www.kraytracing.com

Don't wanna beat the dead horse but I seriously don't get it, 3rd Parties can by themselves drag people into Lightwave and they don't really help. On the website, they don't push the infos.
Luxology understands it and really showcase whet helps Modo te be better.
Once NT understands that, I bet they will build a stringer community, drag more people and strenghten the relationship with 3rd party developpers.

I would perfer for Kray to stay as independant from lightwave as possible. Like instance, material, etc. Having its own system inside of Kray so they are not at the mercy of Newtek to make fixes. More like Vray does just better. I am hooked on Kray but just want it to nest in lightwave without having to upgrade to the newest lightwave for features like you are doing with instances in the next update.

Agreed. Will the new kray version be incompatible with the previous lw version?

For now I would just like to use Kray without the worry of crashing it every 2 minutes because being new to Kray (and using LW11) I don't know what is safe or unsafe to do.

Some nodes work, some crash it; some standard surface settings work, some crash it, making it hard to do stuff.

the more integrated it is, the less work it requires.
I had a big scene to work on, and I like the idea of tweaking instances in VPR, so it's an improvement for me that Kray relies on LW for that. I don't see why it's a problem.
Saying that Kray remains "independant" doesn't make sense... It's a rendering engine, so it depends on what the 3D host software gives. Otherwise you get a Maxwell.
Sure thing is that it would be bad if support for 9.x was discontinued.

LW is changing and improvements are great. I'm happy to be able to use Kray for flocking, instances and anything cool that is integrated.
One thing that stops me from using Kray for production is the nodes that are not supported, or crashy and not enough buffers.

The best best thing that could be done would be to support LW's Native Buffer export + DP Filter. Is that possible?

My point for keeping basic Kray features like instancing and materials that developer has control over it. Yes I am all for it to be integrated as much as possible. But lets face it without them porting to other 3D software there will never be enough cash flow for them in increase there production speed by hiring other programmers. I for one do use Kray exclusively for production and have not touched Lightwave in years for rendering. On Newtek site I see all the time people wanting Vray for lightwave.At the moment you need to assume that will never happen and why would we need Kray could be much better. In my opinion Kray has more value then Lightwave. I would like to see Kray ported to other applications to increase revenues for development. That is why I believe that basic features stay consistent across 3D packages if Jure ever decides to go that direction other then the Sketchup version. Look at Vray again the way it handles basic features across Max to Maya the same more or less while being intergrated into that app. If Kray relies to much for basic functions like instance it will not be consistent in each 3D package.

I totally get your point, but this assumes that you would have an idea of Kray's business model.
If they planned on spreading the engine on all softwares, you are probably right. But it doesn't seem like it and doesn't seem like it's going to happen soon. So I'd rather have a top notch version that supports all lightwave candy features than a half baked solution reinventing everything thinking that one day maybe it will need to be integrated in other packages.
And on a financial point of view, I guess that it's better to rely on the hours NT have invested (they of course have more to put on the table) than rebuilding things on your side.
To illustrate my point, just look at the buffer, I think that the result would have been much better if Kray was relying on LW's Buffer system to get them all (it might be complicated I don't know).
I'd rather have a Kray that has things LW doesn't have like microdisplacement, real displacement. But sure thing is NT tookk time to integrate Instances and I'm glad Kray made its own solution!

You have a point khan. I'm all for updating kray to support new features in lw 11. Just that I hope it doesn't break anything with lw 9.6. Its still the most stable version.
These new instancing features in lw 11 is just a temp solution. When they merge modeller and layout and we have best instancing similar to other appz, then this instance feature in lw 11 will just be forgotten. The instancing in max is not handled by vray at all. Its max instancing. Its not the same as instancing in lw 11. It goes down to the subobject level. Vray uses it at render time but its independent from vray.

Hi
I am exploring LW11 and can't find in native instance generator ''use costum object'' placement option. The closest thing is by setting type to polygons but it places two instances per polygon because krays costum object is made out of two polygons (triange and two point polygon) and it doesnt rotate the object in the way triangle is rotated. How is this going to be resolved in kray's update? Are we still going to be able to use costum object in the future?

medzo wrote:Hi
I am exploring LW11 and can't find in native instance generator ''use costum object'' placement option. The closest thing is by setting type to polygons but it places two instances per polygon because krays costum object is made out of two polygons (triange and two point polygon) and it doesnt rotate the object in the way triangle is rotated. How is this going to be resolved in kray's update? Are we still going to be able to use costum object in the future?

LW11 instancing is not compatible with Kray custom objects. You can use other workarounds instead (nulls or polys as direction guides).

However you can still use Kray custom objects in LW11 with Kray's own instancing plugin if you want.

Any News about 2.5 release? Guys, I really need to istance object with LW Instances

talats wrote:Any News about 2.5 release? Guys, I really need to istance object with LW Instances

+1

khan973 wrote:

talats wrote:Any News about 2.5 release? Guys, I really need to istance object with LW Instances

+1

+1

Very soon

how much very soon