GI - Yafaray

scottishbloke · July 3, 2009, 3:01am

I cant find the GI settings box in the latest version of Yafaray. Has it been taken out or am I not seeing where it is?

organic · July 3, 2009, 3:17am

If you mean this one, it is for Yafray, you are using Yafaray:-

Use these instead:-

Reaction · July 3, 2009, 3:19am

Me too!

I have to say, I’ve tried converting to YafaRay, but I’m finding it heavy going. With the old Blender-selectable YafRay, I had to do so little to get a reasonable render - tweak a few light values here and there, and press render. I’ve all but given up on YafaRay, especially since trying LuxRender’s LuxBlend plugin. LuxBlend seems much better at understanding Blender’s parameters, and there’s even a button marked “Convert all blender materials”…

YafaRay’s defaults just seems to give almost total darkness rather than something useful and ‘tweakable’.

Reaction · July 3, 2009, 3:31am

@organic: If I select the settings you show above, I get total darkness. It’s like somobody’s turned down a dimmer switch somewhere. Where is the “strength” control for GI?

EDIT: After reading the YafaRay forums some more, I finally found what I needed to know. It seems that to get the “instant GI” that the old YafRay used to give you pretty easily, you have to do the following with YafaRay:

Go to the YafaRay plugin’s Settings panel.
In the ‘Background settings’ area near the bottom, choose Texture in the drop down button (instead of the default Single Color).
Click the “Use IBL” button.
Now in Blender, select the World settings and set up a image texture as the world background, using an HDRI map as the texture.
Now click the YafaRay plugin’s R E N D E R button.

As easy as pulling teeth, as they say.

organic · July 3, 2009, 6:46am

Reaction:

@organic: If I select the settings you show above, I get total darkness. It’s like somobody’s turned down a dimmer switch somewhere. Where is the “strength” control for GI?

EDIT: After reading the YafaRay forums some more, I finally found what I needed to know. It seems that to get the “instant GI” that the old YafRay used to give you pretty easily, you have to do the following with YafaRay:

Go to the YafaRay plugin’s Settings panel.

In the ‘Background settings’ area near the bottom, choose Texture in the drop down button (instead of the default Single Color).

Click the “Use IBL” button.

Now in Blender, select the World settings and set up a image texture as the world background, using an HDRI map as the texture.

Now click the YafaRay plugin’s R E N D E R button.

As easy as pulling teeth, as they say.

Photon Mapping and Path Tracing also give Global Illumination. Do not forget you have to set up your lights in the Yafaray gui as well, otherwise they will not be used in the calculation…

It is definitely worth reading the User Guide - http://yafaray.org/documentation/userguide

If it is any consolation I have as much trouble understanding the LuxBlend gui as you have with the (I think, much simpler) Yafaray one, but the problem in both cases is simply lack of familiarity and practical experience.

elclanrs · July 3, 2009, 11:03am

Well, I do like the new Yafaray instead of the old one. Very powerful and simple to use.
IMO Luxblend script is a little messy.