Blender can now directly call YafRay, without first having to export an xml file. This happens through the new plug-in interface and can be activated by unchecking the xml button in the YafRay tab.
You will need to install the new Yafray 0.0.7 to have this working; check for installation notes on the download section.
Up until now, YafRay's output was only shown after the render had completed. When using the plugin interface, the render in progress will now update continuously in Blender's render window. This gives much faster feedback. It even shows the distribution of the samples taken by the path light when rendering with cached pathlight. YafRay devides the image into blocks and renders them in a random sequence.
Another big improvement is that a render can now be cancelled by pressing the ESC key. It may take some time befor YafRay responds, because it only checks when new blocks of progress are ready for display.
(By Alfredo de Greef)
The new photonlight is probably the most confusing (as more things related to yafray), the photonlight is not a real lightsource, it is only used as a source to shoot photons from. Since indirect lighting is already supported (and looks better as well) only caustics mode is supported. So to be able to use this properly other lightsources must be used with it.
For the photonlighting to be 'correct' similar lightsettings as for the 'source'
light are needed. Probably the best way to do this, when you are happy with the lighting setup you have, and want to add caustics, copy the light you want to enable for caustics (shift-D) and leave everything as is, then change the mode to 'Photon'.
To not waste any photons, the photonlight behaves similar to the spotlight,
you can set the width of the beam with the 'angle' parameter. Make sure that any object that needs to cast caustics is within that beam, make the beam width as small as possible to tightly fit the object.
The following other parameters can be set:
-photons: the number of photons to shoot.
-search: the number of photons to search when rendering, the higher, the blurrier the caustics.
-depth: the amount of photon bounces allowed, since the primary use is for caustics, you probably best set this to the same level as the 'ray depth' parameter.
-Blur: this controls the amount of caustics blur (in addition to the search parameter), very low values will cause very sharp caustics, which when used with a low photonnumber, probably lead to only some noisy specks being rendered.
-Use QMC: Use quasi monte carlo sampling, can lead to cleaner results, but also can sometimes cause patterns.
Since the photonlight has no meaning to Blender, when using photonlights and switching back to the internal render, the light doesn't do anything, and no type button will be selected. The lightsource can still be selected, but unless switching to yafray, no parameters can set.
- Orthogonal (no perspective) camera views are now also rendered by YafRay.
- A new kind of Depth of Field (DoF) has been added. It is a real raytraced depth of field, so it's slower than the previous post process effect. The settings for it can be found in the edit buttons of the Camera. When YafRay is set as the renderer, a new panel labeled "YafRay DoF" will be there.
- Extended the range of the depth and cdepth parameters as reqested by leope.
- Bumpmapping should now be a bit more similar to the Blender render.
- Added support for all remaining lightsources in yafray, tried to make use of as much of the existing Blender parameters as possible.
Blender Lamp: added switch to enable rendering with shadowbuffer ('softlight' in yafray).
All other parameters are similar to the Blender settings, for yafray both the bias parameter and the shadowbuffer size can be lower than equivalent Blender settings, since the yafray buffer is floating point. Remember that 6 shadowmaps are created in this case, so can use quite a bit of memory with large buffer settings.
When 'ray shadow' is enabled for this lamp type, it is possible to set a light radius to create a spherical arealight source ('spherelight' in yafray), when this is 0, it is exported as a pointlight instead.
Blender Spot: as in Blender now supports 'halo' rendering.
Halo spots always use shadowbuffers, so when enabled the buttons for shadowmap settings will appear. The 'ray shadow' button can still be used to disable shadows cast onto other objects, independent of halo shadows.
One thing to remember, halo's don't work with empty backgrounds, something must be behind the spotlight for it to be visible.
