Update on development of Kray wanted.

[Josamoto]

Hi all!

I was just wondering, now with the so near to release of Lightwave 9, what's happening to Kray. We are still standing at 1.6.12 or something I believe. Is Kray still under development, or is the new architecture in LW causing severe problems in the dev process.

I really think Kray has a lot of potential, I mean, just look at the galleries. I just wish more and more people can get involved with the dev process so it can move a bit faster. I think writing a renderer is definitely not a one man job.

Wishing good luck to the Kray team, and hoping to see an update soon.

[silverlw]

Yes it's indeed very much under development and we are tesdriving betas with new functionality all the time. I can agree with you on one point and that is that it's alot of work for one man. The more people who starts to use it the faster development will go. Now Grzegorz have to work with other projects to get the bills paid but he wish to work on Kray fulltime. This next version will be released soon, faster and with more features. (Nope aint gonna tell ya )

[Captain Obvious]

What, the next version is going be even faster? Crap. I was hoping it would be slower, so I could.... you know... be bored more.

I saw someone (was it you, silver?) at Luxology's forum post a screen shot of Kray 1.614 beta, i think it was...

[Josamoto]

Good to know, thanks SilverLW.

Capn, I'd suggest you get a realy fast boiling kettle to keep up with Kray rendertimes, lol.

Just a last question, is there even the slightest of a possibility that Kray might start working with say Modo 201 or any other 3D apps? Absurd question, I know, I don't expect poor Gregorz to go that far.

I'd like to try out the surface baker in Kray, as I'm playing with baking at present in Modo, LW and Vue. Only prob is the watermark at the bottom of the image, don't want the rendertime showing up on my couch. Can the information line be disabled somehow?

[Captain Obvious]

I'd like to try out the surface baker in Kray, as I'm playing with baking at present in Modo, LW and Vue. Only prob is the watermark at the bottom of the image, don't want the rendertime showing up on my couch. Can the information line be disabled somehow?

Not in the demo version, no, but there is a very easy work-around: Just move all the polygons in the UV map up slightly, so the "Kray demo" text appears in an unoccupied area. Works like a charm.


And I also would like to see Kray work with modo 201. But I guess it's not going to be worth considering until modo has an SDK.

[Josamoto]

You freaking genius Capn!

Why didn't I think of that. You're brilliant, Dude!

On the Modo subject, I think we are going to see some severe competition coming up from Lux in the future. Other 3D companies better watch out for Lux!

Just a quick question, what language is being used to develop Kray, is it purely LW SDK? What I know of the SDK is dangerous, but I was thinking maybe the rendering info gets sent over from LW to the Kray engine which was written in say C++ or something.

Just curious.

I'm thinkging, based on my C++ knowledge here. If you can write a generic engine, you can maybe have the engine architecture in such fashion that you would only need to develop plugins\parsers to translate different scenes from different applications to the KRay generic format or something like that.

So for example you have the Kray rendering format. Then you have a LW or even say Modo scene file parser that converts all the usable information to something Kray understands. So it looks like this:

3D SCENE --> PLUGIN\PARSER --> KRAY RENDERING ENGINE

Is there a possibility of getting involved with the development of Kray at all? I'm very enthusiastic about the Kray, and would like to help, even if I'm writing documentation or something.

[Captain Obvious]

I'm going to guess that Kray is written mostly in ordinary C or C++, and then bridged into Lightwave via the SDK. Kray was stand-alone from the start, in fact. You exported a file from Lightwave that you rendered in Kray via the command console, I think. So the actual raytracing and such doesn't seem to rely on Lightwave.


As for your 3d scene -> Exporter -> Kray idea, it technically works, but it will mean procedurals and such won't work. If you hook it up via the SDK instead, you can still get procedural support.

[Josamoto]

Right again Captain. The only way of getting procedurals accross would be to get the SDK converter plugin to bake them to UV's or something. Which then again would require possibly a high resolution image should the render be up close or so.

Does Kray have any relation to Yafray used by Blender at all?

[Captain Obvious]

Baking to UVs would also mean you'd have to have a whole lot of proper UV maps for objects that might otherwise not need them. That's a lot of work. It takes gobbles of memory to use high-res textures, compared to procedurals. And baking them would take a long time...

I don't think Kray is related to Yafray. Why would it be?

[jure]

Yes Kray is separate engine written in C juts like capt'n said. There is a chance that it gets connected to other apps also but first G. wants to make good and stable connection with LW.

[Captain Obvious]

There is a chance that it gets connected to other apps also but first G. wants to make good and stable connection with LW.

That's good to hear.