YafaRay v2.1.1

David Bluecame shares a status update on his YafaRay work.

On last October, YafaRay v1.0.0 was releases with many improvements (as mentioned in this Blender Nation article) . Several months later YafaRay v2 was released with even more improvements and new features.

The current version of YafaRay is v2.1.1, with builds for Linux, Windows and MacOSX. It can be downloaded here.

(Note: the Windows build only works with Blender v2.76, but there is a Windows build made with Python 3.5 that works with Blender 2.77).

The biggest improvements are:

• Render Passes: a new and flexible Render Passes system to be able to render at the same time separate “passes” such as diffuse, shadow, indirect light, reflections, refractions and many more that can be composited later, either in Blender Compositor or externally. Additionally, some interesting special passes are:
• Material ID and Object ID passes, with automatic versions that render each object or material with a different color.
• Masking passes, where you can get an image with only the objects or materials desired, and the rest would be transparent for alpha composition. There are even shadow masking passes! This video is a bit old and some details are slightly different now in v2.1.1, but you can see the basics of Render Passes and masking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXs7otE1NFs

The video has no audio, only the video itself. I hope it's self-explanatory.

• Render Views: it's possible now to use several cameras to generate a “Multi View” rendered image (Stereo for example)
• Material/World preview: advanced controls. This feature allows to preview materials with a lot more control, being able to rotate, zoom and change the background of the “preview object”. Even one of the objects in the scene could be used as a preview object now! A video explaining the new feature (also no audio) is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEHuVyjF1OI

• New Noise Control parameters, including a new clamping function to reduce noise at the cost of reducing physical accuracy and realism.
• RAM optimization options for JPG,PNG,TGA and TIFF textures. Using "optimized" (by default now) will reduce RAM usage for those textures in approx. 70%.
• Support for exporting in MultiLayer EXR files, that can be opened in Blender as well.
• Added Normal Coordinates for textures, so you can use a gradient texture mapped to normal coordinates to simulate, for example, some cloth materials (see here)

And many more bugfixes and improvements! :-)

I'm currently working on the next v3.0.0, still in Alpha state which will bring also more new features and bug fixes. I will keep you posted when it's released.
I hope you like it and best regards!