Kerkythea Tutorial

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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

Post by RAYMAN »

Many of you would have loved to use a standalone render engine like
Kerkythea but did not know how to start and what to do.
So this is a short guide for all those ... step by step.
Well first step is to drag your scene in this case the cathedral from the stack
into workspace .... it opens.. I then switch to model side and there I instal my
luuv plugin..... with the plug button !. A button with obj. appears in the toolbar. I rightclick that to see that it exports my textures as well and groups ! I open a fresh folder outside of Truespace and name it ...With the obj. panel open I use the pull down menu to chose one object after the other
exept for cameras and lights and with alt click on the luuv tool I export one object after the other into that newly created folder.
Note that it should export the textures as well into that folder !
After I am finished with exporting all my objects I close TS !
Here is what CHANGA does to export to Kerkythea.
Note that he triangulates to avoid holes and he glues all objects together
in model side before he exports in one go.
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step 1.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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Next step is I open Kerkythea. With file open I chose my first object from the folder the second thrid fourth etc. I load with the merge function:
From the panel I chose only to load the mesh and not the rendersettings
and not cameras lights or global settings ! I chose keep current for these !
In the end I should have all the objects from the folder in the stack on the left !
NOTE THAT THEY ALL COME INTO THE SAME PLACE THEY WERE IN TRUESPACE
SO YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO MOVE ANYTHING !
If they dont show up in workspace doubleclicking on the filenames in the stack will make them have a star and they will show up !
Highlighted objects can be moved in workspace !
IF YOU HIT THE G KEY on the keyboard you cycle between move rotate and scale !
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step 2.jpg
step 3.jpg
step 4.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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You then try to get the scene upright and into the middle of the workspace.
You do that either by rightclicking onto the top insert in the stack
(move to origin-move to ground) or you can do it manually by choosing all
objects AT ONCE andturn it with the widget !
You can now chose solid display mode if you like and insert a camera and lights .....
RIGHT CLICKING ON EVERYTHING IN THE STACK WILL OPEN a panel
with all the functions like choosing material and deleting etc.
right clicking on a camera in the stack and choosing goto camera
will let you jump to that view of the camera.
NOTE THAT RIGHTCLICKING IN THIS PROGRAM ON MANY NAMES AND OBJECTS
OPEN AND DO A LOT OF THINGS !
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step 6.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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Here is the panel that pops up when you rightclick an object in the stack.
You can change materials here .... and lots of very usefull functions..
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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For the dokumentation on the material editor and how to change
camera and light settings please look into the documentation and
the getting started tutorial in the download area at the main site
of Kerkythea but I just want to cover 3 more things ....
first is the sun and sky Wizard.
With this you can ad a sun with the exact position at time of day
andin the next tab you have either physical sky or spherical map
like hdri. with intensity you control how bright that is.
There is a lot more under advanced settings if you want to dive into that
but thats just the basics for now.
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step 10.jpg
step 11.jpg
step 12.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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Under render ....start... you geta tab that asks for the camera you want to render what size - you ca use a preset or typ in the size AND YOU CAN
USE A RENDER PRESET which is all you need most of the time anyway,
We have 2 typs of render methods . biased like photon mapping
and unbiased like MLT or pathtracing progressiv.
Whats the difference well biased - you hit the render button and the render is finished
after some time and give you the end result.
Unbiased - you hit the render buttoon and you continue until you like the result. it gets finer and finer and less grainy UNTIL YOU ARE HAPPY and you
turn it off .
Most of the time 30 - 50 cycles are enough for a decent quality.
Unbiased rendert engines take much longer !
Rule of thumb you take photon mapping for fast renders and standard renders.
you take path tracing progressiv for BIG landscape scenes.
You take MLT and MLT bpt if you have enough time and need the most physically correct renders or you have very difficult light setups or difficult interiors with lots of bouncing going on.
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step 14.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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next is the post process and save panel you can always have it open if you have enogh space but you need if at render time to judge if you are happy with the render result and for unbiased render settings to turn the rendert off
when you are happy with the result. note that you can save while the render is still continuing. so you can look at it outside in an editor like Photoshop if you want to while it is still baking along....
Note that there are some very cool render settings like mask render that let you rendera mask of only the selected objects and you can save only
chanels like specular too !
In the post process editor window you can also make a render lighter or darker if you need to .
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

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This is what you get after 2 cycles ..... and after 16 cycles and after
30 cycles ...... that ca go on for days if you want to and dont stop the render getting finer and finer with every cycle so the sky is the limit for your
render quality or you patience

You can always stop a render when your satisfied .....
Here are examples of how the render changes after some time....

(Note that the same scene with photon mapping medium and medium antialiasing (preset 6)only took 3 minutes and 9 seconds at 500x500 px
with an intel quadcore 2400 with 3 gig !
So biased can be a lot faster !)
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step 15.jpg
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RAYMAN
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

Post by RAYMAN »

Here are tjhe light and the camera panel
you can set everything in these tabs and dont forget that for some effects you have to enable volumetrics from within there
but its good to go to the kerkythea forum there is a lot more there about the advbanced settings
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camerapanel.jpg
light panels.jpg
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Krowbarh
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Re: Kerkythea Tutorial

Post by Krowbarh »

Many Thanks for your decade old tutorial....I have Kerk installed for Wings3D & now I can figure it out!.....
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