In this quick video tip for Blender 2.5 and LuxRender we take a look at how to easily install the latest version of Blender 2.5, LuxBlend and LuxRender. The method shown is much easier than the manual process shown previously in our Introduction to LuxRender tutorial and should solve problems with getting LuxRender to work for many people.
Previous Introduction to LuxRender: http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/11/11/introduction-to-luxrender-in-blender-2-5/
Nicce tutorial. Luxrender final works.
It works !
Thanks a lot Jonathan for all your tutorials
You don’t need to download LuxRender. Those testing builds come with pylux which allows you to render with LuxRender inside Blender using the ‘internal’ option.
Actually that’s not true. When the “internal” option is set it just doesn’t load the LuxRender GUI, and instead displays the image rendering inside Blender’s UV/Image Editor. It just makes it feel a bit more “integrated.”
-Jonathan
The internal option makes use of pylux.pyd, which is also used for material previews. It does not make use of an external LuxRender binary.
You do not need to download an external copy of LuxRender if the build comes with pylux (almost all builds on GraphicAll do). I package my own builds and I can tell you that’s how it works.
Of course, if you prefer to use the LuxRender GUI then the external option is the way to go.
Awesome tip. I love the results of LuxRender
keep it going Jonathan !
you’re a bit on a tutorial posting spree haha.
but take a break from time to time
make sure you don’t overwork yourself.
Thanks for that frustration saver!
I did the”manual” install in linux, all good, however, what i can seem to find no solution for or tutorial for , is how to use uv textures/images in luxrender, i cannot get it to work in 2.5 blender. perhaps a tutorial?
There definitely seems to be omitted information on this,any response would be solid gold, thanks Jonathan.
Hi Greg,
To use a UV image in LuxRender you need to add a texture to your material, choose the ImageMap type, change the mode over to Color and then enable the “T” option for Diffuse under the material settings.
Cheers and best of luck!
-Jonathan
How about for bump/normal maps, etc.?
Great stuff! Now I can use light groups etc before I could only gey inturnal rendering working and that means loosing the extra stuff on luxrender gui which are great! Cheers Jonathan!
I think one thing is for certain from this post: the Blender Cookie Crew (BCC) could do multiple in-depth tutorials on Luxrender and make LOTS of people happy. I can only imagine that lots of beginning/intermediate users don’t even want to try it, just because they would have to go in search of tutorials and support info.
Keep it up! Great Job!
You can definitely count on more LuxRender tutorials in the future!
-Jonathan
Any progress with this yet?
Heh not just yet. I got distracted with Cycles
I’ll add it back to the list though to look at again in the near future.
i have a mac and this does not work for me. Thanks
I am slowly starting to understand how this all works, however, when I change the render engine to LuxRender, it opens LuxRender and it looks as though it is working, but no picture or image appears to be rendering. I am a Mac OS 10.6 user and I am using the public build of Blender featuring the OceanSim. I installed the Mac version (Intel Based) like you said, but I just took the luxrender addon from the the pack that came with Blender and LuxRender and placed it in the Addons folder found with the OceanSim version of Blender. Hope that makes sense. If anyone knows what I did wrong, please let me know.
Btw, your tutorials are so very helpful, so keep it up. But like others have said, don’t overwork yourself…
A tutorial on the OceanSim would be handy…
Hi Taylor,
A OceanSim tutorial is definitely coming, just not sure when.
As for the addon, does it work using the bundled build?
-Jonathan
Why is it that you reply to people who say ” You great Man!” or ” Your awesome” But not really when people need help… Why? Not being a Jerk
My apologies, I certainly did not mean to come of as a “jerk” or just taking in the praise. I try to get to all comments that come through, but admittedly right now I have a bit of a queue, along with many support tickets. Have no fear though, I will do my absolute best though to get back to all comments asking for help.
-Jonathan
really, i really don’t like this website or blender anymore because i have a mac. And people really don’t respect mac anymore because there rare or to expensive, And you guys do everything on a Pc and i don’t have one, Also you guys charge money for everything like to watch bonus tuts or for a series and i don’t have 200 dollars for a Cd that will only show you how make a Gun or something. I CAME HERE TO KNOW HOW TO DO IT, NOT HOW TO BUY IT OR DOWNLOAD IT!!!!!!
i want to learn…………..
Wow . . .
Okay first, I have seen several tutorials with macs being used. Second, correct me if I’m wrong, but Blender works virtually identically on mac, linux, and windows. Third, currently I am not a “citizen” of blendercookie.com (though I am seriously considering it) and yet I have learned oodles and oodles from this site, just about everything I could ask for as so far, and new tutorials go up on a regular basis. Finally, if you’re not a troll (and I hope you’re not), the admins of this site and authors of it’s tutorials do their best to help everyone use blender of ALL skill levels and computer persuasions, but if you still feel slighted, there’s plenty of other programs and sites out there. Might I recommend Anim8or . . .(shudder)
Good day to you
macs are not rare or expensive. they are just for people who dont know how to use computers.
That’s a little uncalled for, at least Macs work more than they crash. I’m a MAC person and I have no problems with installing and using Blender.I’m using the version 2.5 Beta. I’m sorry that Taco Bell is unhappy and I will say to all he is not a representation of Mac users. Keep up the good work here at Blendercookie.
Thanks so much Jonathan, I had tried to install Luxrender yesterday and something was not working and thanks to your tips it works today and I can try to use it. Only thing I see that is not great, is that I have to reintroduce the Path to Luxrender for each different file I want to render. Anyway to block it?
cheers and keep up the great work, Bernard
Saved twice the user preferences and the path to luxrender remains.
But now I see my image from your “intro tu luxrender” file renders in black and white
Hi Bernard,
If you open a default scene and set the LuxRender path, then save your User Settings the path should be applied to all new files. I am not sure about older files though…
-Jonathan
I have problem with pylux with builds from graphicall.org. i mean on this one with luxrender already install. In fact Luxrender works but when i copy pylux in Luxrender folder are restart Blender it doesn’t show up anymore. Also i have a feeling like Luxrender works desperately slow with this latest build. I use Luxrender 0.8
Finally got it working, woo hoo! Thanks! Well, still have a few glitches but at least I’m getting something now. One tip that helped me was on the render panel to turn the GUI refresh interval down from 10 to like 2 because it can sometimes seem like it’s not working. I used the latest build for intel macs from graphicall for optimized versions. I think the build is important, other builds i’ve gotten installed but sometimes it won’t let you check the box in the user preferences. I also thought it might be I was launching the .7 version so this tutorial helped me realize to try .8. One glitch I am having that isn’t a big deal is that the only way I get it to run in blender is to have it set to LuxRender GUI which launches luxrender and also will render in the blender window. If I just use the console it won’t render in the blender window.
thanks for the tut but when i try to render it comes up with this application has failed to start. i’m using a 32bit machein and have no idea whats going wrong
I don’t mean this as a dumb question, but did you happen to download the 64bit version of Blender? If so then it will not start on a 32bit machine.
-Jonathan
nope i downloaded the 32bit one. i tried redownloading it but that didn’t work either
i had the same problem but i am on a 64 bit windows computer. i have 64 bit versions of lux and blender from the websites described in the tutorial. i chose the no open cl and i even tried the opencl version of luxrender even though i dont think i have opencl drivers.
help?
Just when I needed it!
Thank you very much:)
Hi!
This is great! However, I only see “missing links” when I try to open the LuxRender material presets. Have I configured something wrong?
First let me say I enjoy all the tuts on here, kudos Jonathan and crew.
Second let me say I am running into the same problem as Malcolm where I cannot check the box in user prefs to enable LuxRender. I have tried all the current build bundles for my system to see if it was a build conflict. No joy there. Perhaps it was simply not meant to be. I have a lot of work to do on my modeling and texturing skills to get to where I want to be to use this add-on to it’s fullest, so maybe the stars will align when I get there. Still bugs me though.
System compatibility?
Intel Core2 Quad Q9300
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT (newest drivers)
6 GB RAM
Running with Python 3.1.3
I had the same issue, and this will sound stupid (and it is) but try this, it worked for me. You will notice, that when you first try to click the checkbox, it looks as though it checks it but only for a moment. Then you click it 30 thousand times more but never works… I closed Blender, opened it, prefs, click the box just once and waited a second. Poof, it checked it after a few seconds. There must be some background stuff that needs completing and the feedback on the checkbox is last.
Again, odd but it worked for me.
Kaboom!
I tried this yesterday and it was a no go, but I downloaded the newest build just now, and tried your little trick and POW! it worked. I suggest everyone else regardless of OS try this and it may work if your having the checkbox problem. It may take a few seconds but hang in there.
Thanks for the hail mary Sean
Sorry to bother you with another question but I cant preview lux render materials
in the material panel, it previews normal mat(blender materials) but lux material option appears on the panel, when I change the mat type to certain types nothing will show on the render it seems like no Luxrender material is working at all what could it be?
Before the video, I had been working for a couple of days and nothing. After watching the video, it took me 10 minutes to get Luxrender running. Thank you so very much.
Your Luxrender tuts are just awesome Jonathan, I got Luxrender working really well apart from one thing: no material colors! Only shades of grey are rendered in my scene. The same occured on a 32bit pc with Luxrender installed from your previous tutorial as well as with my new 64 bit i5 4gb pc laptop (with a Luxrender Blender build from Graphicall).
Could you advise me please, that would be so helpful! Thanks so much for your time and knowledge.
Olivier
Hey Olivier,
I’m glad you like the tutorials!
Can you send me a screenshot of your material settings? I am not quite sure what may be going on but I’ll try my best to help you.
-Jonathan
Hey Jonathan, I have the same problem. Getting only shades of grey rendered and the file I used to try and test Luxrender is your own file ” intro to luxrender” from your previous tutorial ! Any idea?
Hi Bernard,
I really have no clue why you and a few other people are only see grey renders… Perhaps you have assigned a texture to the diffuse that doesn’t exist or something? If the texture is missing I could see how it might default back to grey or something…
-Jonathan
One thing I’ve noticed before is that there may be an error message in the console window that doesn’t reflect in the main Blender window, and that the path to the render directory isn’t granting sufficient rights to render. If you run as an administrator (assuming Windows), it will work. I suppose you can grant rights, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Oh, and nice tutorial, BTW. Makes keeping current easy.
Have you all got this to work?
Jonathan, first thing I must tell you once more that your tutorials are great. Then trying once again to render your file “intro to luxrender” I had more success when for Texture.001 which had a Render Type set to scale, I changed it to “imagemap”, like you said in your tut, then LuxRender scale texture changed automatically to Color instead of Float and I have set the path to the wood texture to where it was on my machine. Then I got the color appear instead of shade of grey. Hope it can help other people and let you know, I made it better, although the colors I get are less warm than the ones you got on your render of the same scene.
Thanks again for being so helpfull.
Cheers
Bernard
Jonathan, I answered with a positive comment that comes above your replies, hope you can read it.
You should do a YafaRay tut Jonathan.
Hey i was wondering if you could look into bump map painting and ptex they seem really useful i just dont know how they work. i was wondering if you could expain them to me?
Mac OX 10.6.6.
Download 0.8RC1
Blender 2.56
Does not work, I’ve tried this a few dozen times and nothing seems to get the option in Blender to turn on.
Thanks.
Can someone help me I’m having a really difficult time with this. Mostly I’ve done this tutorial THREE times …exactly everything to the “T” and the materials preview won’t show up on the luxrender material tab or on the 3d viewport. I looked at the console and it says Warning: Binary Pylux module not available! I thought that pylux came with it, why is it not working on my computer? I’d really appreciate the help.
Awesome tutorial, i would never have figured that out on my own:D now i just need tutorials on how to use it!
I use a Mac and this worked fine for me. I only did the first bit, finding a build with add-ons and using that. It’s an older build but it works and I was able to open files created in a newer build and render them just fine. With any luck, the fellow creating these for Mac will be able to build a newer version soon.
I’ll also point out that the tutorial Jonathan links to in the description was done on a Mac. Aside from build and installation the software works the same on all platforms. I’ve learned a great deal from the tutorials offered here and feel $10/month is a more than fair price for the quality of content, much of which is provided free anyway.
-Rufina
I am running on Blender 2:56 so I have to wait
http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af353/Spender19/Skrmavbild2011-02-19kl111456.jpg
Ihen I try to open blender it says this application has failed to start because its side by side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command lone sxstrace.exe tool for more detail. Do you know how I can make blender work from that download?
Good morning! How do you install a downloaded build from Graphicall? For some reason, .blend files aren’t automatically labeled with the proper .blend file icon, and I don’t know how to set the downloaded build to be the Default Program to be used for opening .blend files…
Hi All.
Can anyone please help?
I’m using Win XP on a quad core Intel 2.4Ghz 3G ram.
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT
I got Blender build:
Blender 2.56a (trunk) rev35023 32bit + patches + contrib & external add-ons + API Doc – by filiciss on Feb-21-11
Lux Build:
LuxRender_CVS_20110201_32bit_SSE2_OpenCL.exe from the development folder – same.
I installed the Lux folder to my BlenderFoundation folder and set the path to the folder (Also tried pointing to the exe too)
I can run Lux ok without Blender, and render the test image that comes with it, but when trying to render a Blender default cube scene, the Lux renderer comes up for a second, then I get an error dialog saying:
“luxrender.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
I tried the OpenCL and the no OpenCL.
Any ideas?
~G
i had the same problem. tried the same thing. jonathan was talkin to someone else about that problem a few comments up.
Thanks Futch
Still doesn’t work. Later I’m trying a new version with the Lux compiled in. Maybe that will do it.
I GOT IT WORKING!
For everyone else, over at GraphicAll.org, there’s a build of Blender by Dobz called “Blender 2.56a r35350 Win32 with LuxRender and OpenMP”.
He has a 64bit version there too. It’s on the right side panel.
I didn’t see a MAC version though, I may be wrong.
What’s truly neat is that Lux is compiled into the build. Nothing to load or fuss with.
And nothing to change except the Rendering at the top of the Blender screen.
(Blender Render -> LuxRender)
Set the Lux materials and it just works. Take a bit of time to get going, maybe 10 to 30 secs but you can see something going on in the little screen behind Blender. I think this little screen is only Windows. Not sure.
Now I can go back through all the tuts and do them.
Thanks
I also just learned that if you have a crash when trying to use the external render, check your Volume Integrator setting in the LUX renderer’s render options.
If this is set to Multi, you may get a LUX crash with no explanation.
Set this to Single and it should get rid of the error when trying to render externally.
That’s the error I was getting.
Jason in the LUX forum answered this and I’ll give him full credit. Thanks!
You’ll have to do this in all your blend files as it seems to keep the Multi setting. I’ll say I have no idea what this is for, but it works and I wanted to give back and pass this on.
~Gary
I have a mac and I have been able to do virtually every tutorial that I’ve looked at with no difference in results. BlenderCookie’s free tutorials are so numerous that if you actually went through all the tutorials and still found it “lacking” then I would be amazed… There are tutorials on here done on macs, but you’ll obviously notice that blender has it’s own UI so it looks and works on all OS’s exactly the same. Nobody is telling you to pay for the tutorials and I would say 100% that the quality of these tutorials probably makes them worth the price they ask for membership.
Hi all,
I look at grap-all and looks like they don’t have it for us mac users so i will just wait. I to have spent hours trying to make it work but till they make a mac bundle i wont wast any more of my time trying to figure it out.
For one mac has let us down.
Could you please make a tutorial on how to use GreenButoon with blender and LuxRender?
LINK: http://www.greenbutton.net/
Added to the list!
-Jonathan
has anyone come across an issue where luxrender consistantly aborts in the middle of exporting the model? (usually occurs at around 87% completion). Since attempting this install neither luxren nore the blender internal renderer can complete the render process.I am wondering if it is the install or perhaps a problem with my model somehow….. any ideas? Oh and yes I have already tried a complete reinstall…… heh heh
I have not seen this before…
Which version of Blender and LuxRender are using? If you haven’t already I would recommend getting the latest SVN of Blender, 0.8 RC2 of LuxRender and the latest LuxBlend.
-Jonathan
As a Mac user I will concede that some of the tutorials don’t translate across exactly (mostly keystroke stuff) but they are fairly few things so far I’ve noticed. I also disagree Macs are for people who don’t know how to use computers =)
At any rate, I’m not seeing a Mac version of the program on that site, which includes all the add-ons. I found one, but it doesn’t list which add-ons come with it, so I’m not going to download it just yet. If you do know of a specific link, let me know. Thanks!
–Jason
Tried both tutorials on getting luxrender working and when I try rendering the default cube to test, all I get is a blank screen; pasted the console output below:
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.60\python
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:42] Using pylux version 0.8
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] INFO: Creating LuxRender context
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] INFO: Exporting render settings
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] INFO: Exporting geometry
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] Binary PLY file written: C:\/untitled/Scene/00001/Cub
e_0000_m000.ply
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] INFO: Exporting lights
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] INFO: Export finished
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] Wrote scene files
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] C://untitled.Scene.00001.lxs
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] untitled/Scene/00001/LuxRender-Materials.lxm
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] untitled/Scene/00001/LuxRender-Geometry.lxo
[Lux 2011-Dec-07 11:53:51] untitled/Scene/00001/LuxRender-Volumes.lxv
LusRender is installed; it is enabled in addons and I have changed rendering from BlenderRendering to LuxRender. The path points to(64bit): ‘C:\Program Files\LuxRender’ and I have copied ‘luxrender’ folder.
Completely puzzled…
Nicholas
I am having the same problem as writer’s block. I have luxrender installed into blender and when i try to get it to render while using the lux render engine, all i get is a black screen. I couldn’t find anything on graphicall.org for macs that had all the add-ons and what not. What do you suggest I do Jonathan?
i have luxblender in my addons but when ever i click the little square to activate it, the little x mark doesnt go in the box
i have blender 2.61 the most recent if this only works with 2.5 i will try it out one more time
if u have any tips email me at [email protected]
thanks
Hi.
Can I install LuxRender in blender 2.63?