Philbo - thanks for the tutorial. It's a great introduction to Luxrender and a nice review of Blender. Luxrender has come a long, long way since I last tried it.

thanks phil, very clearly put together. blender provides such a neat portal into luxrender.

one thing i've always wondered about...unbiased renders seem to take hours, whereas other renders can be done in say 30 mins or so. is it worth the wait?

what is the real advantage of using an unbiased renderer?

Phenomenal Tutorial Philbo, The LUX info is very useful...I was unaware of the lighting tab sliders regarding self lit objects,
Thanks for sharing,
Blend3d

Thanks Phil for tutorial, very nice.

how much time is necessary in luxrender for having a good result?

Thanks

Marcorhino

Hi Phil, wow that is a really comprehensive tutorial covering so many things!

Thanks very much for making it, that is definitely a major help for anyone who wants to delve into using Blender and the part where you can adjust lighting values in Lux separate from the render process is really cool!

- Michael

Depending on the parameters, renders can take 6, 8, 10 or more hours. The thing about unbiased renderers is that you pretty much just set your lights where they would be in reality and just let it go and you'll get a great looking result. With other methods, you have to fiddle at placing lights, rendering and then re working them over and over until the scene looks right.

For me, it's easier to set it up and then let it run over night. When I get up, it's usually looks great!

Great tutorial (I learned something new -- the "snap camera to view" shortcut).

Just to add to Phil's remarks about Luxrender -- not only does it basically produce great results without much fiddling, but a lot of special effects (notably caustics) that are horrible to get right in normal renderers "just work" -- so if you're producing a "hero" render, Lux Render (or its non-free cronies such as Maxwell and Indigo) are amazing.

ok, nice explanations, thanks ppl

Thank you very much! ;-)