YafaRay-E v2.1.1 for Blender 2.76b Windows, Linux and MacOSX

[David Bluecame]

Hello,

(EDIT 2016-02-06) I've uploaded YafaRay-E v2.1.1 with some interesting improvements respect to v2.0.2:

https://github.com/DavidBluecame/Blende ... tag/v2.1.1

I've included: builds for Linux 32/64bit, Windows 32/64bit and MacOSX 64bit. I've also included a special build for Windows 64bit using Python3.5 that can be used with Blender v2.77, etc.

MacOSX build, as usual, has been tested very little. Please let me know if you have issues with it.

Main changes respect to v2.0.2 (many more details in the CHANGELOG file inside the builds):

* IMPORTANT: Fix for incorrect IBL lighting in World Background Texture when set to Angular. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/714

* IMPORTANT: Adjustment to the automatic intersection/shadow bias calculation formula to avoid black artifacts in the scenes with fine details

* IMPORTANT: Fix for black dots (alpha=0) sometimes when using Mitchell/Lanzcos filters

* ADVANCED CONTROLS FOR MATERIAL/TEXTURE PREVIEW
As requested in http://yafaray.org/node/699 I've made many changes to allow fine-grained control of the Material and Texture Preview window, including:
- Preview Dynamic Camera Rotation & Zoom
- Preview object rotation, scale and custom object
- Preview lights control (power and color) for key and fill lights. Also light rotation
- Preview Scene control: type of backgroung (full world bg. can be selected now), Ray depth for glass preview and progressive AA passes

A video explaining this is in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEHuVyjF1OI

* Fixed World Preview not updating correctly

* Added Normal Coordinates for textures, so you can use a gradient texture mapped to normal coordinates to simulate, for example, some cloth materials (see http://yafaray.org/node/188 )

I hope you like it!

[Samo]

Thanks David I will try as soon as possible.

[Samo]

Hi David one last thing, can you attach in the bugtracker test files you make for each feature please. It would be cool that we can create a full testing suite that includes each feature we solve or create as new. Maybe some day we can have a rendering box that outputs rendering results and stats for the full suite.

[Samo]

Hi David

Thanks for implementing new features in the material preview. However, I would like to suggest simplifying it without settings that won't make much of a difference, like posX or posZ. I think scene rotation is enough in case we can not implement a flexible zoom in/out feature and the objScale setting will do most of the work anyway.

Rotation settings are good, but the problem I see with the current rotZ setting is that the object is not rotating in its center mass point, for instance a rotating ball should not move in the previs window but just rotate. In general, I think it is a problem implementing this without using a more intuitive rotation based on mouse cursor. Rotating lights also produces unpredictable results. For now and given the lack of better capabilities in the exporter, I would rotate only the camera view while the previs object and lights stay fixed, so users can look for a better terminator placement with just one setting. Also the default view should provide this clear terminator view from the start IMO.

Also I don't think posting texturing settings in the material preview is a good idea, since we already have those settings in the texturing panel, and those are the settings users would expect to see previsualised in the material preview. Settings duplication is not good IMO and now it looks like that.

The problem of the current previsualisation window IMO is that key light is not dominant enough for relief mapping previsualisation, there are three light sources now in the previsualisation scene that more or less have got the same light power. The idea is that fill lights (the other light sources than key light) have little or not power at all so key light is very dominant, this is the best way to see relief mapping on the surface IMO. The new light power setting is good but is not enough to solve this problem IMO. The only way to solve this is controlling power of the other two sources in the previs scene and using more common key-to-fill ratios as default.

I really think that good defaults and the objScale setting are the key rather than proliferation of settings few people are going to use. BTW what's the standard size of the previs object, for instance the ball? I hope you find these opinions useful.

PD: background type and custom object are great.

[surena]

Thanks David for this!

I would sugest:

Rotate object with mouse (and make as Samo said the rotation coordinates work properly). With also a reset rotation button.
Change quality as desired (more-less samples or antialias).

Great work!.

[David Bluecame]

Hello,

I've made some of the changes you requested. As far as I know, Blender interface does not allow to use the mouse in the material preview window for any actions. Also, to make the rotation work around the object "centre" is not an easy task at all and will take some time.

For now this is what I've done:
https://github.com/DavidBluecame/Blende ... fc6df212f1

Changes to the new Material Preview Controls:
* Removed PosX,PosZ controls
* Removed Texture scale/offset controls
* Added AA Passes control for progressively refining the material rendering
* Splitted the Light power control in two: Key Light power control and Fill Lights power control


If you want to test it, please do the following:
* Download this file: https://github.com/DavidBluecame/Blende ... mental.zip
* Decompress it and copy the files over your current YafaRay v2.1.0 existing files/folders (overwrite them).
* Try again, you should see the changes now.

Please let me know if this helps.

[Samo]

Hi David, thanks. It is a pity Blender allows so limited customization on something as important as the material preview window. One question I still have is what's the size in Blender units of the ball or cube shown in the preview when obscale=1

[David Bluecame]

It was quite difficult but I think I achieved the Dynamic Camera Rotation & Zoom using the mouse!!!

This will be available in the upcoming YafaRay-E v2.1.1. For now you can see the functionality in this new video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxNDam66OqE

I hope you like this.

[surena]

Thanks David, great!

I've seen on the video that the rotation seems laggy, is it?

Testing last build I've seen that world preview (In world tab) is not changing after making changes on sunsky paramenters.

What is the roadmap? Will the material shader definition be pbr? (don't know the correct meaning; BSDF?)

Thanks!

[David Bluecame]

Hello,

Yes, the preview rotation will be laggy, as it's actually doing a full render of the view. The bigger the preview window is, the longer it will take to render. That's normal.

I'm not sure what can I do about it for now. To make it faster would require a deep change in the render engine to do a progressive render, and that would be a big change. However, for now I think the new preview functionality, even not being perfect, should significantly improve the YafaRay experience respect to previous versions.

I will take a look at the problems about world preview, thank you for reporting it!

There is no formal roadmap, but my objective is to improve the material system to achieve more realistic results, including making changes to be able to use properly PBR textures, etc and other changes.

[David Bluecame]

World preview updating will be fixed in the next YafaRay v2.1.1

Again, this was a change in Blender I think, because I tested older YafaRay versions and they have the same problem.

I had to use a similar workaround as I did for the material preview updating, causing a change event in one of the Blender native parameters to force it to update.

Anyway, it will work fine in the next version. Thanks for reporting it.

[David Bluecame]

YafaRay-E v2.1.1 has been released. I've updated the title and links.

[surena]

Hi all

David, I've tested new build, thanks for your efforts!

I've seen that angular mapping is working fine, but also I didn't test it with the other builds.
What I've seen is that on preview scene the object is not in the center of the environment cube, is this for some reason? It should be in the center to get homogeneus reflections?

Finally, have you tried bidirectional with environment only lightning? I'm getting black meshes with only a plane and a cube.

Thanks!

[Samo]

Hi surena

can you upload images and/or scenes about your issues please?

[surena]

Well, it's only a cube and a plane with ibl:

The correct light with photon map

Bidirectional only with ibl

And talking about the material scene:

Material front view

Screenshot - 10_02_2016 , 10_15_31.jpg (15.07 KiB) Viewed 14236 times

Material back view (moreless)

Screenshot - 10_02_2016 , 10_16_08.jpg (22.52 KiB) Viewed 14236 times