 Converting materials

Reality does its best to guess what material type to use for each Poser material, but thetruth of the matter is that sometimes there is simply not enough information in the Posershader to make a good guess. That’s why machines cannot make art; the human touch isstill, fortunately, necessary.

There are many situations where it is necessary to convert a material from one type toanother. For example, a model might include windows and their material should be Glass.Since Poser doesn’t have a glass material Reality cannot know that that would be the rightselection and it will probably select Glossy as the type for that material.

To convert a material from one type to another simply select the material, right-click withthe mouse and select the new type from the menu.


4.6 The Light Editor

If we click on the Lights tab at the top of the Reality UI we enter the Light Editor. Lightsin Lux have properties that cannot be found in Poser and so this is the place where youcan define all the properties of lights used in your scene. Lights are directly linked to theirPoser equivalent. You cannot create or delete a light in Reality, you do that, as usual, inPoser.

In the Light Editor you can enable or disable lights independently from how they are inPoser.

4.7 The Camera Editor

The Camera Editor is where you select what camera you want to use for the rendering andhow that camera should behave.

The Camera Editor takes the list of cameras defined in Poser and presents them in a list. Bydefault the active camera in Poser is selected in the Camera Editor. As you switch cameraview in Poser the Reality Camera Editor changes its selection.

You can change this behavior by explicitly clicking on one camera name. In that wayReality will recognize that you want to render through the selected camera regardless ofwhat camera is active in Poser.

An asterisk after the focal length column marks what camera is currently active in Poser.

The exposure control panel can be used to set the desired exposure for each camera. If theexposure is not set explicitly then Reality will render the scene by selecting the Autolineartonemapper in LuxRender. Otherwise Reality will set the Linear tonemapper with theparameters that you set.

For animators

Setting a consistent exposure for all frames of an animation is fundamental, otherwise youcan end up with annoying flickering caused by the automatic adjustment of the exposuredone on each frame. If you set the exposure in the Camera Editor then all frames generatedvia Reality will have the same exposure.

4.8 The Volumes Editor

LuxRender includes a flexible, powerful volume system that controls how light behaves whenit moves through objects or the space in-between objects.

Typically, when creating a scene that uses volumetric rendering you create a set of mediumtypes, which are then assigned to the interior and exterior of objects in the scene. The


interior medium defines how light moves within the object, and the exterior medium defineshow light moves through the space between the object it just left and the next one itencounters.

The interior volume setting is primarily used to give absorption and internal scattering tothe object it is assigned to. In most cases you will create a separate medium for eachmaterial you want to have internal absorption and scattering effects with. The exteriorvolume setting is generally used to provide atmospheric effects, and is kept the same for allobjects in the scene.1

The Volumes tab in Reality allows you to create new volumes and to set up all the propertiesfor Lux volumes. You can then attach volumes to materials, assigning them for the inneror outer portion of a material.

4.9 Advanced settings

The Advanced tab controls certain aspects of how Reality behaves and how it sets defaultsfor new scenes.

Let’s see the values used in this tab one by one.

• Max material preview cached. When you work on materials Reality shows you apreview the material you are working on. To speed things up Reality keeps a certainnumber of materials in memory. This value determines how many material previewsare kept at any given time in memory (cache). The default is of five. Higher numberswill give you faster response from the program at the cost of a little more memoryused.

• Lux Display refresh interval. When Reality generates a LuxRender scene it sets howoften Lux should refresh its display. This value controls that interval.

• Lux write interval. This value determines how often Lux will save the rendered image.

• Ignore Infinite Lights. Infinite Lights (also known as Distant Lights) generally rendervery poorly in LuxRender. They are an artificial construction of biased renderers andare generally not useful at all with unbiased renderers like Lux. Since there are severalpre-made light sets designed for Poser that employ Infinite Lights, this setting is ahandy way to avoid having to remove those harsh lights.

• Convert Infinite Light to mesh lights. This is an alternative approach to using InfiniteLights. When this value is set Reality will convert the Infinite Lights to large meshlights floating above the scene. This approach removes the harshness of Infinite Lightswhile keeping the contribution of the light to the scene. Results can vary widely,depending on the setup. Nevertheless this flag can be easily turned on or off beforeexporting to compare the result of its influence.

1Extract from the LuxRender wiki page about volumes


• Convert Spot lights to mesh lights. This flag acts in a similar way to the one forInfinite Lights. A very small mesh light will be created in place of the spot. Thisoption will produce a more pleasant, less harsh light but the mesh light will not havethe characteristic spot cone. It will be just positioned and oriented in the same wayof the original spot. This flag can also be toggled on or off before exporting the sceneto Lux.

The second group of values is grouped under the label “Defaults for new scenes.” Thosevalues affect how Reality configures a new scene when it’s created inside Poser.

• Lux GPU acceleration On. If this value is enabled then the GPU acceleration will beenabled for all new scenes.

• Overwrite warning On. If this value is enabled Reality will ask you confirmationbefore overwriting the Lux scene file and the related rendered image, if they existbefore exporting the scene to LuxRender.

• OpenCL Group size. Some nVidia drivers have a bug that causes the image to becompletely black if the OpenCL group size is not set to 64. By setting this value youavoid having to set it for every new scene.

4.10 The dockable panel

Reality provides a convenient panel that can be docked in the Poser UI. This panel providesa bit of information about the objects handled by Reality and two convenient buttons:


Figure 4.7: The Reality Dockable Panel

The first button calls the Reality UI; it works like the option in the Render menu. Theother button, labelled Render Frame, does the same thing as the Render Frame button inthe Reality UI.

These two buttons can easily speed up your workflow.

You can dock the Reality Panel in any part of the Poser UI that you find convenient.

Chapter 5

POSER LIGHTING PRACTICES

5.1 Careful with those light sets

While Reality can easily convert any Poser light set it is important to understand why youshould avoid using light sets made for Poser.

The lighting model of the Firefly renderer and the one used by LuxRender are very, verydifferent and use completely different approaches. A typical light set from the Poser librarycan use an IBL light in conjunction with two-three Infinite Lights. Infinite lights are almostnever used in LuxRender. One single Infinite Light can cause severe over-lighting; two area recipe for disaster.

This is because in Lux indirect lighting is always present and there is no need to simulateit with infinite lights.

So, while you can use the Poser light sets, chances are that the result will not be pleasant.Here is a simple recipe to convert a light set to something that can work for you:

• Remove every Infinite light

• If the set contains an IBL light then keep it

• Replace every spot with small mesh lights

• Possibly replace every point light with mesh lights as well

In general you will find out that you will get better results and faster renders with a lightingsetup that is designed for Lux.

Using the Reality MeshLight gives you the best results.

35

Chapter 6

KEY CONCEPTS

6.1 Unbiased vs. biased renderers

LuxRender is a “physically-based,” “unbiased” renderer. If you are not familiar with theseterms, it’s worth spending a few seconds learning how they affect your work. Most renderingengines, including Firefly (the renderer of Poser), are biased.

What that means, in simple terms, is that you can drive the renderer to create effectsthat are not possible in real life. For example, in Poser you can arbitrarily decide if alight projects shadows and if the shadow is soft or hard. In real life, if you turn on alight, that light will cause shadows. You cannot change that. And if that light is small, incomparison to an object, the shadow will be sharp. If the light is large, like in the case of abig photographer’s softbox, the shadows will be soft. This is a law of physics that you canuse to your advantage, and these “physically based” behaviors are the basis of “unbiased”renderers like LuxRender.

6.2 Creating soft shadows with Reality

Remember, sharpness or softness of the shadows is not based on the brightness of the lightbut on the size. For example, the Sun is a very small light source in reference to peopleand even buildings. Of course we know that the Sun is several times the size of the Earth,but because of the distance it appears as a point in the sky. During a bright sunny dayshadows are sharp. If you were to create a Poser scene and decided to set the sun with softshadows, while visibly showing an outdoor, sunny day, that scene would look unrealistic.People might not know immediately what was the problem but they would perceive thatsomething was not quite right.

During an overcast day shadows are very faint, to the point of not being visible. That isbecause the layer of clouds between the Earth and the Sun diffuses the light and acts asa light source; a huge, all-covering, light source. Large light sources create soft shadows.The larger the light, the softer the shadow. If you want to create soft shadows in yourReality scene stay away from sunlight and spotlights and use a Mesh Light or a Soft box,both provided in the Reality add-ons. Any polygonal mesh can be turned into a mesh light

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CHAPTER 6. KEY CONCEPTS 37

but simple planes are usually the best option because they only have one face. When usinga mesh light each face/polygon is a light source and each light source will add more timeto your render. Unless you need very special shapes for the light source, the Mesh Lightadd-on will work perfectly.

If you need to use the Sun and want to have softer shadows, like during an overcast day,you can simulate that situation in Reality. Contrary to what many believe, “dimming” thesun doesn’t give soft shadows. Remember, the brightness of a light doesn’t determine thesharpness of the shadows, the size does.

• Place a diffuser (a simple plane primitive) between the Sun and your subject

• Set the material for the diffuser to be Glossy and enable the translucency

• Adjust the alpha (transparency) to add a little more transparency to the diffuser sothat a little more light passes through. Don’t overuse this, you just need a littletransparency.

This little trick, which is used every day in Hollywood productions, will give you soft lightand soft shadows while using the Sun.

Indirect lighting is always on

Light, in real life, bounces off objects and “touches” surrounding objects, picking up colorsand other characteristics. For example, light hitting a metal surface will be reflected quitestrongly and will light nearby objects. This is called indirect lighting. In Lux indirectlighting is always active and so your scene will require generally fewer lights than whenusing Poser’s built-in renderer.

6.3 Lights are visible

In many 3D applications, Poser included, it is possible to place a light in view of the cameraand then set it to be invisible during rendering. This is not possible in Lux, which is a verygood thing.

Hiding lights during rendering is a time-honored technique used by conventional renderersbecause it was often necessary to use several lights to simulate ambient light. Those lightsneeded to be placed in strategic points in the scene and they were often visible by thecamera. That trick is not necessary with Lux because indirect lighting is always “on” andit doesn’t require any additional light.

In aiming for realism we need to think like a photographer, and photographers can’t hidethe lights from the camera. If we were able to do that our brain would register that thereis something out of place in the image.

Photographers have learned to hide the lighting fixtures with a variety of tricks of the trade.In aiming to achieve realism we can do the same.

CHAPTER 6. KEY CONCEPTS 38

Chapter 7

REALITY’S MATERIALS

7.1 The Material Editor

The main component of the Reality UI is the material editor. Reality automatically convertsall the elements in your scene, like materials, lights and cameras to corresponding elementsin Lux. For example, a shiny object is converted to the Lux “Glossy” material, othersare converted to “Matte” and so on. Reality automatically recognizes the materials forDAZ’s Generation 3, 4, Miki 4, Alyson and other figures. For example, the face materialis converted to Skin and the cornea is converted to a Glass material with the Index OfRefraction (IOR) of a human cornea. Reality also generates Sub-Surface Scattering (SSS)settings for the skin of known models.

7.2 Editing materials

The following picture shows Reality’s Material editor after the plug-in has been invoked onthe Victoria 4 model:

Figure 7.1: Material Editor

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CHAPTER 7. REALITY’S MATERIALS 40

The Material list is ordered alphabetically by name, by default. You can reorder the columnsto your liking and you can sort by material name, owner, the model that holds the material,and by material type. This kind of organization makes it easy to find materials of thesame kind and to operate some transformations on them. When you select a material, thelower part of the window shows the properties of that material grouped in several tabs.For example, the Glossy material has three tabs: Glossiness/Specular, Alpha Channel, andModifiers. The Modifiers tab is common for most materials and contains the settings forbump/normal map, displacement map, subdivision and other geometry modification flags.

Figure 7.2: The Modifiers tab

If you don’t agree with Reality’s selection for a material (for example, if you want to changefrom Glossy to Matte), you can simply select a material, right-click on it, and select a newtype from the menu.

7.3 Changing multiple materials

Reality allows you to quickly change multiple materials with a single action. If you need tochange the type of multiple materials at once you can simply select all the materials affectedand then select a new type from the menu.

All selected materials will be changed to this new type. If you edited one material and youwant to apply those changes to a set of similar materials:

• Select the source material you’ve changed.

• Select “Copy” from the application’s menu.

• Select all the target materials.

• Select “Paste” from the application’s menu

All the settings from the source material will be copied to the targets except for the textures.This allows you, for example, to copy the skin settings from V4’s torso to V4’s limbs withoutlosing the textures in the target materials. If you also need to apply the textures, use the“Paste with texture” option instead.


7.4 Finding the right material

Here is a quick video that shows you how easy it is to find the material to edit even withlarge scenes containing dozens or hundreds of materials.

Video tutorial: how to find a material1

7.5 Multi-edit

Reality has support for multi-edit, the ability to edit one or more parameters for multipleselected materials. Simply select multiple materials either via Shift-Click or Cmd/Ctrl-Click(Cmd for Macintosh, Ctrl for Windows), and then change whatever parameter you want.For example, you can change the glossiness level of all selected materials.

7.6 Save your Scene

Reality saves its own data inside the Poser scene, so when you save it, all the Realitymaterials and configuration data are saved as well.

7.7 Reality materials are simpler

Don’t be alarmed that the rather long list of nodes that you see in the Poser Surfacewindow is not showing in the Reality Material Editor. Reality materials are defined bytheir characteristics, like being Velvet, Metal or Glass. Those characteristics in many casesinclude multiple parameters in a traditional renderer that may not be necessary for anunbiased renderer. For example, a Glass material needs opacity control in Poser, while thatis not necessary in Reality since Glass is by definition transparent. The alpha channel forGlass in Reality is only used to create irregular edges or holes in the material.So, the list of properties in Reality is in many cases different and generally simpler thanwhat you see with a biased renderer. It’s also easier to read because it maps properties ofreal-life materials.

7.8 See before you render: The Material Preview

When tweaking and adjusting a material it’s nice to be able to see how it will look withouthaving to wait for the whole scene to render. For this task there is the Material Preview.

1http://youtu.be/kDnO3pWeTt0

http://youtu.be/kDnO3pWeTt0

http://youtu.be/kDnO3pWeTt0


Reality works in the background and renders a preview of the material whenever you makea change – automatically and without waiting for the process to finish. This is a quickapproximation of your material mapped either to a sphere or a plane. The preview is closeto the final result but it’s not completely accurate, for reasons of speed. It will give youa good understanding of the material’s colors, textures, level of glossiness, and so forth.Nevertheless we constantly improve it and for Reality the glass preview is closer to the finalresult than before.

When making materials for such important areas of human models like lips, face and eyes,you have a third option for the preview: Shape. Shape gives you a stylized pair of lips, asimplified face and a stylized eye to help you see more precisely the effect of your material.These shapes are all mapped to reflect the real model so that textures project as expected.Reality introduces the Face shape for the first time.

Another great feature of the Material Preview is that the previews are persistent: if youselect another material and then come back to the original material, the preview will beshown immediately without re-rendering it. The number of previews cached is limited.By default Reality will cache five previews. You can change this number, setting it upto twenty, in the Advanced tab. Reality also detects automatically the Shape preview forcertain materials. When previewing the lips or face materials of DAZ figures Reality willautomatically select the “Shape” preview.

7.9 Resetting materials to the original state

Sometimes things don’t go in the direction that we want. After tweaking a material for afew minutes you might find yourself in a situation where you would rather start again fromthe beginning, from the original material that was imported by Reality from Poser. In thiscase you can simply right-click on a material and then select to convert it to any kind. Ifyou select to “convert it” to the same kind it is, for example Glossy, the original definitionof the material, as converted from Poser, will be reloaded.

7.10 Reality material reference

Reality provides access to most of LuxRender’s materials. Reality materials are designed toprovide all the advantages of using Lux’s physics-based materials but without the complexitygenerally found when using renderers of this kind. Lux materials, and therefore Reality’s,are defined by a series of properties and textures. What Lux calls “textures” other systemscall “nodes.”

For example, the Poser material editor uses a wide array of nodes to define its materials.The term node is a bit vague and it refers more to the way information is stored in thecomputer’s memory than to what it represents. Lux’s use of the word texture is moreaccurate. A texture is not just an image stretched over a surface. A texture is anythingthat generates a visual pattern or image.

A brick node, common in many 3D apps, generates a brick pattern. We are correct in callingthat function a “brick texture” and that is exactly how it’s called in LuxRender.


Reality allows you edit and create most of LuxRender’s textures. Some of those textureswill be the result of the conversion process from the original Poser’s materials. Others canbe defined by you from scratch by using the powerful Reality Texture Editor.

Each texture is shown in the material editor in a small rectangular area called the “TexturePreview.” Clicking in the texture preview itself will open the texture in the Texture Editor,where you can change the properties of the texture or even convert it to a whole new type.

Next to the texture preview there is a gear menu where you can select a few of other features.When clicking on the gear button a menu will be shown providing the following options:

• Use existing. This option allows you to select an existing texture for the channel thatyou are editing. This is called “linking to a texture.” For example, you can define atexture for the bump map channel and then link to it from the displacement channel.Any modification done to that texture will be reflected in all channels using it.

• Unlink. This option allows you to unlink a channel from an existing texture. Theoption is not always available for every channel. If you see it greyed-out it means thatthe channel doesn’t support the unlinking of textures.

• Edit. This is the same of clicking on the texture preview: it loads the texture in theeditor.

Glossy

One of the most widely used materials, it can be used for things like plastic, glossy paper,semi-glossy stone, leaves, and even human skin.

Glossy has the following channels:

• Diffuse. This channel defines the base color or texture of the material.

• Specular. This channel is usually set to a color of an image map and it defines theamount of light reflected by the material and its color. The brightness of the colordetermines how much light is reflected. High values of brightness cause the materialto reflect more light. For best results the brightness should not be past the midpointor it will result in unrealistic results and possible generation of Fireflies (Appendix B)or high amount of render noise that will take longer to resolve.

• Glossiness. This channel controls the amount of glossiness, or how shiny a material is.This is the effect of polishing a surface until it’s very smooth. Glossiness is expressedas a number, from 0 (dull) to 10,000 (mirror finish). A texture can also be used tocontrol the level of glossiness at any point in the surface.

• Top coat. This channel controls the definition of the coat of the material. A Glossymaterial is basically a Matte material with a shiny coat on top, as if the materialhas been covered with a coat of varnish. The Coat parameter allows you to controlthat coat and will result in a “glaze” on top of the material. The color parameter


controls the translucent color of the coat. The thickness parameter, by default at 0.3,determines how visible the coat is. Higher values will make the coat more prominent.

• Translucency. This channel allow you to make the material translucent. The texturein the channel determines how translucent a material is. Brighter color cause moretranslucency.

• Surface Fuzz. This property is used to access the “Asperity” option of Lux. It adds asurface scattering of the glossiness. This effect works best with high values of glossinessand can be used to create velvet-like materials. It’s extremely effective for human skinwhen combined with a specular map.

Matte

As the name implies, the Matte material has the purpose of helping define surfaces thathave no specularity. Only the Diffuse tab is unique to the Matte material. In it you canfind a diffuse color and texture. In addition you can adjust the roughness of this material.

Similar to the Glossy material there is also a translucency channel. It works in exactly thesame way.

The “Over-exposure limiter” flag helps in avoiding having the texture for the translucentmaterial being “blown out” when a light is placed behind the translucent object. Also notethat you can use the Alpha channel to control the opacity of the translucent material tomake it partially transparent and let it pass more light through.

Glass

Glass is a simulation of real glass and it can create near-photographic results. Glass ismainly defined by the Reflection and Transmission parameters and the Index Of Refraction(IOR). Reality includes dozens of IOR presets measured from real materials. For example, ifyou want to render an emerald you can find the exact IOR for it, 1.56, under the Gemstonespreset group. The IOR does not change the color of the material, which needs to be modifiedmanually. Glass has three tabs: Glass, which defines the glass characteristics, and the usualAlpha Channel and Modifiers tabs.

The parameters for Glass are:

• Reflection. The color or texture of the reflections on the surface of the material. Thespecular color from Poser is imported in this channel but it’s usually best to changeit to an off-white (250,250,250 for example). The higher this number is, the morereflective the glass is. If you want to create the effects of a glass pane that has beencoated with an anti-glare treatment, use a low Reflection value, like 42,42,42.


• Transmission. The color or texture that the glass will have and consequently theamount of light that will pass through the material. Poser’s diffuse color is applied tothis channel. If you want to create a green glass bottle this is where the green will beconfigured. This is the color that the light will pick up when traversing the glass. Forneutral glass, like windows or car windshields, you should set it to white. For LaraCroft’s sunglasses a nice shade of orange will do. If you convert the texture to use anImage Map you can achieve a plethora of stunning effects, including stained glass andlight gels. If the texture washes out because of the light going through it, mix it witha dark gray color, like 20, 20, 20.

• Architectural. Glass is computationally expensive so if the object is small and at adistance, or if you don’t need absolute accuracy for it, enabling this parameter willspeed things up while maintaining the basic characteristics of glass like being reflectiveand transparent. The refraction deformation will be less visible.

• Volumetric. Lux 0.7 introduced volumetric glass, a material that transforms lightbased on its volume. What this means is that the thickness of the glass in the modelaffects the final result of how it’s painted on the image. Also, light is affected whenpassing through the glass and it creates colored shadows. Volumetric is basically theopposite of “Architectural” and that’s why the two options are mutually exclusive. InReality 2 this was called “Hyper-realistic.”

• Frosted. This flag creates Frosted Glass, or rough glass. When enabled, the Roughnessslider will be activated. Higher values of roughness make the glass appear more andmore as if it was “sand blasted.”

• Thin film thickness. This value allows you to define a glass material with a film coatthat is expressed in nanometers. Optical instruments, like a camera lens, are oftencoated with a thin film to reduce the glare caused by direct bright light like the sun.This coat can show as an iridescent “film” when seen at a certain angle. A goodstarting value for this parameter can be 200nm.

The images below show what a glass sphere looks like without and with thin-film coating.

• Thin film IOR. This is the Index Of Refraction of the thin film. Different IORs willcreate different colors in the film. For this IOR you can try 1.0 and move from thereto see the shift of iridescence in the coat. When converting glass from a Poser materialyou need to keep an eye on a couple of issues. Poser simulates glass via a transparencymap or opacity value. Both these options should be avoided in Reality. If you converta material to Glass check immediately if it has an alpha map. If so, erase the filename or the resulting material will be too “thin” and transparent. Also check that theOpacity value should be 1.0. Also check the texture in the Transmission channel ofthe Glass. Some textures in Poser are designed to create a certain coloration in thesimulated material. Unless the transmission texture has a real image, you are betteroff by removing it and using the transmission color instead. If the texture has a sortof painting, like the images found on stained glass, then it will be OK to leave it inplace.

• Dispersion. This flag allows you to create real glass effects like when a light is splitinto its basic colors by a prism. The Cauchy coefficient can be used to control the


Figure 7.3: A glass sphere without thin-film coating

Figure 7.4: Glass sphere with thin film coating. Thickness at 200nm, IOR at 1.5


result, together with the Clarity at depth. This option is best used with Volumetricof Standard Glass.

Mirror

This material simply defines a mirror surface. The parameters include a color for thereflectivity. The brighter the color, the brighter the mirror. For example, if you define thereflectivity to be 50,50,50 (a dark shade of gray), the mirror will act as if the glass wastinted dark. Generally shades of gray work best for this parameter. The other parametersdefine the optional thin film (zero thickness will disable it), and the IOR for the film. Thesework exactly like their Glass counterparts.

Metal

This material defines metallic objects that can have anisotropic reflections (see the Polishparameter, below, for a definition). There are several presets:

• Aluminum

• Chrome

• Cobalt

• Copper

• Gold

• Lead

• Mercury

• Nickel

• Platinum

• Silver

• Titanium

• Zinc

These presets can be configured to have variable levels of shininess and they can be used tocreate other types of metal. For example, very shiny silver can be used in place of stainlesssteel. Besides the usual Modifiers tab, Metal has also an Alpha Channel. You can also select“Custom metal” and use a simple color channel to create materials like anodized aluminumin seconds. Or use an image for more sophisticated effects.


The Polish value sets how shiny the metal is. Higher values bring more shine. The Horizontaland Vertical sliders are linked together by default to give uniform reflection. When the“Synchronized” option is deselected the two sliders can move independently, allowing youto create a polish that has different values for the vertical and horizontal directions, called“anisotropic reflection.”

Velvet

This is a great material for clothes and other textile objects like drapes. In addition to theusual diffuse color and texture, similar to Matte, velvet includes a “Thickness” parameter.Higher values accentuate the velvet effect.

Water

This material is one of the most exciting features of Reality. Water allows you to createvery realistic-looking water like you see in high-end 3D programs. The parameters for waterdefinition are:

• Tint. The color for the water. Use it to create orange juice, wine, beer or any otherliquid. Please render responsibly.

• Clarity. The measure of how far you can see into the water. Expressed in meters.

The easiest way to add water to your scene is to use the Water Plane prop provided withReality. Just drop it in your scene, subdivide it a couple of times right inside Reality andrender. Alternatively you can import any OBJ into Poser and convert it to water. If theOBJ already has a single material called “RealityWater” then Reality will do the assignmentof the water material automatically.

Water has also an alpha channel to help define irregular shapes for the water prop by usinga transparency map. Please note that the same issues for alpha maps explained in the Glassmaterial apply here.

Null

Null is perfect for when you need to hide something in the scene. Please note that if youmake a model or a part of a model invisible in the Poser scene tab, that object will notbe exported. Using the Null material is different, in that it allows you to selectively hidematerials while keeping the geometry.


Alpha Channel

The Alpha Channel controls the transparency of a material.

The values available are:

• Opacity/Map strength. Without a texture the value indicates the level of opacity ofthe material. A value of 1.0 means that the material is perfectly opaque. A value of0.0 means that it’s completely transparent. If you have an Alpha Map the value worksin the same way but in conjunction with the texture. The value is taken directly fromPoser during the conversion of the material, but it can be changed to your liking.

• Alpha map. A texture that defines the alpha map. White is solid and black istransparent. This value is taken from Poser if present. You can use any of theprocedural textures available in the Reality texture editor.

Modifiers

This tab is named in this way because the values in here have the potential to modify thegeometry of the model.

• Bump Map. You can load a bump map or a normal map in this part of the UI. Realitywill take the bump map from Poser, if one is used in the material’s shader. If you usea normal map you will have to notify Reality about this by enabling the Normal Mapin the texture editor:

Reality recognizes several standard suffixes for the file name. If the file ends with “NRM”,“normal” or “nmap” (this is case insensitive) then the flag will be set automatically. Whena normal map is used the Bump map value of Strength, Negative and Positive are not used.

Normal maps also provide a much more realistic result and can be an excellent replacementfor displacement maps resulting in renders that take a fraction of the time and the memoryto finish, compared to displacement maps. There are several programs, free or inexpensive,that can generate normal maps from the diffuse or bump map. It’s definitely worth spendingsome time getting familiar with this great technique.

The parameters for controlling the effects of the bump map are:

• Strength. The strength of the bump map.

• Negative. The maximum value for the negative bump.

• Positive. The maximum value for positive bump.

• Displacement map. The parameters are similar to the ones used for bump mapping,and can be used in conjunction with those. Displacement mapping creates a realalteration of the rendered geometry. It depends on the subdivision level, which has


Figure 7.5: Normal map flag

to be increased to 1 or more. Higher values of subdivision produce finer detail inthe resulting geometry but require a much larger amount of memory. This couldbe an issue with computers running with a limited amount of memory, like the onesusing a 32 bit version of XP. Keep in mind that each level of subdivision, when notusing the “microfaceted” option, quadruples the amount of polygons in the mesh (forquadrilateral polygons). The microfaceted option activates a higher-detail type ofdisplacement. Please note: In Lux/Reality a displacement map has a Negative andPositive value. The negative value indicates how recessed the geometry should becomewhen the lowest value in the map, pure black, is found. The positive value indicateshow raised the surface should be when the highest value in the map, pure white,is found. Therefore, if you don’t want to displace the geometry a mid-grey value,127,127,127, needs to be used. If your displacement map has been made for Poser beaware that Poser assumes that black is no displacement. In that case you should setthe Negative value to 0.

• Subdivision. Reality/Lux can subdivide the material to make it appear smoother.


The Reality subdivision option works well for water planes and other single-materialobjects.

• Keep sharp edges. This option determines if the subdivision will “round” the edges ofthe subdivided material or not. This only makes sense when using open figures likefloor planes. For human and organic figures this checkbox should be unchecked.

• Use Micro facets. This option allows you to displace a geometric surface with veryhigh resolution, even when the original geometry is coarse. Enabling this option raisesthe maximum number of subdivisions from 8 to 500. With this kind of displacementthe facets are flat shaded. This means that the displacement is in fact faceted andnot smooth. Depending on the resolution of the original geometry this might not bean issue. Microfacet displacement is ideal for simulating brick, stone surfaces, metalengraving and so on. As a general guideline, if you need to displace organic shapes,like muscles and veins, do not use the microfacet displacement. If you need to displacewalls, floors, weapons etc. then try the microfacet variant. If your base geometry isfairly detailed you can use low values of subdivision. If the geometry is very coarse, likewhen a floor is defined as a single polygon, then very high values of subdivision, 100,300 or higher might be used. Be aware that higher values will require more memoryand will take longer to render. Be conservative in increasing the subdivision level.

7.11 Volumes

You can create any number of volumes with Reality’s Volume Editor. Click on the Add

new volume button to create a new volume. There are two kind of volumes available: clearand scattered. Clear is a simple volume that features refraction and absorption but noscattering. It is primarily meant to be used with clear materials, in particular the glassmaterials. A clear volume is created automatically by Reality when you use Volumetricglass or Water.

The scattered volume represents a volume with an even distribution of microscopic particles.You can set a volume to be scattered via the Scattered checkbox. When used as an interiorvolume, it can be used for sub-surface scattering (SSS), cloudy liquids, or rendering anobject as smoke. Reality automatically generates a volume for SSS.

The following video shows how to use Volumes in Reality: Reality 3 for Poser : Creating abeam of light2

2http://youtu.be/CcT6XS5C4bY

http://youtu.be/CcT6XS5C4bY



Chapter 8

RENDER OPTIONS

8.1 Render options

The Render tab has all the options to control the final result of the render. The page shownin this tab is organized by group. We select a group by clicking on a name in the left columnlist. The groups available are:

• Output. This group

A LuxRender scene is generally composed of a few files. The way Reality exports your Poserscene to Lux is via 2 files:

• reality_scene.lxs This base file contains the general scene definition, including theresolution, format, and name used for the rendered image. This file references thefollowing two “include” files.

• reality_scene.lxi This file contains the definition of the objects in the scene.

The Render tab allows you to change the name of the base file, which will determine thename for the .lxi include file. These files and their purpose are mentioned here purely togive you all the information necessary to back up and transfer your scene files. Copying the.lxs file is not enough. You have to get the corresponding .lxi file as well.

Output path When you select a new destination folder for your scene Reality will set thatfolder as the default destination for the new scenes created afterward.

File type The output file formats supported for your render are PNG, EXR, and Targa.The size of the render is taken directly from Poser but you can also select to have the finalrender at 100%, 75%, 50% or 25% of the size, or at 200%, 300% and 400% of the size. Thisis a great way of making test renders that take a fraction of the time of the final scene. The“% of frame rendered” parameter is persistent, and it’s remembered across invocations ofReality for the same scene.

Alpha Channel

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CHAPTER 8. RENDER OPTIONS 53

The Alpha Channel checkbox allows you to create an alpha channel for your scene in caseyou want to do background replacement in graphic packages like Adobe Photoshop. Whenthis option is selected, any part of the scene that is not covered by some object will be setto transparent.

Preserve Light hue

When the camera faces a light, and that light has a certain color, or hue, the objects lit bythat light will take the hue but the light source itself will render almost pure white. If youenable this option then the light hue will be preserved.

Overwrite Warning

This is new for Reality. When this checkbox is enabled Reality will warn you if the scenefile (.lxs) that you are creating for the export already exists on disk. You can then decideto overwrite it or not. This flag is saved for each scene. The default for new scenes, on oroff, is decided by the setting in the Advanced tab.

Collect Textures

Another Reality feature. Collecting textures allows you to store all the textures for thescene in a location where they can easily be copied. For example when you need to movethe scene to a different computer. Reality created a subdirectory named “name of the scenefile”-resources. For example, if the scene file is called “reality-scene.lxs” then a directorynamed “reality-scene-resources” will be created at the same subdirectory where the scenefile is stored. In that directory Reality copies all the files necessary to render the scenes.There is where the collected textures are stored.

Texture Size

Together with “Collect Textures” this option allows you to greatly reduce the amount ofmemory required to render your animation by resizing the textures. For example you canset each texture to be no wider than 1024 pixels. During the texture collection Reality willcheck the width of each texture and compare it against the maximum value selected. If thevalue is higher, then the texture is resized. Reality saved the scaled texture as a PNG file toavoid loss of data due to transcoding. The minimum size of the texture is 256 pixels wide(0.25K). The maximum is 2048 pixels wide (or 2K). The last value for this slider is “Fullsize.” This allows you to collect the textures without resizing them.

GPU Acceleration If your computer has a OpenCL-compatible video card (note, differentfrom OpenGL) you can now take advantage of that additional computing power by selectingthis option. Another new feature of Reality, it enables the rendering via GPU of LuxRender.GPU acceleration is limitet to the Bidirectional and Monodirectional scene types but youdon’t have to worry. If you select a scene type that doesn’t support GPU rendering and youhave selected GPU acceleration, Reality will warn you and it will disable the GPU option.


8.2 Scene type

Lux can use a myriad of different rendering options based on the type of settings. Theparameters are really complex and can make a grown man cry. To make things simplerReality groups all those settings in a series of “Scene types.” Most of the time you will needto use just the Bidirectional type. This provides the highest quality of rendering for bothinterior and exterior scenes. Sometimes you might get some speed advantage by using theMonodirectional type while having an outdoor scene lit by the sun.

There are also “Photon Map” and “Smart Photon Map” scene types. These are providedfor the more adventurous types who like to test and experiment. The plain “Photon Map”corresponds to Lux’s “ExPhotonMap” and it’s a fast rendering option that brings resultsclose to the Bidirectional type but possibly in much shorter time. This is a description ofit from the LuxRender Wiki:

“Exphotonmap is physically based, and consistent. It can simulate more or less all the optical

phenomena supported by LuxRender, and given precise enough settings, should look basically

correct. With that said, exphotonmap is biased, so it intentionally takes some shortcuts; how

much this affects the rendered result depends on which render settings are being used. Ex-

photonmap is not going to render your scene in a blink of an eye. Although when configured

properly it will outrun path tracing (Monodirectional) and bidirectional (Bidirectional) path

tracing by a long shot, it is still spectral progressive rendering.”

Words between parentheses are to indicate the corresponding Reality settings. You canfind the full technical description of this configuration at http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Intro_to_ExPhotonMap.

In some cases “Photon Map” can be twice as fast as Bidirectional. Please note that PhotonMap will take a long time up front during which it calculates the photon map. During thistime you will not see any image being rendered. This is normal. You can see the activityprogress in Lux’s Log tab. After the photons are calculated the rendering will happen quitequickly.

The Photon Map scene type has several parameters that are exposed by the Scene Param-eters Editor (see below). Particularly, the amount of direct, indirect and caustic photonscan play a large role in the final result.

Smart Photon Map, what Lux calls SPPM, is a variation on the Photon Map theme inwhich the number of photons used is variable and dynamically adjusted as the renderingproceeds. It has the characteristic to start rendering almost immediately and produce a very“splotchy” image with green color tones. Progressively the image becomes more detailed andthe green color cast goes away. This scene type has provided very good results but it’s stilla work in progress.

Scene Parameters Editor

Reality, gives you tje option to edit the internal rendering parameters passed to Lux for eachscene type. This allows you to optimize Lux for the specific scene that you are rendering.This option is best used by people who are quite familiar with Lux’s internals. Otherwiseyou can simply continue with the defaults. The editor is shown automatically below thescene type selected.


Max samples The “Max Samples” slider is used to force Lux to stop rendering after agiven number of samples per pixel is reached. Leave it at zero for no limit. This slider isalso essential for the rendering of animations, both with Lux and with SLG. Setting it, forexample, at a value of 500 will stop the rendering of a frame when that number of sampleshas been reached, and will cause Lux to start rendering the following frame. Otherwise, ifleft at zero, Lux would never move past the first frame in the series.

FF Removal

To help in removing certain types of rendering noise, nicknamed “Fireflies,” Lux has a specialparameter that works as a “sentinel.” This rendering parameter was used by Reality 1.2with a fixed value of 5. In Reality it can be adjusted to your liking. Higher values can bemore effective but will introduce bias. Please note that the normal rendering noise thatyou see at the beginning of the rendering is NOT an indication of the presence of Fireflies.Fireflies are very large “specks” of white pixels that either stay of get worse over time. Theydon’t appear often and they are frequently caused by over-lighting very shiny surfaces. Inany case the parameter is used by default by Reality. You can set the value to zero tomarginally speed up the rendering.

Gamma

This value can be used to alter the gamma correction to the scene, if necessary. The gammavalue is set up automatically by Lux to be correct for your system. If you are not familiarwith this value it’s better to leave it at the default.

8.3 Frame numbering

Reality has support for animation rendering. Animations are rendered as sequences offrames, each frame saved to an individual file. To create a video animation file you thenneed to assemble the frame using an NLE (Non Linear Editor) like Adobe Premiere, AppleFinal Cut or compositing programs like Adobe After Effects. Blender’s video editor canalso be used, which provides you with a zero-cost solution for video editing.

If you want to automatically create a file name that includes a number corresponding tothe frame, simply add a certain number of “#” characters at the end of the file name. Thisfeature works both for the scene file name (.lxs) and the image file name. For example, if youchange the scene file name from the default to “reality_scene##.lxs“ and you render frame

42 of your animation, Reality will export the scene to a file named ”reality_scene_42.lxs“

(and ”reality_scene_42.lxm“ and ”reality_scene_42.lxo“). If you use more # signs the file

name will be padded with zeros if necessary. For example, if the pattern used is ”real-

ity_scene####.lxs” the generated scene file will be named “reality_scene_0042.lxs”.

If you want to use the same feature for the image file name you can add the “#” to that nametoo. Simply using the “#” on the scene file will not automatically apply the auto-numberingto the image file as well. If you render an animation and you forget to add the “#” symbolsReality will add automatically a number of those symbols sufficient to represent the highestframe number in the animation.


Once you’re done setting your animation range all you need to do is to click on the “RenderAnimation” button. Reality will export each scene file and then call LuxRender, adding thefull animation set to the Render Queue. You will be able to see the full set of scene filespassed by clicking on the “Queue” tab in Lux.

Chapter 9

LIGHT CONTROL

Realism is achieved by careful use of lights. What Reality and Lux allow you to do is to avoidusing the usual “cheats” of traditional 3D lighting and start applying lighting solutions thatwork in real life. If you have experience in photography then the way Lux handles lightswill be immediately familiar. For example, if you need to fill a part of your scene withsome soft diffuse light you can set a plane on the opposite side of the subject, facing thelight source, and you have a beautiful “fill” without using an additional light. The followingpictures show this principle in action. In the first picture we see a car lit by a single largemesh light suspended above it at an angle. Notice that the front of the car and its side aredark and we can’t quite see the detail in those areas.

Figure 9.1: Simple lighting with top mesh light

Instead of adding lights we can add a couple of planes, one in front and one on to the sideof the car, to reflect the light from the top fixture.

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CHAPTER 9. LIGHT CONTROL 58

Figure 9.2: Adding reflectors to bounce the light

Now the exact same scene, with no added lights, shows more details of the car.

On a similar note, if the Sun light is too harsh you can place a plane between the Sun andyour subject, set the plane as “Matte translucent,” and in doing so you created a diffuser intwo easy steps. Remember, think like a photographer and the software will react as expected.The sooner you stop using some of the “trickery” acquired by using biased renderers, thesooner your images will look as you want.

9.1 Light types

Reality supports the following types of lights:

• Mesh Light. These are also sometimes called Area Lights and they are geometricmeshes that emit lights. These are generally the best choice for creating good lightingand for achieving realism. To create a mesh light you can simply add a plane or cubeor any kind of primitive, rename it “RealityLight” and orient it in the direction youwant it to spread light. A cube will emit light from all six sides, and a plane will emitlight from the direction pointed by its surface normals. If you need more light sources


Figure 9.3: More details visible without adding lights

simply add a suffix: RealityLight_1, RealityLight_fill, RealityLight_hair, etc. Theimportant thing is that the object starts with “RealityLight.” Capitalization has tobe exactly as in the examples given. To make this task easier we have included threemeshlights in the Reality Add-ons:

– MeshLight: this is a simple plane that is preconfigured to work as a light-emittingobject. It provided beautiful lighting and it’s very lightweight

– Top Mesh light: a mesh light that is positioned to shine from top to bottom.

• Sun. This is a Poser infinite light that is named Sun. When used, Reality will exporta Sun plus atmosphere which will be rendered very believably in Lux. The angle ofthe Sun will determine the type of light. Horizontal Sun will look yellow-orange andVertical sun will look cooler and more on the blue side of the spectrum. The positionof the Sun in the scene is not relevant, only the angle is. You can place the Sunwherever it is convenient for you.

Of particular use is the “Sun size” control. With that you can make the sun, if it’s visibleby the camera, appear larger than the default size determined by Lux. The turbidityparameters can be used to create a more visible atmosphere. The default of 2.2 is what isnormally used by Reality. Reality generates a separate light group for both the Sun and theSky so that you can adjust their balance in Lux while rendering. Look in the “Light groups”tab of Lux and you will find a “sun” and “sky” group that you can adjust independently fromeach other. For this effect to work you should use the “Linear” tonemapper. * Spotlight.A Poser spotlight is converted to use the exact same orientation, position, and cone anglein Lux. The color of the spotlight is also preserved. If the light’s color is any shade ofgray then the standard color temperature of 6,500 Kelvin is used. This can be changed


dynamically in Lux when the scene renders. Spotlights usually have a soft area around theedges, where the light is “feathered.” Poser doesn’t have that control and so Reality setsthe edge feather at 5 degrees. It can be adjusted to other values in order to make the edgeas soft or as sharp as you need. You can also set a texture for the Spotlight. This turns thespotlight into a projector. * Point Lights. Reality supports Poser’s point lights which arelight source that emit light in all directions. Pointlights are also enabled to use IES profiles.See the description about IES lights below. * Projectors. See video tutorial1. * Infinitelight. This kind of light is used to simulate the sun and ambient light in Poser. They havelittle or no use with Lux and should not be used whenever you plan to render your scenewith Lux. If you use one for seeing the objects in the scene you can then disable it in theReality light editor so that it has no influence in the final render. Infinite lights generallyproduce the worst type of light and detract from the overall realism.

9.2 Converting materials to lights

Converting materials to lights

You can also turn any material into a light by right-clicking on its name in the materiallist and selecting “Convert to light.” When this option is used the material will be removedfrom the list and instead a light with the same name will be added in the Light tab. Thisoption can be used effectively to convert a large amount of scene elements into LEDs andother light sources.

To revert a light back to a material, click on the “Convert to material” button in the LightEditor.

Reality has a sophisticated light editor that allows you to control all the aspects of eachlight. In addition to expanding the parameters available, the light editor provides presetsfor lights and allows you to assign textures to some types of lights. Look in the “Lightproperties” group box below the list of lights. There you will find controls for changing thecharacteristics of each light. The light editor automatically shows only the controls that arerelevant for each type of light.

You can set the color of a light based on the desired “model.” If you are a photographeryou are probably comfortable with color temperature. This is the physical model of lightand the default one. You can simply move the slider and go from a very warm light, 1,800Kfor example, to a cold one, 8,000K and set your light from all ranges from candle light tobright sun light. If you prefer to dial in a specific color, simply select the RGB model andyou will see the familiar color picker.

Finally, you can select one of the light presets defined in Lux based on real spectral data.These presets are useful if you want, for example, to accurately reproduce the light of a

1http://youtu.be/lozfDq33J4U

http://youtu.be/lozfDq33J4U

http://youtu.be/lozfDq33J4U


neon tube. Create a cylinder in Poser, convert its material to a light and then select thepreset for neon.

Color Temperature

Color temperature controls the spectrum shift of each light. Natural light has a color thatis determined by the source. For example, incandescent light bulbs have a more yellow colorthan neon tubes or sunlight. The sun shifts color temperature during the day, being moreyellow/orange during sunrise and sundown and being more blueish during the day. Theseshifts of tints are defined as “color temperatures” and are measured in Kelvin. The followingtable gives a few reference values:

Table 9.1: Light color temperatures

Light type Kelvin value

Candle flame 1930

Common Tungsten bulb 2,500–2,900

Sunrise/Sunset 3,000

Quartz Light 3,200

Fluorescent 3,200–7,500 (cool white)

Daylight 5,500–6,500

Image Based Lighting (IBL)

Image Based Lighting (IBL)

Reality provides a great IBL system that supports full HDR (High-Dynamic Range) imagesboth in HDR (.hdr) and OpenEXR (.exr) format. With IBL you can create incrediblyrealistic renders in which your 3D objects are bathed by light that is coming from alldirections and that is obtained from photos of real places.IBL in Lux uses one single image to generate both the light and the background. Thismeans that, with the right type of image, you can create spectacular backgrounds for yourscene with the same image used to generate the lighting.

Which IBL format?

In addition to the format used to encode an IBL file (HDR, EXR, Tiff, etc) an IBL mapcan be created in two different layouts:

- LatLong, from "Latitude" and "Longitude." This layout works best with Reality and Lux for creating backgrounds.

- Angular, or "Light probe."

Both formats are supported but LatLong is generally your best choice.


Using images with IBL: HDR vs. LDR

Aren’t we having fun with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)? When using IBL, you will needto provide an image of some kind. One characteristic of images is whether or not they providehigh ranges of light information. HDR (High Dynamic Range) refers to the ability of animage to provide a high amount of light information, higher than conventional photographsand closer to the range perceived by the human eye. LDR (Low Dynamic Range) refers tothe limited range of light information handled by conventional photographs. The humaneye can detect a wide range of light with finesse, and this “HDR” ability becomes part ofour experience with the real world. In contrast, film and digital cameras can only capture asmall subset of light (in the low to medium ranges), resulting in LDR images. For example,if you want to take a picture of a friend facing you in a room, with her back to a brightwindow, your camera will be unable to take a good picture. You will either need to exposethe image to have your friend’s face well lit, which will overexpose the window behind her,or, you can expose for the bright window but then the face will be just a dark oval. Thisproblem demonstrates the limitations of cameras.

When implementing IBL, you can use LDR images, but the result will be a very low-contrasttype of lighting. In that case you can improve your render by adding one or more lightspositioned to reflect the light into dark areas of the scene. The ideal solution is to useHDR images for IBL. Photographers create HDR images by taking multiple exposures ofthe same image and then combining all those exposures inside a single file that containslight information that a program like Lux can use. You can often find these images forpurchase on the Internet.

IBL without images

You probably noticed that there is a color control in the IBL editor. You can use that colorto add a tint to the picture, in case you want to shift the tone of it. Or, you can use itby itself without any picture. If you have a picture the color will be combined, multiplied,with the picture. If you don’t use any picture you will still get an excellent even lighting ofthe whole scene with the selected color. This can be an excellent way of adding some dim,blueish light to a night scene lit by a spot to simulate the moon. There are many otheruses. Experiment with this to find creative ways of adding diffuse light to your scenes.

The Lights tab

Before hitting the “Render” button it’s a good idea to check your lights. They are listedin the “Lights” tab. Lights can be turned on or off in this page directly, by checking orunchecking the “Active” box. The status of the light is remembered. For mesh lights youcan adjust the brightness up to 5,000 watts. The “Invert Lights” button swaps the activestate of each light so that you can switch which ones are on or off.

Light groups

Lux has a powerful feature that allows you to adjust the brightness and color of light whilethe render is running. To use this feature you need to create light groups. When one or


more groups have been defined then you can use the “Light Groups” tab in Lux to adjustthe brightness, color temperature or tint. Reality automatically sets up some groups.

• The sun is set in its own group called “Sun” and the sky has its own “Sky” group.

• Spotlights are grouped in “Spots”

• Mesh lights are grouped in “Mesh Lights”

• Point lights are grouped in “Point Lights”

• Distant lights are grouped in “Misc.”

Custom light groups

Reality allows you to define your own groups for finer control. In the light editor there isa field where you can type the group name. Using the same group name for multiple lightswill group them together. Please remember that this feature can take more memory duringrendering so it’s best to use the minimum amount of light groups necessary.

9.3 IES lights

IES Lights

Reality can used IES files to make a MeshLight or PointLight behave like a specific, real,light. IES stands for Illuminating Engineering Society. The IES standard file format wascreated for the electronic transfer of photometric data. An IES file contains the measurementof distribution of light. It’s a digital profile of a real world light. Lux supports the use ofIES files and will reproduce the physical characteristics of the light described in the IESfile. IES light files are provided by several lighting manufacturers and can be downloadedfreely from their sites. One such lighting manufacturer is Lithonia Lighting2 which has anextensive library of IES files in different categories. You can simply enter the IES file in thelight editor and the rest is done automatically.

2http://www.lithonia.com

http://www.lithonia.com

http://www.lithonia.com

Chapter 10

CAMERA CONTROL

The Camera tab is used to control the use of the camera, including the use of DOF (DepthOf Field), the exposure controls and, new for Reality, the Film Response.

10.1 Selecting the rendering camera

Reality will use whatever camera is active for rendering. If you prefer to use a particularcamera for rendering, regardless of what is selected in Poser, simpluy click on the name ofthe camera in the Reality Camera Editor and that camera and Reality will remember yourchoice.

10.2 Shallow depth of field

You can get beautifully shallow depth of field with Lux. Reality makes this operation aseasy as point-and-click.

• Set the focus length ( this is not the focal length ) in Poser.

• Once in Reality, click on the Camera tab.

• Check the “Enable DOF” box.

• Select an f/stop (lower values make the out of focus part blurrier).

Now, when you render the scene, the objects closer or further away from the focal point willbe increasingly blurred, like the effect of using a 35mm camera in similar conditions.

10.3 Exposure controls

The Camera Editor allows you to set the exposure controls for each camera. These controlsare the same that are found on a standard photo camera: ISO speed, shutter speed andaperture (f-stop).

If you render animations it is important that the exposure is kept consistent throughout theanimation. To do so render one test frame and set the exposure in Lux . Copy the values

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CHAPTER 10. CAMERA CONTROL 65

to Reality and then render the whole animation. The exposure will be set for each renderedframe and the sequence will render correctly.

10.4 Film Response

This feature allows you to use one of the many film emulations of Lux. Film responseprofiles are descriptions of the way several real film stocks react to light and color.

For example, the Kodachrome series of films have been used in the past by photographersto achieve a certain look because of the very specific color response of that film. Realityprovides access to the whole set of Lux film response files with a twist: the Reality descrip-tions are a bit easier to read. We have done extensive research with the manufacturers toget the right name for each film type. As soon as possible we will update the LuxRendercode to reflect the same naming scheme.

Some Film response names have the “B&W” suffix to indicate that its an emulation of “Blackand White” film. Some names have the “Color Rev.” suffix to indicate diapositives or filmfor “slides.” This is called “color reversal” film because the final result is expected to beprojected and not printed on paper.

Chapter 11

Reality’s log files

If something unusual happens while using Reality, if you think that you found a bug youmight need to find out what’s happening “behind the scenes.”

Reality logs some events into a text file called Reality_plugin_Log.txt which is storedin your Documents folder. If you open that file in a text editor you can find possibleerror messages that can explain if something unexpected happened. If you contact our techsupport we might ask you to send a copy of the file to use to help us diagnose the issue.

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Chapter 12

How to contact us

If you need customer or technical support for Reality you can reach us via email [email protected]

Our website1 is constantly updated with news and information about Reality and LuxRen-der.

There a very active online community of Reality users that can also help you with commontricks and techniques that have been developed over the years. The official Reality forumsare found at:

http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?303-REALITY–3-Official-Forums2

You can follow all the latest news and developments about Reality through the main socialnetworks:

-Facebook3 -Twitter4 -Google+5

1http://www.preta3d.com2http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?303-REALITY-3-Official-Forums3http://www.facebook.com/RealityPlugIn4http://twitter.com/preta3d5https://plus.google.com/106625816153304163119

67


http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?303-REALITY-3-Official-Forums

http://www.facebook.com/RealityPlugIn

http://twitter.com/preta3d

https://plus.google.com/106625816153304163119


http://forum.runtimedna.com/forumdisplay.php?303-REALITY-3-Official-Forums

http://www.facebook.com/RealityPlugIn

http://twitter.com/preta3d

https://plus.google.com/106625816153304163119

Chapter 13

Updating Lux

You can find new versions of LuxRender at the LuxRender website1. Look in the Downloadssection.

Please verify with us first if the new version of Lux is supported.

1http://www.luxrender.net

68

http://www.luxrender.net

http://www.luxrender.net

Chapter 14

Known issues

• The James low-resolution model has an error in the mesh. The hip area has invertednormals, they point inside instead of outside. For this reason Lux will not renderthe hip area. This is an error in the mesh, not in Reality or LuxRender. As asimple alternative use the high-resolution mesh, which doesn’t have this problem.Alternatively give the poor man something to wear.

• Poser dynamic hair is currently not supported. A future version of Reality for Poserwill add support for it.

• Loading a Poser scene by double-clicking on it from Windows Explorer or the Macin-tosh finder will not load the Reality data included. This is a caused by a bug in Poser,which has been reported to Smith Micro. The Poser developers are working on a fixwhich should be included in a future release of Poser.

69

Chapter 15

Acknowledgements

The LuxRender development team

I personally want to acknowledge and thank all the developers and dedicated individualswho made LuxRender a reality, no pun intended. LuxRender is a real gem of a program.Through the genius and dedication of the developers we now have a state-of-the-art renderingengine that is available to everybody, on all major Operating Systems, and that has beendesigned to last a long time. If you can, please go to http://www.luxrender.net and thankthe generous people who made this possible.

The Reality beta testing team

I’d like also to thank the invaluable beta testers who patiently put up with the lack ofdocumentation and with the lack of a proper installer for the beta. They did an astoundingjob at testing every part of Reality with as many models as possible and provided greatfeedback throughout the process. A big thanks goes to:

• Alex Lewis

• Anton Van Tonder

• Claudia Atteveld

• Cyrstin Bech-Yagher

• Eric Cone

• Eric VanDycke

• Frederic Jouret

• Janet Jackson

• Joe Thoennes

• John Whiting

• Margot Shea

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CHAPTER 15. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 71

• Mario Bush

• Mary Williams

• Matt Minnis

• Natalia Roudneff

• Paul McErlean

• Peter Kember

• Ray Phelps

• Russ Sprouse

• Ryan Biggs

• Sam Halburian

• Shawn Buys

• Steve Golding

• Victoria Goodman

If I forgot anybody, my deepest apologies.

The makers of Poser

Reality would not have been possible without the help of the dedicated, fun and skilledpeople at Smith Micro. I particularly want to thank Steve Cooper, Larry Weinberg, StefanWerner, Uli Klumpp and Jack Walther for their great help. SmithMicro changed the actualcode of Poser to support Reality, a dedication that speaks volumes about their commitmentto Poser and its great community of artists.

The one who made it all possible

Lastly I want to thank my wife Holly, for her saint-like patience in dealing with an“hermit”husband for the months that it took to develop Reality. She also provided invaluable helpin reviewing and editing this manual. . . again. If this guide is at all readable it’s all becauseof her attention, amazing editorial skills, and great wisdom. All the mistakes are entirelymine.

Paolo Ciccone

Chapter 16

More Reality resources

You can find more tips and techniques at our forums: http://www.preta3d.com

Stay updated with Reality! Be sure to get the latest about Reality by visiting ourwebsite at http://www.preta3d.com There you’ll find news, tips on how to get the most outof your scenes, video tutorials and updates to this documentation.

You can also subscribe to our YouTube Channel to find instructional videos on how to useReality: http://www.youtube.com/user/PretA3D

For the latest about Reality and upcoming products be sure to “Follow,” “Like” or “Circle”us on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/preta3d

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Reality-Plug-in/143936782331542

• Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/10662581615330416311

All content in this document is copyright c� 2010–2011 by Pret-A–3D. Reality plug-in,Reality Engine and ACSEL (Automatic Custom ShadEr Loader) are all copyright c� 2010–2011 Pret-A–3D. All rights reserved.

Reality: See the light!

72

Appendix A

Network rendering

With LuxRender you have an unlimited license to use as many CPUs and as many rendernodes you want. Network rendering is accomplished by running the command-line versionof Lux on each render node and then connecting the main render process to the nodes.Render nodes can be a mixture of Mac OS, Windows and Linux machines.

• Install exactly the same version of LuxRender on every machine that will participatein the render process. The exact version means the revision number; you can mix MacOS, Windows and Linux nodes without issue. For the sake of this tutorial we assumeLuxrender 0.9

• Start the command-line processor on each node. On Mac OS you need to use Termi-nal.app, located in /Applications/Utilities. On Linux you can use any of the manyterminal emulators available. On Windows you need to start cmd.exe.

• Run the luxconsole command in server mode by typing the command: luxconsole

-s

• Take note of the IP address of the render node. For this example we assume that it is192.168.0.2.

• Go back to your machine where you have Reality installed, and start the render asusual.

• When Lux starts rendering your scene click on the Network tab and add 192.168.0.2in the Server input field. - Repeat the process for every render node that you have.

• Lux will seem “frozen” while it sends the scene and all the textures to the rendernode. If you look at the render node screen you will see the activity about the sentfiles. After a while the nodes will start sending samples and contributing to the renderprocess.

73

Appendix B

Fireflies and render noise

As we have seen before, LuxRender renders the whole scene in a single pass and then itrefines the result as it computes more samples per pixel. The “grain” that we see on screen,while the image is still unfinished, is called render noise.

Render noise is removed as the scene renders. The time needed to achieve this is depenedingon many factors, including:

• Number of CPU cores and their speed

• Size of the image

• Number of light or light sources in the scene

• Amount of glossiness in reflective srufaces

Sometimes we see the term “fireflies” used to indicate render noise. That is not correct.Fireflies are mostly a thing of the past and they don’t happen today with Lux, except inthe most extreme cases. Fireflies are not render noise. Instead they are large “specks” ofwhite pixels, much larger than render noise, an they don’t get resolved over time. In factthey tend to become more pronounced as the render continues.

74

Appendix C

Reality plug-in software license

END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

The Pret-a–3D Software delivered is intended for individual personal use only. Redistri-bution is not allowed. 1. GRANT OF LICENSE: Copy and Use - Application Software.Pret-a3D grants to Recipient a limited, non-exclusive License to install, use, access, dis-play, run, or otherwise interact with (“RUN”) this copy of Reality plug-in (hereinafter the“SOFTWARE PRODUCT”), or any prior version, on a single computer, workstation, ter-minal, handheld PC, or other digital electronic device (“COMPUTER”). The primary userof the COMPUTER on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed may make copiesfor his or her exclusive use on other computers. Pret-a–3D retain all ownership and title tothe Software at all times. Support and Updates. This License does not grant Recipient anyright to technical or Software product support of any kind, bug fixes, or any enhancement orupdate, by Pret-a–3D. This License applies to any updates or extensions of time-protected-software which may be supplied to Recipient by Pret-a–3D or any of its distributors.Redistribution and Content Use. This License prohibits the Recipient from redistributingof any part of the Software Product, including images, models, applets, documents, iconsand programs, both for commercial or non-commercial purposes. This License grants to theRecipient the right to use images and models created through using the Software Product foreither commercial or non-commercial purposes. At no time may the Recipient redistributeimages or 3D models that are delivered with the Software Product. The Recipient may notre-license or re-distribute the images, models or clip art that are delivered with the SoftwareProduct without first receiving written permission from Pret-a–3D. For the purposes of thisagreement, e-mail is not considered a valid form of written communication.

1. RESTRICTIONS: Copyright, Title, ownership rights, and intellectual property rightsin and for the Software Product shall remain with Pret-a–3D and its suppliers. TheSoftware Product is protected by the copyright laws of the United States and inter-national copyright treaties. Title, ownership rights, and intellectual property rightsin and to the content accessed through the Software Product is the property of theapplicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law.This License does not provide any rights to Recipient for such content.Recipient must maintain all copyright notices on all copies of the Software Product.Recipient shall not attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile or take actions to disas-

75

APPENDIX C. REALITY PLUG-IN SOFTWARE LICENSE 76

semble the Software Product.

2. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: The Software Product is provided on an “AS IS”basis, without warranty of any kind, including without limitation the warranties ofmerchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. The entirerisk as to the quality and performance of the Software Product is borne by Recip-ient. Should the Software Product prove defective, Recipient, and not Pret-a–3D,assumes the entire cost of any service and repair. In addition, the security mechanismimplemented by the Software Product has inherent limitations, and Recipient mustdetermine that the Software Product sufficiently meets Recipient requirements. Thisdisclaimer of warranty constitutes an essential part of the agreement. SOME STATESDO NOT ALLOW EXCLUSIONS OF AN IMPLIED WARRANTY, SO THIS DIS-CLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO Recipient AND Recipient MAY HAVE OTHERLEGAL RIGHTS THAT VARY FROM STATE TO STATE OR BY JURISDICTION.

3. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NOLEGAL THEORY, TORT, CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, SHALL Pret-a–3D ORITS SUPPLIERS OR RESELLERS BE LIABLE TO Recipient OR ANY OTHERPERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUEN-TIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION,DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAIL-URE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER COMMERCIAL DAM-AGES OR LOSSES. IN NO EVENT WILL Pret-a–3D BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAM-AGES IN EXCESS OF Pret-a–3D’S LIST PRICE FOR A License TO THE SOFT-WARE PRODUCT, EVEN IF Pret-a–3D SHALL HAVE BEEN INFORMED OFTHE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY CLAIM BY ANY OTHERPARTY. THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY SHALL NOT APPLY TO LIABIL-ITY FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY TO THE EXTENT APPLICABLELAW PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION. FURTHERMORE, SOME STATES DONOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CON-SEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS LIMITATION AND EXCLUSION MAY NOTAPPLY TO RECIPIENT.

4. TERMINATION: This License will terminate automatically if Recipient fails to com-ply with the limitations described within this Agreement. On termination, Recipientmust remove the Software Product from all computers onto which it is installed, andmust destroy or return all copies of the Software Product.

5. EXPORT CONTROLS: None of the Software Product or underlying information ortechnology may be downloaded or otherwise exported or re-exported (i) into (or to anational or resident of) Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), NorthKorea, Iran, Syria or any other country to which the U.S. has embargoed goods; or (ii)to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationalsor the U.S. Commerce Department’s Table of Deny Orders. By downloading or usingthe Software Product, Recipient agrees to the foregoing and Recipient is representingand warranting that Recipient is not located in, under the control of, or a national orresident of any such country or on any such list.

6. MISCELLANEOUS: This Agreement represents the complete agreement concerningthis License between the parties and supersedes all prior agreements and representa-tions between them. It may be amended only by a writing executed by both parties.

APPENDIX C. REALITY PLUG-IN SOFTWARE LICENSE 77

If any provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable for any reason, suchprovision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable. ThisAgreement shall be governed by and construed under California law as such law appliesto agreements between California residents entered into and to be performed withinCalifornia, except as governed by Federal law. The application the United NationsConvention of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded.NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY IN THE GENERALLICENSE AGREEMENT, THE USER MAY NOT TRANSFER OR ASSIGN THEPRODUCT OR ANY COPY THEREOF, OR THE USER’S LICENSE TO USE THEPRODUCT TO A THIRD PARTY. Manufacturer is Pret-a–3D, Aptos, CA 95003USA. http://www.preta3d.com, [email protected] c� Copyright 2010–2011 Pret-a–3D All rights reserved.

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