Kerkythea

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kerkythea

Kerkythea is capable of rendering photorealistic caustics and global illumination.
Developed by	Ioannis Pantazopoulos
Latest release	Kerkythea 2008 Echo / 2008-10-18; 177 days ago
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Type	3D Graphics Software
License	Freeware
Website	Kerkythea

Kerkythea is a freeware rendering system that supports raytracing. Currently, it can be integrated with 3ds Max, Blender, SketchUp, Silo and Wings3D (generally any software that can export files in obj and 3ds formats). Kerkythea is a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lighting.

1 History
2 Exporters
3 Features
4 External links

[edit] History

Kerkythea started development in 2004 and released its first version on April 2005. Initially it was only compatible with Microsoft Windows but an updated release on October 2005 made it Linux compatible. It is now also available for Mac OS X.

[edit] Exporters

There are 6 official exporters for Kerkythea.

Blender

Blend2KT
Exporter to XML format

3D Studio Max

3dsMax2KT 3dsMax Exporter

GMax

GMax2KT GMax Exporter

SketchUp

SU2KT SketchUp Exporter
SU2KT Light Components

[edit] Features

Supported 3D File Formats

3DS Format
OBJ Format
XML (internal) Format
SIA (Silo) Format (partially supported)

Supported Image Formats

All supported by FreeImage library [ JPG, BMP, PNG, TGA, HDR included]

Supported Materials

Matte
Perfect Reflections/Refractions
Blurry Reflections/Refractions
Translucency (SSS)
Dielectric Material
Thin Glass Material
Phong shading Material
Ward Anisotropic Material
Anisotropic Ashikhmin Material
Lafortune Material
Layered Material [Additive Combination of the Above with use of Alpha Maps]

Supported Shapes

Triangulated Meshes
Sphere
Planes

Supported Lights

Omni Light
Spot Light
Projector Light
Point Diffuse
Area Diffuse
Point Light Spherical Soft Shadows
Ambient Lighting
Sky Lighting [Physical Sky, SkySphere Bitmap (Normal or HDRI)]

Supported Textures

Constant Colors
Bitmaps (Normal and HDRI)
Procedurals [Perlin Noise, Marble, Wood, Windy, Checker, Wireframe, Normal Ramp, Fresnel Ramp]
Any Weighted or Multiplicative Combination of the Above

Supported Features

Bump Mapping
Normal Mapping
Clip Mapping
Bevel Mapping (an innovative KT feature!)
Edge Outlining
Depth of field
Fog
Isotropic Volume Scattering
Faked Caustics
Faced Translucency
Dispersion
Anti-aliasing [Texture Filtering, Edge Antialiasing]
Selection Rendering
Surface and Material Instancing

Supported Camera Types

Planar Projection [ Pinhole, Thin lens ]
Cylindrical Pinhole
Spherical Pinhole

Supported Rendering Techniques

Classic Ray Tracing
Path Tracing (Kajiya)
Bidirectional Path Tracing (Veach & Guibas)
Metropolis Light Transport (Kelemen, Kalos et al.)
Photon mapping (Jensen) [mesh maps, photon maps, final gathering, irradiance caching, caustics]
Diffuse Interreflection (Ward)
Depth Rendering
Mask Rendering
Clay Rendering