Yafaray-E v2.1.1 (2016-02-06) for Blender 2.76b:

------------------------------------------------
Note: there has been important changes and bug fixes in this version. They have solved some long-standing issues but perhaps they could cause new issues and unexpected results, so we have to keep an eye on them.

* IMPORTANT: Fix for incorrect IBL lighting in World Background Texture when set to Angular. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/714

* IMPORTANT: Adjustment to the automatic intersection/shadow bias calculation formula to avoid black artifacts in the scenes with fine details. However, now we can get again some black dots in some scenes again. For now, no good solution at hand (any good solution would require fundamental changes to the engine and probably slow down the renders in a significant amount). However, I hope to have found a better balance now. See: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?389385-YafaRay-E-(Experimental)-v2-0-2-builds-Windows-Linux-and-Mac-OSX-for-Blender-2-76b&p=3004974&viewfull=1#post3004974

* IMPORTANT: Fix for black dots (alpha=0) sometimes when using Mitchell/Lanzcos filters. It's not clear what is the best way of solving this problem. This fix is the one that makes more sense but could cause new issues, we have to keep an eye on this. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/712

* Fixed Black artifacts in World Background Textures. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/714

* Fixed regression error in v2.1.0 when using Area Lights. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/713

* Fixed World Preview not updating correctly. This is probably caused by Blender itself, I had to use the same workaround I used in the past to fix the material preview updating problem

* Fixed crash when using textures with Normal or Window coordinates (which are view dependent) along with Caustic Photons. However, we have to consider that Photons are supposed to be view-independent, but when using textures with Window or Normal coordinates (which are view dependant), then the Photons WILL also be view dependant as well! So, using textures with "tricks" like Normal or Windows coordinates can cause low frequency noise in animations with Photons. This would not be a problem, but the price for using such "tricks" in renders.

* Fixed python error when selecting an image texture before with no image opened yet.

* "Final" changes to the Material Preview Advanced Controls:
    - Added Dynamic Camera Rotation & Zoom.
    - Changes to ensure the preview object is centered and rotation keeps it always in the centre.
    - Changes to keep the scale/proportions of custom preview objects
    - Added AA Passes control for progressively refining the material rendering
    - Splitted the Light power and Light Color controls in two: Key Light power control and Fill Lights power control
    - Removed PosX,PosZ controls as considered unnecessary and complicating the interface.
    - Removed Texture scale/offset controls as they could cause confusion with the actual texture scale/offset parameters

Important note: YafaRay only supports *one* scene in the .blend file. If you have more than one scene, it could cause unexpected results and problems in the new Material Preview Controls.

Yafaray-E v2.1.0 (2016-01-31) for Blender 2.76b:

------------------------------------------------

- Added Normal Coordinates for textures, so you can use a gradient texture mapped to normal coordinates to simulate, for example, some cloth materials (see http://yafaray.org/node/188 )
- Fixed some crashes when changing Material/Texture settings
- Increased max limit for Sample Multiplier Factor from 2.0 to 4.0 so more steep exponential increase of samples can be done for every pass. Be aware that the number of samples will grow very fast in every pass if the factor is above 1.5.

- Advanced Controls for Material/Texture Preview
  As requested in http://yafaray.org/node/699 I've made some changes to allow fine-grained control of the Material and Texture Preview window.

  Some videos explaining the new feature:

  * First tests (outdated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWcHgufkBw
  * Latest video with all features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBgzqZFQ3Y8

  The new features are:

    * Ability to change key light incident angle, so we can place the terminator area on the preview object.: new parameter added to rotate the lights in the Preview window around the preview object. That should allow to set the lights in different angles to look the material under different light conditions
    * Ability to focus in the observer's terminator area: added parameters to displace the preview object up/down, left/right as well as to scale the preview object. This way, the terminator area can be better explored in detail
    * Ability to change light power in the material previsualisation window: added a power factor parameter for the lights and another parameter to set the color of the lights themselves to experiment with different lighting conditions on the material
    * Ability to change previsualisation object size: with the parameter to scale the object plus added parameters to scale/displace the texture as well in the preview
    * Rendering an object from the scene as a previsualisation object: added a parameter to select an arbitrary object from the blend scene as preview object.
    * Background selection: added a parameter to select the desired background: "checker" is the default, "none" is a white background and "world" would be the blend scene world definition. Selecting "world" would allow a more realistic and customized material preview, but it will probably be noisier and slower (depending on the samples selected in the World definition)

Yafaray-E v2.0.2 (2016-01-26) for Blender 2.76b:

------------------------------------------------
- Fixed crash when Blend materials were used and their components were also blend, which had some component materials missing
- Max value for the dark noise factor parameter expanded to 1.0 to allow even darker areas to have better AA sampling
- Fix for Oren Nayar to avoid generating white/black dots when used together with bump mapping
- Fix for black dots using HDRI spherical and Coated Glossy

Yafaray-E v2.0.1 (2016-01-05) for Blender 2.76b

Yafaray-E v2.0.1 (2016-01-05) for Blender 2.76b:

• Fixed Instances not working in v2.0.0 (regression)

Yafaray-E v2.0.0 (2016-01-01) for Blender 2.76b:

• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement Render Passes. The Passes are especially intended for Direct Light and Photon Mapping integrators. Some passes may not work (or work incorrectly) in other integrators.
• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement Render Views (Stereo3D / MultiView)
• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement a (hopefully) improved more automatic and reliable Shadow Bias and Intersection Bias, based on triangle size and coordinates positions.
• 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%. The "optimized" option is lossless (except in TIFF 16bit). There is a "compressed" option that is lossy but allows an extra reduction of approx. 20% in RAM usage.
• Support for exporting in MultiLayer EXR files, that can be opened in Blender as well.
• XML rendering now supports an option to save partially rendered images every "x" seconds, probably useful when creaiting external GUIs to the XML interface.
• Ability to select what "internal" YafaRay Render Pass has to be mapped to an "external" Render Pass. This provides a lot of power and flexibility when generating Render Passes.
• Object ID/Material ID passes, with option of automatic ID color pass.
• Object ID Masking and Material ID masking (objects only, objects+shadows, shadows only)
• Debug passes and UV debug pass available to be able to find mesh/mapping/texturing problems at the same time as rendering the scene.
• Samplerate pass, to apply post-processing filters to the noisier parts of the render.
• Added dispersive caustics to SPPM.
• Changes to dispersion in rough glass.
• Removal of entire Qt interface. As far as we know it was old, unmaintained and probably useless anyway.
• Fix (although horrible) for the Bidirectional integrator generating black renders with some types of lights.
• A few speed improvements, I don't expect a significant change but I hope they help a bit, especially in 64bit systems.
• Fixes to the material preview to be correctly refreshed after any changes to the material properties.

Yafaray-E v2.0.0 (2016-01-01) for Blender 2.76b:

• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement Render Passes. The Passes are especially intended for Direct Light and Photon Mapping integrators. Some passes may not work (or work incorrectly) in other integrators.
• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement Render Views (Stereo3D / MultiView)
• STRUCTURAL CHANGES to implement a (hopefully) improved more automatic and reliable Shadow Bias and Intersection Bias, based on triangle size and coordinates positions.
• 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%. The "optimized" option is lossless (except in TIFF 16bit). There is a "compressed" option that is lossy but allows an extra reduction of approx. 20% in RAM usage.
• Support for exporting in MultiLayer EXR files, that can be opened in Blender as well.
• XML rendering now supports an option to save partially rendered images every "x" seconds, probably useful when creaiting external GUIs to the XML interface.
• Ability to select what "internal" YafaRay Render Pass has to be mapped to an "external" Render Pass. This provides a lot of power and flexibility when generating Render Passes.
• Object ID/Material ID passes, with option of automatic ID color pass.
• Object ID Masking and Material ID masking (objects only, objects+shadows, shadows only)
• Debug passes and UV debug pass available to be able to find mesh/mapping/texturing problems at the same time as rendering the scene.
• Samplerate pass, to apply post-processing filters to the noisier parts of the render.
• Added dispersive caustics to SPPM.
• Changes to dispersion in rough glass.
• Removal of entire Qt interface. As far as we know it was old, unmaintained and probably useless anyway.
• Fix (although horrible) for the Bidirectional integrator generating black renders with some types of lights.
• A few speed improvements, I don't expect a significant change but I hope they help a bit, especially in 64bit systems.
• Fixes to the material preview to be correctly refreshed after any changes to the material properties.

Yafaray-E v1.1.0 (2015-11-06) for Blender 2.76

• Changes to the Core code and build files to enable building for Mac OSX 64bit (v10.6 or higher), based on the excellent work from Jens Verwiebe. Thank you very much, Jens!!
• Added a new "Resampled Floor" parameter to the Adaptative AA calculations, to increase the noise reduction performance. The idea is that if the amount of resampled pixels go below that "floor" value during a certain pass, the AA threshold is automatically decreased in 10% for the next pass. More information: http://yafaray.org/node/690
• Blend materials can now be selected using drop down menus. This feature has been ported from povmaniaco's The Bounty fork of YafaRay. Thanks, povmaniaco!!
• Added a new texture sampling parameter in Blender Exporter to control the type of interpolation in the image texture. Options will be: bilinear (default), bicubic or none. See: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5121
• Added a per-material parameter to control reception of shadows. Now it's possible to select if a material should receive shadows from other objects (as default) or not. See: http://yafaray.org/node/687
• Minor changes for existing material visibility feature to improve (just a tiny bit) performance.

New Color Pipeline, new Volumetric Raytracing, and several other changes

Yafaray-E v1.0.0 (2015-10-13) for Blender 2.76:

Note: from v1.0.0 I will no longer use the suffix "beta", as all YafaRay-Experimental versions are inherently betas ;-). I will use for version scheme: "Major.Minor.Bugfix". Major will be very important and structural changes with possible API breakage, Minor will be new and modified functionality without API breakage, Bugfix will be small changes and bugfixes.

• IMPORTANT CHANGES to Color Management and Color Pipeline Linear Workflow: http://www.yafaray.org/node/670

Initial prototype to try to fix the (apparently broken) YafaRay color pipeline workflow and to replace the simple gamma input/output correction with a proper sRGB decoding/coding in non-HDR files.

More information here: http://www.yafaray.org/node/670

So, I've prepared a YafaRay prototype that fixes the next issues:

• Improved Blender Color Space integration.
• The "simple" gamma correction has been replaced by Color Spaces:
  • LinearRGB Linear values, no gamma correction
  • sRGB sRGB encoding/decoding
  • XYZ XYZ (very experimental) support
  • Raw_Manual_Gamma Raw linear values that allow to set a simple gamma output correction manually
• Fixed: Double application of input gamma to the Blender Color picker. So now scenes will look brighter in general, but they should also look more realistic with less tweaking.
• Gamma input correction no longer used. The color picker floating point color values will be considered already linear and no conversion applied to them.
• For textures, added specific per-texture Color Space and gamma parameters.
• The color values exported to the XML file will be encoded acording to Blender Output Device Color Space setting.
• In yafaray-xml, new commandline option added: "-ics" or "--input-color-space" that allows to select how to interpret the XML color values. By default, for backwards compatibility, color values will be read as "LinearRGB", but using "-ics sRGB", the color values will be interpreted as sRGB. This setting does not affect the textures, as they have already per-texture specific color space/gamma parameters.
• Fixed: when exporting to file there was an error in Blender while reopening it to be shown in the Blender image view.

Several bug tracker entries are supposed to be fixed with this change:

• Color pipeline bug: http://www.yafaray.org/node/670
• Linear output forced on every scene: http://www.yafaray.org/node/603
• Gamma 1.80 input on linux: http://www.yafaray.org/node/604
• Forward compatibility with Blender Color Management: http://www.yafaray.org/node/547
• Gamma correction performed on EXR files: http://www.yafaray.org/node/549
• IMPORTANT CHANGES to Volumetrics for proper raytracing of volumes:

Problems with volumes and transparent objects have been reported in the bug tracker several times:
http://yafaray.org/node/289
http://yafaray.org/node/666

The problem was that Volumes were not really included in the raytracing process, so they were not reflected nor refracted. Now Volumes have been included in the raytracing process, so they can be refracted and reflected as any other objects. This is a significant change that could cause new issues, so please let us know about any problems in YafaRay bug tracker.

Now, if there are no parameters set in the XML for transparent background or transparent refracted background, their default values will be "false" and not "true" as until now. This will avoid confusion due to the new way "transparent refracted background" works, not rendering the background at all so volumes rendered against a transparent background do not carry "remains" of the background with them.

• Fix for attenuation when using 2 or more volumetric objects: http://www.yafaray.org/node/332
• Fix for error message "Index out of bounds in pdf1D_t" when spotlights with falloff > 0.70 and photons were used: http://www.yafaray.org/node/681
• Fix for Alpha Premultiply broken in Blender exporter: http://www.yafaray.org/node/682 Now the "Premultiply Alpha" option is back in the Exporter, but only when Export to file or to xml is selected. Premultiply will now be forced to true when exporting into Blender.
• Fix for some YafaRay camera panels incorrectly appearing in LuxRender! http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=12405&sid=14e5a712bb33cbdee95c65fb1920ad38&start=20
  70138b7

Added advanced shadow options. Bump map corrections.

Added advanced shadow options. Bump map corrections.

Fixes for Blend materials changing, more options for Shadow Bias/Min Ray Dist and fix for Non-IBL Background caustics

Hello,

Main changes in this Blender-Exporter beta4 version (including changes in the Core) respect to beta3:

• Changes to the blend material "component" material1,material2 handling. In previous versions if you created or deleted materials in the .blend file, sometimes all the material components of the blend materials changed or dissapeared randomly. To avoid it, now the materials are referenced by name using strings. You cannot use dropdown menus anymore to select the blend submaterials, and you have to be careful now not to rename the materials used by "blend" materials. However, with the new system if you create or delete other materials it will not affect the blend material1,material2 assignments.

Also, I've increased the level of detail in the YafaRay Log, so if there are any problems with missing components in blend materials it should be easy to spot and correct by reading the YafaRay Log.

WARNING: this change breaks backwards compatibility. When opening a .blend created with an older version of YafaRay the blend material components will be "upgraded" to the new system, but the"blend" materials in a blend made with the new version could behave wrongly if you open it with an older version.

• New advanced parameters for fine control of Shadow Bias/Min Ray Dist if the automatic calculation is not good enough.
• Fix for caustics noise coming from Non-IBL background in Photon Mapping. Now the background will only be used for Caustics if IBL is enabled and (if there is a caustics parameter available in the background settings) if caustics is enabled in the background.
• Background "power" parameters relocated to places where they make more sense. They were hidden and only visible when IBL was enabled, but most of the times the power parameter affects the background rendering even if IBL is disabled.

Fix for Blender 2.74.5 MultiView. Extended Texture Mapping System

Blender made another change to their API in their development branch 2.74.4 to include MultiView. That change caused YafaRay to render black images despite being working fine.

Very kindly Jens Verwiebe sent us the fix for Blender Exporter so YafaRay can work again with Blender 2.74.4. This fix is not a full integration in the new MultiView functionality, it just allows YafaRay to work again with Blender.

More changes in this beta3 version:

• Fix for -NAN results in the Bidirectional integrator when using Architectural, Angular and Ortho cameras. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/538
• Fix for problem with Rough Glass too bright when dispersion is enabled. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/642
• Extended Texture Mapping system (very experimental!!), allowing using textures to map additional properties in materials, to be able to create either more realistic or more exotic materials and reduce the dependency on the "blend" material. More information in: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5091

Important note: when using some of the new mappings, the renders may slow down. I'm not sure whether it's because of the additional calculations (very likely) or if it's something we can optimize further in the future. In any case, it should only be noticeable when using the new mappings, and I think it's worth the ability to create new materials now.

The new texture mappings in addition to the existing ones are:

• Diffuse Reflection Amount in Shiny Diffuse, Glossy and Coated Glossy materials
• Sigma factor for Oren Nayar in Shiny Diffuse, Glossy and Coated Glossy materials
• Filter color in Glass and Rough Glass.
• IOR refractive factor in Glass and Rough Glass. The texture amounts are added to the IOR of the material.
• IOR refractive factor for the Fresnel in Shiny Diffuse and Coated Glossy materials.
• Roughness factor in Rough Glass material.
• Exponent factor in Glossy and Coated Glossy materials
• Mirror amount in Coated Glossy materials.
• Mirror Color in Coated Glossy Materials

I also added a (non-texture) mirror amount slider in the Coated Glossy material

Unfortunately due to Blender API limitations, in some of the new texture sliders, the "tooltip" information that appears when hovering the mouse over the slider, can be misleading and not represent the actual function of that slider. However, I took care in setting the description correctly so just by looking at the slider itself you can see what does it map.

I hope you like the changes and also that the new changes do not introduce new issues.

Best Regards. David.