does anyone know of, or is working on, an updated virtualight script? the one that comes with virtualight is for blender 2.10.
or if it’s easy, explain how to update it. (a line or to of changes as i’m not someone who works with anything more than the simplist of languages.)
Hi!
I am also excited about the upcoming release of Virtualight. I started a post (in the wrong place as usual :-|). There wasn’t much interest but here it is:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22237
I apologise for cross posting.
I had always thought that python scripting was never going to be something for a mere mortal like me. Luckily, earlier this week, I accidentally crossed something that made me have another go. In one night I suddenly made my first useful script 
.
I would love to help with making/updating a python script for Virtualight. I don’t know how much use I can be as a couple of days ago I would have classified myself as complete non-programmer (now I’m more of an eager complete newbie). Anyway, I hope I am learning fast enough to be useful.
Hopefully someone much more competant than me will also come along to help.
Regards,
Koba.
Hi Koba. As a ray-tracer which is the advantage of VirtualLight over, let’s say, Yafray?
What does Virtualight have over yafray?
One picture on the Virtualight site showing two features that yafray doesn’t currently support can be found at the bottom of the Virtualight homepage.
As you can see Virtualight supports volumetric rendering with photon maps as well as dispersive optics. Volumetric rendering can really add atmosphere to a scene and chromatic light dispersion make for far more realistic glass materials.
Yafray of course does support photon lamps etc but at the moment they are not implemented in the Blender interface. Secondly Virtualight doesn’t need fiddly photon lights for caustics: they are simply an option you switch on when it comes to rendering.
VirtuaLight also supports far more camera models and primitives than yafray. VLight supports an animation system and a particle system. It also has an OpenGL preview when rendering which is VERY useful.
The new VLight will also support HDRI output as well as a host of very advanced features that I am not qualified enough to talk about 
.
All in all VLight is a far more developed raytracer at the moment though of course I will always support yafray as it is open source and in active development.
Koba.
Gracias.
Is there no interest in this thread? 
Well… the seeming lack of interest is probably due to several factors.
VL (even the freeware 1.4), however nice it is, is a closed product, the work of a single man. Stephane has large visions (VLMAX et al) and has already indicated he has no time to look into Blender integration. That kinda rules out the yafray tweeks that made the first integration in Blender possible.
Which leaves python. There was a script and some nice stuff was done by Dotblend. However, the script was not updated along with the rapidly evolving python api, leaving it in quite a sorry state for 2.32
So, on the one hand we got Blender with a rudimentary raytracer (nothing fancy but enough for shiny spheres over checkerboard plane ).
Then we have the yafray integration. ( OK, better than traces, but yafray is new and not up to VL level yet. It’ll get there in tandem with blender integration.).
We also have jms doing his thing with POV in Python. ( POV is a venerable well supported product with a large community backing it)
I just don’t see why sparce resources should be dedicated to support an end of life product… I’d prefer everyone working on improving the existing stuff. (Of course, if anyone WANTS to do VL integration, more power to him!) I’m afraid that any effort on VL scripting will just end up like the Lightflow python script which was great but died when Lightflow itself faded in the past.
But who knows! VL ASE might make a difference once it comes out.
I was hoping someone could see, saw, the value in a temporay script while yafray gets on it’s feet.
UglyMike, your points are well made and taken.
You know how it is. “I want it all and i want it now” I just don’t know how to do it. 
Yes. Point taken.
Yafray has always been my renderer of choice for Blender due to the quality of the images produced (not matter how slow). I do feel that it will take a long long time for yafray to have the volumetric photon maps (and other features) of Virtualight. I would of course, love to be proved wrong.
As for POV, I have never like it and I have never understood what all the fuss is about. I feel that POV does have a full feature set but just doesn’t produce nice images. To me POV images look horribly fake. I think it has a reputation because it is so old. Maybe one day someone will help me understand what is so good about POV.
I was never hoping for full Blender integration of Virtualight: just a workable Python script with maybe something salvaged from the old code. I was wondering if Dotblend could help. I have just started to learn about Python scripts in Blender (and Python in general) so I probably can’t help much. If no one else can help, I will have a go writing a script of my own though I will probably fail. Oh well.
At this point I think I’ll stop trying to push for a script. Thanks for explaining the lack of interest.
let push this back into interest
vl is a fast renderengine and needs a modeler to work with, although it also has a backend wit max, maya, and a few others i really feel that it deserves to get back inline with the new api, i have a few ideas and would really really like to have them worked out!
so lets put this baby back on track!
Great!
I’m really happy you’re working on a script, dotblend. I contemplated contacting you (see my post in the “Blender General” about it but I didn’t want to bother you.
I’d love to help out but my python skills are limited as they only came into existence less than a month ago. If you would like me to have a look at the script or test it out etc just ask. Don’t know if I could make any helpful suggestions though.
By the way, how do you know that the new .vib format will be the same as before, seeing that the new Virtualight isn’t out yet and the whole program has been rewritten from scratch?
Thanks
Koba
Firstly, sorry for bumping an old thread.
Now, I was reading over the stuff on Virtualight and looking at the past posts regarding the VL export scripts. I can’t tinker with them now, since my comp at work is a Mac. I am wondering if anyone is working on updating the available script to work with the API in 2.3+? I have had limited success with Yafray and its unpredictable results. Maybe I haven’t fooled with it enough, but the differences in the 3d view and the scene are enough, added to the fact that it doesn’t support animation. So, is there any possibility of the script being updated? Yafray doesn’t move along developmentally fast enough. I understand that VL is closed source, but what makes that worse than open source if no one is (seemingly) working on the open source Yafray? Perhaps considering a serious push toward another renderer (at least until the Internal matures a little more which I would really prefer over all.)? It doesn’t have to be VL, but it’s a consideration because A) there’s a script available that just needs some updating and TLC, and B) it’s obviously more powerful and faster than Yafray. Now, I know it’s not crossplatform, which sucks, but there’s WINE and VirtualPC for non Win users, so it’s not like there are NO options. Renderman renderers would be the best option, but the various attempts have met with limited success, so I was just reminding (and asking) about another option.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
-Gendo
Look at this page:
http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/cpl_localiserpythonscript.htm#exportation
Not to go off-topic but if you would like to try another Blender-compatible system you can import your Blender models as .obj files in Art of Illusion and render with HDRI output (and HDRI world textures), one-switch caustics, photon mapping/monte carlo/hybrid global illumination, soft shadows, gloss/translucency (blurred reflections for chrome, etc.), procedural textures and procedural materials (in AoI “materials” refer to the interior qualities of an object, “textures” for the exterior) with IoR, density, scattering, eccentricity, etc. All in a very simple-to-use package.
Not a bad deal if you want to try other open-source renderers. I am currently modeling a lot in Blender and rendering in AoI.
Hmm…
I’ve tried Art of Illusion and I quite liked it. I just didn’t see how it was superior to using the Wings/Blender/Yafray workflow but then again I never used the rendering engine.
I’ve looked around on the internet for pictures made with Art of Illusion (with caustics/GI etc) but came up with nothing (except for the official gallery which doesn’t show these things). Could someone kindly link to some examples of what is possible (eg cornell box with pretty caustics)?
Thank you.
Koba
Well, I gave the cornell thing a try. Unfortunately I just had a few minutes because I’m in a hurry, so I had to set the quality low:
Hardly any caustics are visible because I didn’t have time to mess around. Look in the AoI manual (available at the AoI site) and you will see some cool examples of caustics.
Here’s one:
http://www.housepixels.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=22
Also go to:
housepixels.com > Nate’s gallery
www.friendlyskies.net/aoiforum -> Finished Work/WIP area for other stuff.
A lot of users use Wings > AoI as their “workflow” (not sure how much honest to goodness work is being done ;)) but it’s all free/open source stuff we’re talking about here, so you can use it whenever you like, I guess
Bijin
I’ve toyed with AoI before, recently actually. It’s alright. It lacks in a lot of places but the material editor and renderer are decent. This is, I think, the second or third indy 3d app with a procedural node-based material editor. It would be really nice if someone would revamp the blender material editor into something node-based. It’s ok the way it is now, but it could be better, more flexible. The ability to layer materials (not textures) would be nice, or be able to load a new material in a texture channel. Or something.
There’s another freebie 3d app called Now3D (http://www.now3d.it/Eng/) that’s got a good (sometimes slow) rendering engine and good procedural materials. It’s written in VB6 so I think it’s only Windows. I took my model into my copy of C4D XL6 and tried to recreate the material there. I met with some success, however, I didn’t spend more than maybe 2 hours tweaking the materials so it might be better. I am going to try working with that Virtualight script later this weekend, see what can be done with it. I don’t know, Yafray isn’t all people make it out to be. I mean, it’s good for one or two guys, but it’s still really young and it really seems like there’s nothing being done developmentally. It’s really slow and lacking full integration with blender. It’s nearly there but I get wonky results when I use it, so I try not to. I’m not saying that it’s ALL Yafray’s fault, but there’s something off there. Thanks for the links though, I looked at them and the forum for it,… I might try tinkering with it. I’d really rather have the opportunity to go from blender straight to a good renderer instead of exporting to another app. If I’m going to do that, why use blender at all?