sunflow renderer

[mech7]

the gallery looks pretty impressive for an free renderer :D

[DaveWortley]

So can we use this with Max/Maya ?

[fpsunflower]

So can we use this with Max/Maya ?


I will be releasing a very simple Maya exporter plugin along with the new version due soon.


Source code for it is in subversion for those who want to check it out early.

[Ollarin]

Very decent looking renderer, great stuff. Looking forward to the Maya exporter. :)

[ronaldomiranda]

Very Impressive indeed!

[eMPeck]

Looks impressive :)

And XSI exporter is cool too :thumbsup:

downloading now

[siouxfire]

Looks impressive :)

XSI exporter would be nice too :thumbsup:
There's an XSI exporter in their downloads HERE (http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/index.php?pg=down)

[eMPeck]

There's an XSI exporter in their downloads HERE (http://sunflow.sourceforge.net/index.php?pg=down)


I've found it, thats why I edited my post.

Thanks!

[Apoclypse]

The speed is pretty damn good. Isn't this written in java if so, very impressive. The blender export script could use some work though. ATM, it only exports point lights. I had to read the source to find that out. I also think that more documentation would be helpful, such as how to write shaders for sunflow.

[fpsunflower]

The blender exporter in SVN (soon to be released) supports area lights, the blender sun light (which generates a sun/sky setup). You can also turn regular meshes into area lights.


I plan to work on documentation/tutorials soon.

[corneliu]

Great job fpsunflower!

[tlggungor]

There is no plugin for 3dsmax at this time, only simple exporters for Blender,XSI and Maya.
but I cant find the maya plugin ?????????? where is it ???

[butCherHeLL]

where is maya plugin ?

[fpsunflower]

Maya plugin and new version are on their way. Please be patient :)

[ronaldomiranda]

really thanx fpsunflower!
I really admire ppl like you that work in free stuff for masses ;)

[fpsunflower]

Thanks everyone!


The new release has just been posted on the website. Enjoy and please let me know if you run into any trouble using it.

[Apoclypse]

i really like the approach you took withthe file format. Its very rib like but simpler. I'll check out the blender exporter to see if there is anything I can help with, at least if anything testing. i find that spot lights are just to neccessary to overlook. However, you are just one person and seem to be busy getting request from everybody and their ma.

[fewo]

Good job, in your planned feature you remove the support of renderman shader why ? i think you could siwtch your scene descrition to a RIB format description with binary style and compression because big scene take a lot of space so ...
thanks again to share this beautiful renderer

[tlggungor]

Anybody try maya - plugin ???

[frogspasm]

Where would I find a list of supported object types?
I tried rendering a point cloud scene from:
http://www.toxi.co.uk/blog/2006/12/point-cloud-experiments-with-sunflow.htm
First had to generated the data through "Processing".
Kept getting an error about the object type "dlasurface" being unrecognized. Is this still a valid object type?

Thanks,
~Mike D.

[harlan_hill]

Wow. Very nice, the output is fantastic. Unfortunately we won't use anything here unless it's available on Win & OSX.


That really looks great though.

[Renzsu]

Wow. Very nice, the output is fantastic. Unfortunately we won't use anything here unless it's available on Win & OSX.


That really looks great though.

It's Java, I think you can run it on Win, OSX, Linux or whatever? (correct me if I'm wrong though)

[CaptainObvious]

I've run it on both Windows and Mac OS X.

[fpsunflower]

Kept getting an error about the object type "dlasurface" being unrecognized. Is this still a valid object type?


I've renamed that object type to "particles" although the dlasurface keyword _should_ still be recognized. Send me the scene if you can (toxi's site seems to be down) and I will look at it.

[fpsunflower]

Good job, in your planned feature you remove the support of renderman shader why ?i think you could siwtch your scene descrition to a RIB format description with binary style and compression because big scene take a lot of space so ...
thanks again to share this beautiful renderer


Don't confuse renderman shaders (RSL) with the RIB protocol. After giving it much though, I've decided the renderman shader API is not quite the direction I want to take the software in. I prefer to stay with Java and prepare a way to network shaders together (as in Maya's hypershade) to create new shader types. New nodes could be described with Java code.


As far as RIB is concerned, it is fine, but I prefer to continue along the lines of my own file format which will support incremental object updates (the API already does). I plan to have a gzip'able ascii/binary file format specification which will replace what is currently available (though similar in spirit) and should be quite efficient for large scenes.

[CaptainObvious]

How does Java compare with, for example, C or C++, in terms of performance? Can you take advantage of vector units in Java, for example?

[fahr]

Hi there, i noticed that the Maya exporter on the site doesn't seem to have a build for OSX. Can we get one? AWESOME looking renderer by the way. Looking forward to trying it out.
Thanks!

[fpsunflower]

How does Java compare with, for example, C or C++, in terms of performance? Can you take advantage of vector units in Java, for example?


Hard to answer that question. In theory Java is slower than C/C++ but in practice they can be pretty close. I think Sunflow doesn't suffer too much from being written in Java. Of course the easiest way to tell is to check it out for yourself :)

There's no native support for vector units in Java, but those portions could be written in C++ and hooked up as native methods to the Java program.

[fpsunflower]

Hi there, i noticed that the Maya exporter on the site doesn't seem to have a build for OSX. Can we get one?

Thanks :)

Sure. What version are you using?

[xstijn]

I get this error when trying to load the maya exporter plugin:


// Error: //

// Error: (sunflow_85) //

// Error: Unable to dynamically load : C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya8.5/bin/plug-ins/sunflow_85.mll

//

// Error: //

// Error: (sunflow_85) //


If you could help me, thanks :)

[fahr]

We're going to be getting Maya 8.5 for Intel macs here shortly. Would be great to test Sunflow on our new Mac Pros. :)

Thanks a ton for all the effort. A couple of questions: How is object and camera based motion blur handled? Outside of Renderman, the only other produciton-usable 3d motion blur I've experienced is Mental Ray's Rasterizer. Most other implementations are simply too slow to be usable. Do you have plans for "usable" motion blur in Sunflow? ;)

Are there plans for the Maya exporter to convert Hypershade networks, or, if not convert, but use hypershade to visually build Sunflow shaders?

How much does Sunflow take advantage of multiprocessors? What kind of performance gains can a quad-core system expect over a singloe core?

Does Sunflow allow for network rendering? Is it a command-line renderer?

Some of these are probably stupid-obvious questions. If they are, I apologize. But this renderer seems to have some serious promise so I hope some of the bigger studios are giving you some hardcore feedback to turn this into a truly production-worthy tool.

Thanks!

[fpsunflower]

I get this error when trying to load the maya exporter plugin:

Is this on windows 64 bit or 32 bit ?

[Brent Turbo]

This looks really interesting, and open source as well! I've always been curious to know if there's been any research done into the concept of distributed rendering, similar to how Seti@Home and Folding At Home distribute computational tasks amongst zillions of participating nodes. I know offloading texture data would be impossible (sending 4+ gigs of textures to each node in the "render farm" would be hi-larious), but I'm sure there are parts of a renderer that are more geometry based that could be split up and chunked on by thousands of random computers around the world. I WANT YOUR CPU CYCLES!!!

[xstijn]

Windows 32 bit

[fpsunflower]

We're going to be getting Maya 8.5 for Intel macs here shortly. Would be great to test Sunflow on our new Mac Pros. :)

Great. I'll compile that version first then.


Thanks a ton for all the effort. A couple of questions: How is object and camera based motion blur handled? Outside of Renderman, the only other produciton-usable 3d motion blur I've experienced is Mental Ray's Rasterizer. Most other implementations are simply too slow to be usable. Do you have plans for "usable" motion blur in Sunflow? ;)


Right now motion blur isn't fully implemented yet. It will be added soon - as a raytraced sampled effect first (read: slow - but accurate). But I have a couple ideas for speeding that up :) My goal is to eventually use Sunflow in production - so this feature won't get overlooked.



Are there plans for the Maya exporter to convert Hypershade networks, or, if not convert, but use hypershade to visually build Sunflow shaders?


Yes. Probably won't be a 1:1 conversion since Maya's built-in shaders aren't physically based. But again - visual shader building is a must for production - so yes.



How much does Sunflow take advantage of multiprocessors? What kind of
performance gains can a quad-core system expect over a singloe core?


You should see more or less a 4x speed increase. Sunflow takes full advantage of multi-threading.



Does Sunflow allow for network rendering? Is it a command-line renderer?


It is a command line renderer - so you can at the very least distribute frames if you have a renderfarm manager. Single frame network rendering is not built-in but I have been in contact with someone who has succesfully extended Sunflow to run it on a cluster (several machine computing one image). He says he saw pretty much linear speedups.




Thanks for your interest!

[fpsunflower]

... but I'm sure there are parts of a renderer that are more geometry based that could be split up and chunked on by thousands of random computers around the world. ....


If you want to render gigapixel images of fractal geometry, then sure :)

For larger scenes (read: lots of triangle meshes+lots of textures) the overhead is probably not worth it - a single machine couldn't feed hundreds of clients fast enough with just simple file transfers. I suppose you could try to leverage a protocol like bittorent - but there would still be a long amount of time before a client could contribute a single bucket. So the render times would have to be seriously insane to justify all that effort in getting the data across.

There's also some security concerns - its hard to make sure a malicious client isn't just sending back random pixels (or worse) instead of rendered pixels of your scene.

[CaptainObvious]

Hard to answer that question. In theory Java is slower than C/C++ but in practice they can be pretty close. I think Sunflow doesn't suffer too much from being written in Java. Of course the easiest way to tell is to check it out for yourself :)

There's no native support for vector units in Java, but those portions could be written in C++ and hooked up as native methods to the Java program.
Ah, okay. Will you look into the possibility of doing that? Considering how big a speedup it can produce, it might be worth it.

[fpsunflower]

Windows 32 bit

I just tested it here and it works fine. Can you give me any more details about the error ? Does it popup any error dialog in addition to the stuff in the mel window?

[DrBalthar]

How does Java compare with, for example, C or C++, in terms of performance? Can you take advantage of vector units in Java, for example?
Depends on your coding style you can code both extermly slow and both extremly fast if you are careful. Even though C++ has the nice backdoor of having C packed on it where you always can ludicrous stuff which is nearlly unmaintanable but fast. Or use nasty compiler directives or intrinsics (which make it often non portable). But when you careful in Java by trying not to anger or force the GC too much take a bit care of your Object creations and Releases or stick mainly to build-in types you can produce code where there is nearly any major difference in speed at all.

[Sifis]

Sunflower are you planing to compile an exporter for Maya 8.5 OSX PPC also? Thanx in advance!!

[castroman]

How about a cinema 4d connection?

[Wickster]

The gallery looks awesome. Great work! :thumbsup:

Any plans for a Lightwave Exporter?

Thanks for sharing.

[fpsunflower]

I've attached a test copy of the maya plugin compiled for OS X on intel. Please let me know it it works properly before I include it in the next official release.

[fpsunflower]

The gallery looks awesome. Great work! :thumbsup:
Any plans for a Lightwave Exporter?


Thank you!

I have a Lightwave user friend who said he would look into making one. I will keep you guys posted :)

[Mike Pauza]

fpsunflower:


The gallery images look great!

Yeah, a LightWave exporter would be sweet! Let us know.

Can you share Sunflow's roadmap with us?


Thanks.

[fpsunflower]

My buddy Kevin just posted the first version of his Lightwave exporter for Sunflow.

http://www.kevinmacphail.com/6.html

Try it out and let us know how it goes!

[fpsunflower]

Can you share Sunflow's roadmap with us?


Sure. There isn't a very rigid roadmap but here are the big things that will be coming:

* motion blur for objects and lights
* new GI algorithms
* skin & hair shaders
* improved shader API - allowing networks of shaders to be built (ala Hypershade)
* subd's and displacements

Of course I try to listen to users and the particular features that are important to them.

Let me know what you would like to see!

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