YAF(A)RAY User’s Guide

Yaf(a)Ray is Yet Another Free Raytracer; nobody knows for sure what the (a) stands for. It is a raytracing render engine based on a new source code, different than the used for the YafRay 0.0.x series. Rewriting the source code from scratch was necessary because the old design was exhausted and did not allow for more changes or additions. There are several conceptual differences to YafRay 009. As a consequence of these depth changes, renders will completely differ from YafRay 009 ones.
Integrating Yaf(a)Ray into Blender 3D like the old YafRay 009 would mean a complete redesign of the exporter plug-in and adding more ‘alien’ code to Blender. Besides, at the end of the day YafRay and Blender 3D are separated F.O.S.S. projects. Taking into account that there exist now other external render engines for Blender users apart from Yaf(a)Ray, that kind of integration does not make sense anymore. Ideally, a render API should exist in Blender for equal and seamless integration of any external engine.
Content :
1. What Yaf(a)Ray is.
2. Yaf(a)Ray Installation notes (Windows).
3. Yaf(a)Ray UI and General workflow.
4. Render Output Window.
5. Objects, Lights and Camera settings.
5.1 Object.
5.2 Lights.
5.2.1 Point and Sphere.
5.2.2 Directional and Sun.
5.2.3 Area.
5.2.4 Spot
5.3 Camera.
5.3.1 Architect
5.3.2 Angular
5.3.3 Orthogonal
5.3.4 Perspective /DOF
6. Material settings.
6.1 Mapping notes.
6.2 Glass
6.3 Glossy
6.4 Coated Glossy
6.5 ShinyDiffuse
7. Render settings.
7.1 Lighting Methods
7.1.1 Bidirectional
7.1.2 Pathtracing
7.1.3 Photon Mapping and Final Gather
7.1.4 Direct Lighting and Ambient Occlusion.
7.2 General Settings.
7.3 Anti Aliasing settings.
7.4 Background Settings.

About this document:
Document revision 3.
Written by Alvaro Luna Bautista

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