YafaRay news: v3.3.0 released

Minor release in waiting for a big YafaRay 4.0 release in which among other things YafaRay will be fully migrated to LGPL 3+. The list of changes between v3.2.0 and v3.3.0 can be seen in the download pages below.

The Blender-Exporter builds can be downloaded from:

The Standalone builds (to be used with other software than Blender such as Wings3D for example) can be downloaded from:

Please report your findings and bugs here or in this forum thread.

In terms of speed and feature how Yafaray compare to corona render ?

Corona uses Intel Embree accelerating structures and it is much faster than YafaRay. We will change YafaRay license to LGPL 3+ in the next version in order to implement Embree structures in YafaRay. Feature wise I don’t know. Corona gallery is certainly impressive.

I’ll try to install and see what it can do. Cool that it is open. If you know a good tutorial, please put it here. If I find then I’ll put it here.

Is there any goal list or todo for Yafaray 4? What should we expect? Any major feature? (i’m thinking of stuff like better integration in blender - like preview rendering in the 3dview -, or GPU acceleration, newer biased algorithms, multilights, lightpath tricks, etcetera… edit: oh and yes, Embree is good!)

Well I think there is no plan, David will work on whatever he feels more comfortable with, and now the goal is implementing some embree accelerating structures, which will replace old YafaRay stuff. Also take into account that it does no make sense for a project like YafaRay, with only one active developer, to expand the code base with new features to debug and maintain. We would like first to improve into what we already have.

Also in my opinion it is really important that we follow our own goals and paths and without copying what other people are doing really well. For instance we should keep on investigating on how to fight montecarlo raytracing diminishing returns by means of more advanced adaptive sampling algorithms than just a color thresold. And there is also SPPM, the more I use it the more I like it, I think it really has lot of posibilities. Quality wise is much more powerful than pathtracing.

I think the most important feature to improve is the material System. It’s a bit dated imo. The speed is not too bad at the moment in my experience, but Node Based Materials with Idustry Standad Materials (Principled Shader, layered Materials, more procedural possibilities, curvature…) would take YafaRay to a new level.

Hi, I have finished a small tutorial about SPPM, you can take a look here:
http://www.yafaray.org/node/816

Just a question.

Do you know of any plans for Yafaray to finally have the complete set of standard shading features, because SSS is still missing last I’ve looked and most engines have now thrown out the legacy specular models (Blinn, Phong, ect…)?

Also, any plans to start a subscription-based donation system (it might ensure a future that isn’t dependent on how much time David Bluecame has)?

One of the primary feature needs of Yafaray is sss shading. It is unthinkable for a modern renderer not having sss shading. So, this feature must be a priority for the further development of the renderer. Otherwise its further development will remain a vain, mostly, task… because very few people will use it.

And as we said in another thread with David, it is not necessary to have a strictly ‘physically correct’ shading. It is enough to have a good looking sss shading. But regardless of its being ‘physically correct’ or not, it is an essential feature.

Also, the renderer’s shading system needs to acquire nodes. It is very difficult to choose to use a renderer, nowadays, which does not give a rich range of choices as to its shader manipulation. Tasks needing masking for achieving dirt and decay looks, for example, are very common tasks in today’s 3D imagery. It is something that can not ignored.

YafaRay has got every feature you comment except from a working SSS component we can add to any material. YafaRay materials is based on a nodes system from day zero with masking available in several texture types (stencil) and material blending based on masks as well. This system has been adapted to work like Blender internal texturing workflow so we can use Blender material and texturing panels, but this system should be able to use a nodes editor so there is a real development loop with users’ trials and feedback.

It wont make much sense that we rewamp YafaRay material system while we are stuck in the current status quo.

You mean that it has a node based system of shader editing (apart from the node system of render result editing)? I have Yafaray’s Blender exporter installed a long time now and never met such a thing. Where is it? How can it be accessed? Any tutorial?

As to the latest version… I deactivated the older one and installed it but it is not working. Even in material previewing window gives back a black scene. What may be happening? Any idea?

And also, I do not see the new ‘flat material’ in the materials list? Where is it?

I understand this like Yafaray is nodes based and works with nodes internally. Nodes aren’t exposed to the user, instead a sort of translation into Blender Internal panel workflow was done.

And as we said in another thread with David, it is not necessary to have a strictly ‘physically correct’ shading.

It is a matter of views, but as a YafaRay user who usually have to shoot several renders of the same 3D scene with plate compositing work, consistency for me is very important, because I don’t like modifying material properties between different render views of the same scene, just the lighting setup. Consistency means that renders converge to a phisically correct result depending on my render settings (aliasing and montecarlo noise versus render time), this way the scene setup becomes easier, more predictable and with better results, for instance materials produce a consistent result under different lighting conditions.

And what is the way of doing this ‘translation’ work? Any instructions?

Mine was just a blind guess from what i’ve red here and there. I’m not a coder either.

hi David,
to get same light levels as cycles,corona etc yafaray mesh light has to be set to about 0.3 power.so emitter visible is darker -this leads to wrong reflection.



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Hello, Remade.

This is a very interesting observation, thank you very much! Unfortunately I don’t have Corona so I cannot compare but I will definitely investigate into this.

I don’t know what the characteristics of the materials in Corona are, for example the black ball has no visible reflections at the sides (or they are very dim). I wonder if that’s because of differences in how the material was setup, or if there is a deeper difference between YafaRay and Corona.

The first thing I need to do is to investigate a way to test whether YafaRay is illuminating correctly. For that I will need to know how to setup a “generic” scene with very specific dimensions, material and light parameters, etc, so we can use as a “universal” comparison reference. I will put this into the YafaRay forum and see if somebody there could help.

Thanks again and I will let you know.

I have opened this thread in the YafaRay forum: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5260&start=0

corona standalone is free(+ blender addon).i compared light levels for this scene with cycles,corona & luxrender using exr 32bit and sampling in gimp.i was surprised to get very close results.except yafaray all other renderer’s emitter’s rgb (pixel)value and resulting light levels correspond.