# Building luxrender on linux


I wrote this little article mostly because I had to reinstall
[Luxrender](http://www.luxrender.net) (mostly to try
[Luke](http://freecadamusements.blogspot.com.br)'s work), and this will
serve me as a memo for another time. The info below comes mostly from
the [official
instructions](http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Building_on_Linux).

First, you must install the dependencies listed on the official page
above. Here luckily I already had all of them. Then, the luxrender
system comes in 2 parts, luxrender and luxrays. So it's best to create
first a containing folder, then clone the 2 repositories:


    mkdir Luxrender-sourcecd Luxrender-sourcehg clone http://bitbucket.org/luxrender/luxhg clone http://bitbucket.org/luxrender/luxrayshg clone http://src.luxrender.net/luxblend25


Then, prepare for out-of-source build for luxrays:


    cd ..mkdir Luxrendercd Luxrendermkdir luxrayscd luxrayscmake ../../Luxrender-source/luxrays


Then, because of some bug between openCL 1.2 (which is the version I
have here on debian wheezy) and 1.1 (which is used by lux), you must use
the -DCL_USE_DEPRECATED_OPENCL_1_1_APIS option when compiling. The
easiest way is to use cmake-gui:


    cmake-gui .


Then add "-DCL_USE_DEPRECATED_OPENCL_1_1_APIS" to CXX_FLAGS and
C_FLAGS. Press "Configure" then "Generate".

For me the luxrays library then compiles fine, but the benchmarks
failed. But there is an option to compile the luxrays lib only:


    make luxrays


If all went okay, let's do lux:


    cd ..mkdir luxcd luxcmake ../../Luxrender-source/lux


It will complain that luxrays was not found. Then, start cmake-gui:


    cmake-gui .


And change the value of LUXRAYS_LIBRARY to the path of your
luxrays/lib/libluxrays.a file. Also add the same compiler option as in
luxrays above. Press "Configure" then "Generate". Then, build:


    make luxconsolemake luxrendermake pylux


Now, go back to the luxblend folder and link pylux there:


    cd ../../Luxrender-source/luxblend25ln -s ../../Luxrender/lux/pylux.so


Then link the luxblend folder and the presets into your blender scripts
folder:


    cd ~/.blender/2.6X/scripts/addonsln -s /path/to/Luxrender-source/luxblend25/src/luxrendercd ../presetsln -s /path/to/Luxrender-source/luxblend25/src/presets/luxrender


Then, all you need to do is open blender, activate the plugin, and set
the path to /path/to/Luxrender/lux/ in the render options.