Would someone kind enough, compile the current cvs to a Windows binary (zip or installer is fine)? I can host the release if that’s a problem, just PM me.
thanks,
-G
Yafray is here: www.yafray.org under the download button.
I really think he knows that. %| But there hasn’t been a new release for ages, and he asked for sopmeone to compile the latest CVS.
I’m not sure theres much to offer in a recent cvs of Yafray, if theres anything updated at all. If you read on their forums, the whole project is going under a major overhall, and they’re still in the whitepaper design phase.
They’re aiming to make it more easily extensible, with renderMan like shader extensions, in the hope to more easily add such features such as SSS.
The Yafray Wiki has some tidbits on what they’re working on now. http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Yafray/YafrayReDesign
Support for more of Blenders procedurals is one thing.
thanks, that tells me a little more about why it seems defunct. If they are truly going to overhaul yafray, then that makes me wonder if the work that went into the hardcoded plugin is going to go to waste? It sounds like a nice plan, but what the hell? If they are going to totally redesign and rebuild the entire renderer, then it could be months or a year before seeing an alpha release. What’s the point in even supporting yafray now? Arrghh, this render business is all so frustrating, because your app can have all the awesome features in the world, but if the renderer stinks then everything else is for naught. 
If they are so unsure of yafray’s direction and structure, why not turn blender full-steam toward something that’s already established, like, for example, the Renderman spec? This is just a little more than annoying and frustrating news. If there are no plans to standardize the blender renderer to something like Renderman or even mental ray (I know, no free versions available) then why not just look at the plethora of existing (raytracing, GI, RIB, other) renderers, take their best qualities and work on getting the native blender renderer’s quality up to something like Cinema 4D’s Advance render module? The version 9 release supports all of the current “hot” features. If we can get the native blender renderer up to high quality, with support for all the snazzy features like SSS, GI, caustics, HDRI, micropoly displacement, etc and a nice post system (for things like glow, hair, etc) then why bother turning somewhere else? I have Realsoft 3D 4.25, now, it’s not the cat’s meow in terms of overall 3D use, but it does have a fine renderer (albeit a bit slow for my liking). It’s got a full shading language, bucket rendering, network rendering and post system, but it doesn’t play well with other 3d data. There are a few good examples of apps with killer renderers and lacking other parts. Art of Illusion and the little-known Now3D comes to mind as well. Blender’s renderer could walk all over these other apps if given the proper TLC.
I know I’ve gotten a little off-topic, but this bit of news makes me feel like yafray is more of a burden than before. I don’t hate yafray, but it’s not moving forward, it’s moving backward. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, any thoughts?
-G
were you around when the source for blender was freed?
It took a LONG time before the developers begain to be able to make improvements to the code.
It’s a (sort of) similar situation here. Jandro feels that the pace of development that took yafray this far also made it very hard to extend the renderer to do new things. So he is taking it back to restructure it.
It’s a neccesary step.
Also, f00f/blackmage is working very hard to improve the internal renderer. While yafray is being reworked, I have every confidence that the internal renderer will be brought up to yafray’s capabilities.
Gendo wrote:
that tells me a little more about why it seems defunct.
…but if the renderer stinks…
Yafray is not as bad as you think. Seems you are dissapointed because you cannot get the results that others get (see gallery here: http://www.yafray.org/gallery/gallery.php?type=0). I’ve looked at your 3D portfolio on your website but none of the images come even close to the quality of the images in the yafray gallery.
If we can get the native blender renderer up to high quality, with support for all the snazzy features like SSS, GI, caustics, HDRI, micropoly displacement, etc and a nice post system (for things like glow, hair, etc) then why bother turning somewhere else
Even without having all these ‘snazzy features’ you can get very good result with the internal renderer of Blender (see gallery here: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Images.151.0.html). Again, all these images are of better quality then you 3D portfolio. What you need is more experience with how light works and how to setup lighting to get good results. If you can do that, then you can also use the ‘snazzy features’ to get even better results.
The stuff of mine you’re speaking of it very old and, as a matter of fact, was never meant for a “portfolio”. The stuff you saw I literally threw together for filler on a flash portfolio I made when in college. That stuff was a collection of test renders I did while learning how different 3d functions and features worked in the named softwares, so please, don’t compare that stuff to the yafray gallery. I’m not complaining and saying “why doesn’t my stuff look like the yafray gallery?.. it must be yafray’s fault!” The question I asked was about yafray itself. I read a lot and look at others’ work, so I have a pretty good idea of what yafray is capable of and what it’s not. I didn’t start a personal attack on you, so let’s not start one on me, ok? Thanks.
I’ve seen many other objective discussions on this board and others about various tools without slinging mud at each other, so let’s not, ok SoftWork? I also didn’t claim that yafray was bad. The phrase:
because your app can have all the awesome features in the world, but if the renderer stinks then everything else is for naught.
pertained to 3d software in general, not blender/yafray in particular.
I hate that I have to write this long and wasteful post to try and clarify what the point of my previous post was.
-G
Yes, my reaction was maybe a little too hard. But from your second post it looked like you needed those fancy features to do a good rendering. The piont I was trying to make is that you often don’t need those features to do great renderings.
And if the images in your portfolio don’t reflect the quality of your present work you really should replace/remove them! As a graphic designer you should know that, your life depends on it…
Yes, I actually had forgotten that they were linked to my profile here on elysiun. I took out the link in my profile earlier today. I had been using that webspace to post things for mailing lists I’m on or for my friend to see. I meant to build a real site to go there, but I didn’t have enough content I felt right brandishing to the world, but apparently I did. My mistake.
I don’t need the fancy features for what I’m working on now, but yafray doesn’t support ramp shaders, which my current project uses, so the objects render differently than they should. That’s kind of what I was talking about regarding yafray not being good enough. Heck, I had originally written a much longer post for another thread about yafray, but I ended up cutting it down to the first post in this thread. For example, yafray’s got this great shader block thing going on and crafter shows that, but you can’t really use any of the materials you create in crafter in blender/yafray. You can’t save them to a crafter file and there aren’t any good tutorials for using crafter. For all the work put into the hardcoded plugin, a crafter-style material editor would have been great, but no such editor exists. Basically, I’ve been working on re-creating an image made in Maya, so more intricate shaders would be helpful, because there’s one material use in this image that looks kind of like translucent rubbery plastic, like um, translucent red licorice, but not red, more of a yellowish tone with a weird greenish-blue sheen. I’ve gotten close to it in blender’s materials but the internal renderer doesn’t make the material looks quite right. I’ve been fiddling with the settings for a couple weeks. Yafray doesn’t support some texture or something I’m using so it looks weird rendered out. I’m trying to render part of the scene now, here’s the console’s yafray errors:
[Warning]: Unknown shader type distorted_noise
Input shader for colorband not found
[Warning]: Wrong shader definition for TECurlSpecs_coba
[Loader]: Added shader MABasicMat
Null input in blender mapper
[Warning]: Wrong shader definition for MACurlsMat_map1
Undefined block : MACurlsMat_map1
[Loader]: Added shader MACurlsMat
Null input in blender mapper
[Warning]: Wrong shader definition for MACurlsMat-Green_map1
Undefined block : MACurlsMat-Green_map1
So it looks like the “distorted noise” texture, the ramp colorband aren’t supported, and I’m not sure what “null input in blender mapper” means. the “wrong shader definitions” I’m also not sure about. So this is basically why I was complaining about yafray… it gets great results, depending what you’re trying to create.
I agree with you that it’s sometimes frustrating that Yafray doesn’t output the same materials as the Blender internal renderer. Hopefully the redesign of Yafray will improve this, although in the passed Blender releases there have already been made some improvements.
For the material question I think it’s best to make a new thread with a picture of what you want to create, and ask how it could be done in Blender/Yafray.
true, true.
I’m going to work on getting the best results from the internal renderer then work on getting decent results from yafray and keep tinkering with the blenderman script and those type of engines.