For those of you who are new to 3D animation it will be great news that there are a good number of free renderers.
For this article we have selected the ones we consider the most popular among 3D animators: Aqsis, Indigo Renderer, Kerkythea, LuxRender, Pixie, POV-Ray, Sunflow, and last but not least, YafaRay.
Aqsis Quick Overview
Complies with the RenderMan standard
Available under GPL and LGPL
Created by Paul Gregory
Implements the Reyes Algorithm
It supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
Indigo Renderer Quick Overview
Developed by Nicholas Chapman and Ben Nolan
Supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
It is released under a proprietary license
Through exporters, it is compatible with various 3D packages (Blendigo, for Blender; Maxigo, for 3D Studio Max; SkIndigo, for Sketchup; Cindigo, for Cinema 4D; MayaToIndigo, for Maya; XSIndigo, for Softimage XSI)
Kerkythea Quick Overview
Developed by Ioannis Pantazopoulos
It supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
Released under freeware license
Can be integrated with Wings3D, Silo, SketchUp, Blender and 3ds Max
Compatible with popular 3D packages Blender, 3D Studio Max, GMax, and SketchUp with the use of exporters: Blend2KT, Exporter to XML format, 3dsMax2KT 3dsMax Exporter, GMax2KT GMax Exporter, SU2KT SketchUp Exporter, and SU2KT Light Components
Kerkythea has an interesting set of supported features such as bump mapping, normal mapping, clip mapping, bevel mapping, edge outlining, depth of field, fog, isotropic volume scattering, faked caustics, faked translucency, dispersion, anti-aliasing, selection rendering, and also surface and material instancing.
LuxRender Quick Overview
Developed by Jean-Philippe Grimaldi, Terrence Vergauwen, Jean-Francois Romang, David Bucciarelli, Ricardo Lipas Augusto, Asbjorn Heid and others
Cross-platform
Released under the GPLv3 license
Exporters available for Maya, XSI, Cinema 4D and Blender
LuxRender is one of our favorites, it features biased and unbiased rendering, full spectral rendering, hierarchical procedural and image based texture system, displacement mapping and subdivision, network and co-operative rendering, perspective, orthographic and environment cameras, and HDR output, to name just a few.
Pixie Quick Overview
Developed by Okan Arikan and George Harker
Supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
Released under GPL and LGPL
We also like Pixie, and are some of its most interesting features: 64-bit capability, fast multi-threaded execution, distribution of the rendering process across various stations, depth of field and motion blur, programmable shading, scalable and multi-resolution raytracing, global illumination, support of conditional RIB, 3D textures and point cloud baking, among others.
POV-Ray Quick Overview
Developed by the POV Team
Cross-platform
Released under a specific POV-Ray license
Another one from our favorites, it features a turing-complete scene description language, repository of scenes, textures, and objects, support of various geometric primitives and constructive solid geometry, various types of light sources, atmospheric effects, light caustings, reflections and refractions, surface patterns, radiosity, and much more.
Sunflow Quick Overview
Developed by Christopher Kulla
Cross-platform
YafaRay Quick Overview
Developed by the YafaRay development team
Cross-platform
Released under the LGPL license
YafaRay is also widely used by us, and here are some of its more important features, in our humble opinion.
YafaRay rendering features: global illumination, skidome illumination, caustics, depth of field, and blurry reflections.
YafaRay architecture features: modular framework, and the fact that it is cross-platform.
Well, we hope you have enjoyed this brief summary of some of the available free renderers. We think this list can help you getting a start in the rendering world. Thanks for reading!
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