New YafaRay v3.2.0 released!

Hello,

I would like to announce the release of the new version v3.2.0. I hope you like it!

You can download builds for Linux 32/64bit, Windows 32/64 bits and MacOSX 64bits (however the Mac build needs additional tests, as I only can do very limited tests for the Mac builds).

There are 3 types of builds:

  • Blender-Exporter: intended to be used with Blender 2.78
  • Standalone: to be used with other software such as Wings3D
  • SketchUp 2017 plugin: in experimental Alpha state and only available for Windows 64bit for now. Itā€™s a very basic and probably buggy plugin but at least it works.

The list of changes between v3.1.1-beta and v3.2.0 can be seen in the download pages as well, but Iā€™ve added it to the bottom of this message for your information.

More information and build downloads links:

http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5233

Please if you have any issues with it, let us know in the Bug Tracker and/or Forums.

The list of changes for the Blender-Exporter between v3.1.1-beta and v3.2.0 are:

Feature changes/additions in v3.2.0:

  • IMPORTANT: Support for Texture Mipmaps / Ray Differentials, see: http://yafaray.org/node/695 [Blender Exporter + Core]

    • Modifier all ImageHandlers to standardise access and make them more flexible. BIG changes to ImageHandlers.
    • Added new Grayscale internal buffers (optional)
    • Reorganized all Interpolation and GetColor code
    • Added MipMap capability to ImageHandlers
    • Added Trilinear MipMap interpolation based on Ray Differentials.
    • Added EWA MipMap interpolation based on Ray Differentials
    • Heavily modified IBL blur function, to use mipmaps with manually calculated mipmap level instead of the previous dedicated ā€œIBL blurā€ process
  • Path Tracing integrator: added new Russian Roulette parameter to speed up path tracing, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/775 [Blender Exporter + Core]
    The relevant parameter will be ā€œrussian_roulette_min_bouncesā€.

    • If this parameter is set to 0, russian roulette will be enabled.
    • If set to the same value specified in depth (max bounces), russian roulette will be disabled
    • If set to a value between 0 and max bounces, then russian roulette will only start be applied after this number of bounces, so we can get decent sampling in dark areas for example and get a good speedup with less noise.
    • Lower values of this parameter will result in faster (but somewhat noisier) renders.
  • yafaray-xml: better autodetection of plugins path, but in some cases ā€œ-ppā€ may still be needed [Core]

  • Building system: many changes to make the building process easier and more integrated with Git [Blender Exporter + Core]

  • Building system: standalone builds generated again [Core]

  • Building system: added building instructions and test scenes [Blender Exporter + Core]

  • QT4 support reintroduced and updated for YafaRay v3, but still in a basic state, many features not available yet for the Qt interface [Blender Exporter + Core]

  • Re-added ability to generate Sketchup plugins again [Core]

  • Texture mapping: allow MirrorX,MirrorY even when Repeat = 1 [Blender Exporter + Core]

Bug fixes in v3.2.0:

  • IMPORTANT: Path/Photon OneDirectLight - attempt to sample lights more uniformly, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/803 [Core]
    This has been a significant bug, that went unnoticed for a very long time and was causing severe artifacts in Photon Mapping and Path Tracing when lights were not uniformly lighting the scene. Now with this fix, renders should be much more correct and hopefully more realistic!

  • IMPORTANT: all integrators, SPPM and path roulette: Fixing non-randomness repetitive patterns, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/792 [Core]
    Another important bug that went unnoticed for a very long time. A lack of randomness caused severe patterns in BiDirectional integrator and probably some artifacts (in less extent) in the others. We hope this change helps to achieve more correct and realistic results now.

  • IMPORTANT: big changes to textures interpolation and colorspace processing, see: http://yafaray.org/node/787 [Core]

    • I found out that YafaRay was doing the texture interpolation after decoding the texels color space. This was causing significant differences in color between standard bilinear/bicubic and when using trilinear or EWA mipmaps.

    • The Core code has been modified so from v3.2.0 onwards all internal image buffers will be converted to ā€œlinear RGBā€ during the texture loading process. That will allow a correct color interpolation process, and probably slightly faster than before. Hopefully this should improve color fidelity respect to the original texture images used for the scene.

    • Also, all textures will be ā€œoptimizedā€ by default. I think itā€™s clear by now that optimized textures greatly improve memory usage and apparently donā€™t cause slowdowns (might even make it slightly faster due to reduced RAM access?). To accomodate the extra color information necessary to store ā€œlinear RGBā€ values in the optimized buffers, their size will be around 20-25% bigger respect to v3.1.1, therefore a RAM usage increase will happen now compared with previous versions.

    • For optimal results, from now on the user will be responsible for selecting correct ColorSpaces for all textures, including bump map, normal map, etc. For example for Non-RGB / Stencil / Bump / Normal maps, etc, textures are typically already linear and the user should select ā€œlinearRGBā€ in the texture properties, but if the user (by mistake) keeps the default sRGB for them, YafaRay will (incorrectly) apply the sRGB->LinearRGB conversion causing the values to be incorrect. However, Iā€™ve added a ā€œfail safeā€ so for any ā€œfloatā€ textures, bump maps, normal maps, etc, when getting colors after interpolatio YafaRay will to a ā€œinverseā€ color conversion to the original Color Space. This way, even a mistake in userā€™s color space selection in bump maps, normal maps, etc, will not cause any significant problems in the image as they will be converted back to their original color space. However, in this case rendering will be slower and potential artifacts can appear due to interpolation taking place in the wrong color space. For optimal results, the user must select correctly the color space for all textures.

  • Bidirectional integrator changes [Blender Exporter + Core]

    • Will be supported again, although will be considered ā€œunstableā€ until the (many) issues it has are completely fixed.
    • Fixed issue with excessive brightness that happened after render finished.
  • Fix for SPPM sudden brightness change when reaching approx 4,300 million photons. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/772 [Core]

  • Fixed bug that caused many extra render passes to be generated in some cases [Core]

  • Fixed crash when using Blender Exporter and Core with Ruby bindings support enabled [Blender Exporter + Core]

  • Image Texture Interpolation fixes, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/783 [Core]

  • Angular camera: fixed wrong renders due to incorrect default clipping, see: http://yafaray.org/node/779 [Core]

  • Fixed EXR MultiLayer image file saving [Core]

  • Fixed uninitialized values generated by Ambient Occlusion sampling [Core]

  • AA user interface: fixed disabled filter type and pixel width when passes=1 [Blender Exporter]

  • Show the Physics tab in Blender, see: http://yafaray.org/node/797 [Blender Exporter]

  • Several other fixes and improvements, especially for the building system and tools for developers.

Thank you very much!!

Is it re-new one or is it previous one?https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?418108-New-YafaRay-v3-2-0-ALPHA21-for-Development-testing

Hello,

The latest release v3.2.0 is similar to the pre-release ALPHA21 plus some changes to the BiDirectional integrator.

ALPHA21 was just a preview. Please, do use the new Release v3.2.0.

Thanks!

Thanks you.

How do I create a metallic material?

The YafaRay is really great. I can imagine how good it would have been by supporting CUDA :/. But I know a lot of code would have to be rewritten.

Thank you David.

Iā€™ll test it as soon as I found a crack in my schedule. :slight_smile:

Hello,

We currently donā€™t have a proper metallic material. In fact Iā€™m studying shaders, materials and integrators to start improving our material system and include, for example, real metallic shaders.

For now the best approximation would probably be a glossy material with high reflectance values, appropriate reflectance color and exponent and optionally anisotropy.

Thank you. Yes, unfortunately that would be the case :frowning:

Any thought about implementation of a sss shader? It is still the most missing, maybe, element in the whole rendererā€¦

Hello,

Yes, Iā€™m currently studying materials and integrators in order to be able to implement PBR materials and SSS shader. Iā€™m not sure yet which SSS system I will implement, as there are several possible SSS shader models. I would like it to be fast even if itā€™s not too ā€œrealisticā€, but still pondering whatā€™s the best way forward.

In any case, Iā€™m still very inexperienced when it comes to integrators and materials, but Iā€™m slowly progressingā€¦

ā€˜I would like it to be fast even if itā€™s not too ā€œrealisticā€ā€™

Very wise approach, to my evaluation too. The needed thing in 3D artistic rendering is to have a satisfactory appearance of the produced images. Trying to have methods imitating consistently natural processes -regarding lightā€™s behavior etc- is more a laboratory matter than of having good results producing renderers.

1 Like

Check appleseed render, they are the first ones to make a full ray traced SSS implementation.

http://appleseedhq.net/gallery.html

They are open source.

Or not :slight_smile:

  .

Hello,

Thank you very much for the suggestion. I will certainly take a look at it!

This new release looks fantastic, I love biased renderers and yafaray is pretty darn good for that again. Last I used Yafaray (Yafray) was back in 2005.
I love the blender integration in this release thank you devs for such hard-work. david if you get to please do read up on mitshuba render it is once of the most optimised and cleaner rendering engines out there even if it not usable for blender as much as yafaray is http://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/docs.html.

Hello,

Thank you very much for your comments. Unfortunately Mitsuba code is off-limits for us as its license is incompatible with YafaRayā€™s LGPLv2+ license.

Thanks for your reply David.
I didnā€™t mean source code usage, I was referring to learning methods, algorithms and any smart implementation of technologies since one can read the code.

You are right gaurav