How to render using Luxrender in the vSwarm

Here I describe how to start a render job for Luxrender. If you have any further questions  join the forum.

Step by step how-to

  1. Create your scene with any 3D software that has an exporter for Luxrender. You need at least an .lxs file to start rendering. Most probably your exporter will create at least .lxs, .lxo and .lxm files.
  2. Copy all your texture files to the same directory as your .lxs file. The path names in your exported files are ignored, it is important to have all files you need in the same directory.

IMPORTANT: texture file names are case sensitive. If your files do not match the file names in the source files textures will not work!

  1. Pack all files in this directory using a zip packer. You will get one zip archive containing all your files.
  2. Upload the zip file to the vSwarm Server. For small files (up to 10MB) you can use the  web upload. For bigger files please use FTP.  You can find your login data here.
  3. Open the  create a new job page and fill in the fields.
    1. Name: Give the job a name
    2. Application: select Luxrender
    3. File: select the zip file you just uploaded
    4. X resolution: The width of the image you like to render
    5. Y resolution: Height of the image to render. Maximum size is 4M pixels (x*y <4M) This will be increased after testing.
    6. Samples/pixel to render: the samples per pixel to render. The higher you set this, the longer the render will take and the better (less noisy) your image will look. The value must be between 100 and 2500.
  4. Submit your job and  watch clients grabbing your work units.
  5. Each client submits an .flm file. You can download them by viewing your job details or better using FTP in the results dir.
  6. Download all flm files. (you can even start downloading while your job is still running)
  7. Merge the .flm files using luxmerger. This program should be part of your Luxrender installation. You get one merged .flm file.
  8. Start Luxrender and open the merged file using "Open .flm".
  9. Set all tone mapping options and save your finished image. Congratulations!

How to use luxmerge

Linux

Under linux just call 

luxmerger result*.flm

Windows

As Windows does not expand your wildcards in the command line you must use a small batch script. Create a file called luxmerge-all.cmd in the directory you downloaded the .flm files to. Edit the path to luxmerger in the script to match your installation and run it. All your files should get merged. 

set LUXMERGE_FILES=
FOR %%p IN (result*.flm) DO (CALL :add_file %%p)
echo %LUXMERGE_FILES%
"C:\Program Files\Luxrender 0.6RC6\luxmerger.exe" %LUXMERGE_FILES%
GOTO :eof

:add_file
  set LUXMERGE_FILES=%LUXMERGE_FILES% %1
  GOTO :eof

Troubleshooting

In case you experience any errors this may be helpful: WccTroubleshooting