Support more render engines (as alternative to POV-Ray)

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As POV-Ray sometime not availiable for some users or too heavy, propose add bindings to other free&open-source tools for rendering

appleseed

• appleseed is an open source, physically-based global illumination rendering engine primarily designed for animation and visual effects released under terms of MIT License.
• https://github.com/appleseedhq/applesee
• http://appleseedhq.net/download

appleseed is available as a portable C++ library with C++ and Python APIs, as a set of standalone applications for Windows, Linux and macOS, and as native plugins for content creation applications

YafaRay

• YafaRay - free open-source montecarlo raytracing engine released under the LGPL 2.1 license.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YafaRay
• https://github.com/YafaRay/

YafaRay written with C++ and licensed under LGPL, so could be bundled in LeoCAD directly for Linux, Windows and Mac.

• http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5249#p32111

REFERENCE:

• http://www.yafaray.org/es/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5007
• https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-11465.html

LuxRender

• LuxRender

REFERENCE:

• https://www.blendernation.com/2017/08/07/introduction-luxrender-tutorial/

Radeon Pro Render

• Radeon Pro Render now open-source project
• https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/RadeonProRender-Baikal

Blender/Cycles

• Cycles render is part of Bender
• https://github.com/mcneel/cycles

REFERENCE:

• https://github.com/eLeDeTe-LoDeTanda/RCL-RenderCommandLine-
  • https://github.com/eLeDeTe-LoDeTanda/Brenders
• https://github.com/TobyLobster/ImportLDraw

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Some new tool for render LDraw files (.dat), written on C language

l2rib is a utility for converting Lego LDraw models for use in a RenderMan compliant renderer. In other words, it reads .DAT files, and writes RIB files which can then be rendered by renderers such as Pixar's PhotoRealistic RenderMan.

• https://github.com/levork/l2rib

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Add "appleseed" to the list

• https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed

Cast @appleseedhq

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Its look llike FreeCAD also will get support for more rendering engines soon:

• https://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog.php?2017=414

...
The other feature I'm working on (I have no code that is good enoough to test to share yet) is adding Appleseed as a new renderer to the Raytracing workbench . In a first step I am simply looking at producing an .appleseed file from FreeCAD, that can be fed to the renderer externally (same as we do with PovRay and LuxRender), but Appleseed has a powerful and elegant python (and C++) API too, that can in the futre allow a much more seamless integration, and litterally control and display the rendering progress within FreeCAD. But first things first. I'm also extending a bit the Raytracing workbench code, which is currently C++ only, to allow to add new renderers in python code, which will make it much easier for other people to help and add more renderers.
...

Maybe, it would be usefull look inside "Raytracing workbench"

• https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Raytracing_Module

@yorikvanhavre, it would be cool if you can help for LeoCAD on adding support to more rendering engines. Of course, when you will be free from FreeCAD work ;-)

[ghost]

• https://github.com/glopez122/brender

Blender Render Package for OpenGL animations