[Bf-committers] yafray might be dropped from Blender?

[Giuseppe Ghibò]

Arne Schmitz wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 16. März 2008 09:38 schrieb Giuseppe Ghibò:
>   
>> Tom M wrote:
>>     
>>> "We probably should disable yafray in official releases now...
>>> it is really not maintained anymore. (Tom: that's nothing Janne
>>> can do either)
>>>       
>> If you plan to drop yafray, how about to replace with yaf(a)ray, i.e.
>> this one?
>>
>> http://wiki.yafray.org/bin/view.pl/UserDoc/YafaRay
>>
>> Gustavo Boiko (boiko at mandriva.com) has created a patch for using Yafaray
>> instead of Yafray for current blender, here is:
>>
>>  http://people.mandriva.com/~boiko/patches/yafaray_blender_export.patch
>>
>> though that patch will be probably moved to his own svn in the next weeks.
>>     
>
> I think some form of XML export should be kept, since it allows for simple 
> export to external renderers. I am using the XML export for two self-built 
> inhouse renderers, that we use for research. I do not have a lot of time or 
> knowledge to keep Blender's XML export up and running, but I probably could 
> help a little here and there. The nice thing about Blender's XML export is, 
> that it allows for the export of almost all primitives, as well as single 
> animation frames. It is also very easy to parse by other tools and languages. 
> One can hack together a Yafray XML parser quite easily. If it goes away, I 
> think I would just write myself a custom format, with a python script, but 
> that would take quite some work. 
>
> Maybe it would make sense to write down the Yafray syntax in a XML grammar. 
> Because AFAIK it is only implicitly specified by the Yafray source. If we 
> could make a 'standard' XML format for exporting, this might make it easier 
> for other tools to use that standard. I think this would be an orthogonal 
> concept to the other export tools, which export only parts like models (off, 
> obj, 3ds,...), or Verse (networking) or even the infamous Render-API. The XML 
> exporter would have the ability to make for a powerful, very easy to use 
> interface from Blender to other tools!
>
>   
Indeed what you call 'XML exporter' is actually a side effect for 
calling yafray trough command name and not trough the library plugin
(as it writes and overlap every XML file to TMP and also uses always the 
same filename: this is not good in a multiuser environment).
 IMHO that "exporter" should be a little bit tuned, giving the aspect of 
a real exporter, and the possibility to set the filename
of the XML file trough a file requester.

Bye
Giuseppe.