YafaRay Rendering Software

oort · (This post was last modified: 03-21-2013, 03:08 PM by oort.)

boredom,
Thanks for the feedback. Now that I have finished adding everything I wanted to add to the plug-in I can work on adding polish. Unfortunately there will be nothing "quick" about the process... Smile

I didn't have to modify the registry to get YafaRay to work for me. Hopefully with the ability to install the Wings3D plugin with the .tar file, that part is easy to do now. Also, hopefully there is now enough information here to get new users to try it. If you have any questions, please ask here.

I wish that the YafaRay site was more clear about where to download the files. Their site is geared towards Blender users since most YafaRay users are using Blender. So you have to do some studying to use it with Wings3D. Also Blender users are used to having to do a little extra work to get things working... Smile

I don't think the issue with output path with spaces is something I can fix. I think that is an issue with YafaRay but I can research it. Thanks for the heads up on that. I will add a note to the first post.

Edit: I just checked and yafaray is added to my computers path. I guess I did it so long ago I didn't remember having to do that. I will add info on that in the first post as well.

Thanks,
oort

boredom · 03-21-2013, 04:17 PM

(03-21-2013, 02:52 PM)oort Wrote: boredom,
Thanks for the feedback. Now that I have finished adding everything I wanted to add to the plug-in I can work on adding polish. Unfortunately there will be nothing "quick" about the process...

I didn't have to modify the registry to get YafaRay to work for me. Hopefully with the ability to install the Wings3D plugin with the .tar file, that part is easy to do now. Also, hopefully there is now enough information here to get new users to try it. If you have any questions, please ask here.

I wish that the YafaRay site was more clear about where to download the files. Their site is geared towards Blender users since most YafaRay users are using Blender. So you have to do some studying to use it with Wings3D. Also Blender users are used to having to do a little extra work to get things working...

I don't think the issue with output path with spaces is something I can fix. I think that is an issue with YafaRay but I can research it. Thanks for the heads up on that. I will add a note to the first post.

Edit: I just checked and yafaray is added to my computers path. I guess I did it so long ago I didn't remember having to do that. I will add info on that in the first post as well.

Thanks,
oort

Thanks for the great work. Smile

It really is a great plugin and it definitely deserves more attention than it's getting.

greytery · 03-21-2013, 07:16 PM

Oort,

I've been having fun with the YafaRay plug-in too! I'm going to get it to work for me if I bust!

Thanks to wegg's comments above, I fixed the Registry entry.
The plug-in installed correctly from the .tar file, but only when I copied the .tar file into the "..\wings-1.4.1\plugins" folder (- it did not like loading from a network folder for some reason).
It took a while to figure out the YafaRay problem with spaces in the path name - but this seems to have been be an old problem with Yafray too! (I read your old Handbook and there are hints there). So the answer is - install Yafaray & save Wings-Yafaray render files to folders with no spaces.
But the plug-in is hooked up now and it's rendering, and now I know what to watch out for.

Although these can be added to the options string at the moment, I think you could add some on the yafaray-xml.exe command options as separate boxes in the Plug-in preferences dialog. There seem to be some useful options, for example:
-op, --output-path for rendered images
-f, --format of image file (jpg, tga, png, etc)
-t, --threads ( note -1 is auto selection)
-a, --with-alpha saving the image with alpha channel.
-pp --plugin-path (I think this can be deduced anyway since it's part of the YafaRay folder)
(I appreciate that you were probably going to do this anyway)

BTW: I also looked at the performance of the thread count option - by adding -t 2 to the Options string (also -t 3 and -t 4). I stopped at 4 threads on my 4-core system.

Mmmmm? Interesting!
On my system it seems it's faster to render with the default single thread than with 2, 3, 4 threads! Which suggests that there's something iffy with the thread model on Yafaray and/or Python (I'm using 2.7) on my system. Using the same very simple scene and parameters:
Threads Render Time (s)
1 3.198
2 4.695
3 5.257
4 5.382
But this is early days yet and not under fully controlled conditions, so needs further investigation.

Looks like wegg's machine is a AMD(?) 6-core beast which is why he gets only 17% utilisation. My system an Intel i5 4-core - so I'm getting 25% out of my system on YafaRay's single thread. (Think about it :-) )

gerytery

micheus · 03-21-2013, 07:38 PM

(03-21-2013, 07:16 PM)greytery Wrote: but only when I copied the .tar file into the "..\wings-1.4.1\plugins" folder (- it did not like loading from a network folder for some reason).

Maybe it's related to that 1.4.1 bug. I suggest to use the latest 1.4.1 snapshot as it has a lot of bug fixes.

oort · (This post was last modified: 03-22-2013, 12:05 AM by oort.)

greytery,
Glad you got it running as well.

-op = Isn't that taken care of when you choose the file name??? Maybe I don't understand what that option does???

-t = Good to know that -1 is "Auto". I will have to add that info.

-f = Is already there under Render Options > Output > Choose your image format.

-a = Is already there under Render Options > Background > Alpha Channel > Choose your method.

Interesting about Threads not helping you on a 4-core.

There is also -dp (display settings badge, shows your render settings used in the rendered image). This one is listed under the ? under Edit > Plugin Preferences > YafaRay

Thanks for your feedback. I look forward to seeing some renders... Smile

oort

greytery · 03-22-2013, 08:20 AM

micheus,

Thanks - definitely looks like unc path issue, not a windows mapped drive.
I'm using the official download from SourceForge while I update the User Manual based on 1.4.1. But thanks for the pointer and I'll follow that up.
Perhaps if the updated version is stable it should replace the SF official version at some time. But it looks like version 1.5 might make it sooner, maybe?

oort,

I see you've already dealt with the command options. The ? is very useful for advice on how the options are used.

My example was a tiny test render of a simple model and NOT representative. It's not even pretty!!! Bigger renders taking minutes should behave better, I hope.
The -1 Automatic thread detection option: looks like that's the default setting on Blender-YafaRay. SO any real problems here have probably already been fixed. I hope.

greytery

micheus · (This post was last modified: 03-22-2013, 12:00 PM by micheus.)

(03-22-2013, 08:20 AM)greytery Wrote: Perhaps if the updated version is stable it should replace the SF official version at some time. But it looks like version 1.5 might make it sooner, maybe?

I agree with you. I think the only one can answer that is dgud.

I will try to spend sometime here too and play with -t again (as in the past). Smile

Wegg · 03-22-2013, 03:40 PM

micheus, your height map thing is way cooler than this. Yafaray kind of shocked me with how slow it is. I can't imagine how anyone uses this thing.

micheus · (This post was last modified: 03-22-2013, 05:05 PM by micheus.)

wegg, I think that it depends on what we are rendering (scene size, number of elements, materials, ...), render settings as well the machine you are using. We did a test in the past (using SSS) in which the same scene took 3hr 15min on oort's P4 machine and and 1hr 4min on my i7 using -t=1 (with -t=8, it took only 16min on my PC) - you can check that test benchmark here in the old forum.

oort, something new here, that I still was not able to find an answer (I'm still "googling"):

Code:
> c:/yafaray/bin/YAFARA~1.EXE -f tga -db glass-bottle.xml f:/Wings3d/glass-bottle 

INFO: YafaRay (None)

INFO: The plugin path is: C:\yafaray\plugins

INFO: Environment: Loading plugins ...

ERROR: Environment: There is no image handlers registrered

ERROR: Couldn't find any valid image format, image handlers missing?

It still happen if I try to use png file format too.

greytery · 03-22-2013, 05:59 PM

Oort,

Update ... A "bigger" job render time went from 33s (-t 1) to 12s (-t 4). There's some overheads on setting up, but these soon become insignificant (especially on your 3hr job !?!) - so forget about them.

Autodetect Threads: Tried to set "-t -1" as an option in preferences but that fails with :
"ERROR: option --threads has no value"
which, since the "-1" looks like a parameter switch, is no surprise!
But adding the parameter: <threads ival="-1"/> to the XML file <render> section (and drag/drop the XML file onto the Yafa..exe) works. It gives same behaviour as "-t 4" on my i5 system.
So: You could set this Autodetect value as default in the XML output - like Blender. It could then be overridden if necessary by "-t" on the command line string (I believe).
In the meantime, my preferences are set to "-t 4".

Wegg,

In total agreement about how gob-smacking the height mapper is.
Have you already tried putting "-t 6" in the preferences to use all of your 6-core system?

greytery