Just curious if anyone has tried this.

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

I tried this for a while, and it's nice, but that was a few years ago. The current bottle-neck to the Softimage users seems to be the sad fact that the official build for the LuXSI Softimage-plugin is quite outdated (and I recently read a report on the German xsiforum that it doesn't even properly support SI2012). There still seems to be development going on with the plugin, but it's AFAIK only available as source code.

I gave it a try when it was at version 0.8. It's an impressive piece of tech... for a free, open source project. It's unbiased, thus slow and kind of noisy, and as far as I remember it was missing a few key features like SSS.

It's still a very promising project, particularly with all the work they are putting into GPU acceleration. I'm baffled that the Blender Foundation caught the "not made here" syndrome and decided to start from scratch with Cycles instead of investing in Lux.

That said, seeing how long it took other third-part render engines to integrate with SI, I wouldn't even try working on an exporter for Lux, and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for someone else to do it. If unbiased is what you want, then Maxwell is here, it's not too expensive, and it has excellent integration with SI.

HTH

Greetings...
LuXSI is alive.. and functional:)

Source..
http://src.luxrender.net/luxsi/summary

LuxRender forum entry..
http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=18

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

(Quoted from here)
Sadly, for most Softimage users, where x64 seems to be the norm, this means it can't be considered "functional"...

It all depends on the party who want to read ..

mirkoj wrote:

So what do we need to install to make it work in 64bit, do you mean it already works?
Plenty of people with softimage on 64bit here I guess, if you need help with compiling the 64bit version I'm willing to try.
Will visual studio express do the job or do you need the professional version?

Cheers, Wim

@povmaniaco - I wasn't attacking you, I was pointing out something you even repeated after mirkoj wrote this, that you hadn't found anyone who could provide a new official build. I don't blame you, but it's worth pointing out...
As to mirkoj's quote

That doesn't sound like an "official build" to me. No indication is even given which x64 dll he means. If you were to dig up this "x64 bit version" from the forum and incorporate it in the official build, however...

Sorry .. Maybe I answered too overwhelming. I did not mean to disturb.
The problem with x64 versions, is that I do not have a machine with x64 architecture or economic capacity to purchase one.
Once again I apologize for my previous comment precipitate.
Greetings ..

No problem...
I would take forton up on his offer (send him a Private Message for instance) or open a thread here asking for some assistance with a x64 build, as we are mostly on x64 here, as I have already pointed out... (I would even offer to try it myself, but that would get messy due to my own inexperience with C++)