Yafaray4tS v0.9.0

[clintonman]

Officially started work on the next version of yafaray4ts.
Testing is with versions 2.1.1 and 3.0.0. The official notes say XP support was dropped in 2.1.1, I did a test and it did work in winXP. The "drop of support" must refer to the Blender integration.

Bug fixes for mesh smoothing, fixed color gamma to use new scheme, fixed face directions in caustics scene, blender does not use face directions

Additions/Changes
added 2.1.1 and 3.0.0 to the version checks,
experiments for preview - changed appearance of area and spotlights, replaced infinite light with directional light so can see shadows, made a combo infinite and ambient light to simulate light from background gradiants and sunsky items, changed appearance of glass shader
The previews will never be 100% because the materials would have to have versions for each lighting model and there is no easy way to simulate bouncing lights of a scene.

The only other preview change I have in mind is to add some fake reflections to glass and other shiny materials.

[clintonman]

Here are a few of how the old previews look for comparison.

[trueBlue]

WOW! That is awesome Clinton!
Can't wait to check it out.

[bitkar]

yay, new up to date renderer! always love to see something good for rendering in tS.

[clintonman]

Wrote code and made lights for most of the background lighting previews. The new preview button reads the type of background and creates lights and a large sphere painted with the background. The preview scale input below the button controls the size of the sphere.

Image shows the image background which uses a down facing projector light with the same image as the background sphere only blurred.
The constant color background has a sphere and an ambient light.
The gradient background has a gradient sphere, an ambient light for the horizon and an infinite light facing downward for the sky color.

The sky background types will be some generic gradient type sphere, with a directional light for the sun that is targeted at the origin plus an ambient light for the rest.

[clintonman]

Sky background previews shown above are done and added image based background using a projector light with a blurred image. The sky backgrounds uses a cloud texture on the sphere with a tint based on the turbidity value. Added buttons for controlling the sunlight. 1. select light so it can be moved, 2. copy light location to the Yafaray4tS node so the values can be exported. 3. copy Yaf sun location to the light

Also discovered that the gamma fix was wrong. Incorrect colors happen in exported xml file even when produced from Blender. Removed the gamma "fix".

That's the last of the background previews. The previous posts had the manual experiments, now there are controls built in to create all the preview lights and spheres.

I think next will be the light preview values, then an update for the materials.

[clintonman]

Lights are done. Most were already good as far as brightness levels. Also added a render shadow option to each light.

[clintonman]

First working preview for procedural textures. It also shows an update for blending the color with the texture. In the old version the texture just turned off the color. There will be separate tabs for each texture map type, diffuse map, mirror map etc.

This is just the preview, it's not hooked up to the renderer in any way yet.

[trueBlue]

Are you using seamless textures?

[clintonman]

Are you using seamless textures?

No, it's a procedural texture. The preview is like the wrapped polka dot procedural texture on model side as shown in the image below.
The preview won't be identical to the final result. It will just give an idea of what the render will look like.

Now that you mention it I see that the Z value will need to be added to the offset and size for textures so 3D textures can be used in the render as well as the wrapped uv style.