then, what makes yafaray different?
Depends on the scene and that is a fact. YafaRay is not an experimental engine with a curricular purpose, is a render engine for widespread use and a FOSS software project intended to last. That is what makes YafaRay different.
Yafaray is an excellent render engine and it’s indeed fast. (Follow the Tutorials on their site to deeply understand Photon mapping and you’ll be soon good to go).
For many it is considered the Open Source Vray.
It has many Integrators to choose from unlike Cycles that is a pure path-tracer.
Where it excels is in interior scenes with difficult lighting e.g Architectural Interiors, something that is a nightmare in Cycles unless you have one or more good GPUs. (Personally I still haven’t seen a Cycles Architectural Interior Render without noise!).
The problem with Yafaray is it’s development is very slow (but thanks to David that is something that’s changing) and that it lacks some important (at least to me) features like render passes.
You can also check “thebounty renderer” which is a fork of Yafaray with it’s own development plan.
That’s about to change very soon. Please see: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5131
I’ve made testing builds for Linux 64bits and Windows 64bits. They have Render Passes, Render Views (stereo or multiview) and quite a few more things. Render Passes functionality should work best in Direct Light and Photon Mapping. Passes can be used in Path, Bidir and SPPM but they are more limited with those integrators and some passes may not work in them.
Please test it and let me know how it works for you.
Oh S**t I’ missed this one! Thank you once again. I’ll test and post results ASAP.
Hi David,
great implantation of the Render Passes.
But how can I make more then one Object ID Pass (B/W Mask not the Vector Pass.)
I have several Objects with different ID’s, for each object I want to have an B/W Mask.
Hello,
For now, only one Mask Object ID and one Mask Material ID pass can be done. However, there is an indirect way of doing multiple object Object ID passes for a manual postprocess and masking:
- Object ID Auto (or Material ID Auto): creates a pass with different colors for the different Object IDs. You can use it manually in an external software to apply a different mask per color.
- Manual assignment of Object ID and/or Material ID, and showing the “Object (or material) ID pass”, either relative or absolute (absolute should be exported as a HDR/EXR for the purpose of using an external software for masking as it will have pixels with value > 1). Absolute ID pass It will create an image with pixels with the same pixel value as the Object or Material ID. Relative ID pass will do the same, but relative to the maximum ID pass existent, and scaling the rest for exporting it in PNG/JPG for external post processing.
If there is demand for multiple direct masking of Object ID/Material ID I will implement additional passes in the future.
Thank you very much David for this great new feature.
I tested the Linux build and everything seems to run smoothly, especially the Object ID Auto is amazing.
The only thing that I don’t get is the AO pass. It seems like it is a diffuse pass with AO occlusion multiplied with it! I expected a pure black and white AO pass, am I doing something wrong?
I’m planning to give it an extensive test as soon as I find some more free time.
will the official yafaray sleep for years? If not so, can I suggest YafaRay-E addon use a distinct name, for example YafaRay_E, so that the user can tell, install/update/uninstall yafray/YafaRay-E without wrong.Regards
Hi David,
thanks for the explanation!
That would be fantastic.
B/W Masks can be used universally in any Compositing Application.