As a follow-up to my original post about using the 3Delight renderer with 3DC, here’s an update for anyone who may want to use this high-quality, Renderman-compliant tool to render their 3d models.
First, the good news. 3Delight has been updated several times since my last post, and the current version (2.1) is much improved. Thus, all that guff in my previous post about editing the exported [i:3ajwxa0c].rib[/i:3ajwxa0c] file is no longer necessary – 3delight will accept a [i:3ajwxa0c].rib[/i:3ajwxa0c] file exported from 3DC directly without any changes.
All you have to do (assuming that 3delight is installed on your system), is double-click on the [i:3ajwxa0c].rib[/i:3ajwxa0c] file. The render window will appear, and a [i:3ajwxa0c]default.tif[/i:3ajwxa0c] file will be created in the same directory. Of course, if you want to make use of 3Delight’s parameters you will have to create a batch file or modify the default settings to your taste.
However, you will still need to remake your [i:3ajwxa0c].tif[/i:3ajwxa0c] textures using the [i:3ajwxa0c]tdlmake[/i:3ajwxa0c] command in order to make them compatible. Note that although this program’s output is a [i:3ajwxa0c].tdl[/i:3ajwxa0c] file, you can rename these back to [i:3ajwxa0c].tif[/i:3ajwxa0c] (replacing the originals) and they should then work in both 3Delight and 3DC. I did notice, however, that after doing this some of my textures looked odd in 3DC, but they look great in the final render which IMHO is more important. The 3Delight command I use to remake a texture is as follows (substitute ‘texture’ with the name of your texture file):
[i:3ajwxa0c]tdlmake -mode periodic -filter sinc -quality high texture.tif texture.tdl[/i:3ajwxa0c]
Now the bad news – my hack to call 3Delight directly from 3DC (using the Raytrace tool button) no longer works. I assume this is because only POVRay is now supported for this option (I’m using ver 6.6), and the program won’t look for any other renderers. Still, this isn’t really an issue now that the [i:3ajwxa0c].rib[/i:3ajwxa0c] files can be rendered so easily.
If you are interested in 3Delight, the free download can be obtained from:
[img:3ajwxa0c]http://www.3delight.com[/img:3ajwxa0c]
3Delight
I can thoroughly recommend this renderer to all 3DC users. Not only does it provide great quality rendered images, it’s also free. What more could you ask?