Kerkythea is a completely free, high-quality and fast 3D models render for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms, developed by Ioannis Pantazopoulos from Greece. I found this free render engine in the process of studying SketchUp (by reading Architectural Design with SketchUp). In the end, it passed the software quality audit of AppNee, thus can be shared with more users around the world. Although it is a free software and not as popular as other renders, the functions of Kerkythea are not inferior in any respect. To some extent, it can be a preferred rendering tool for many small companies.

As a lightweight yet quality standalone rendering software, Kerkythea supports importing .3ds or .obj format of model files; has multiple official exporters from some popular 3D software, such as: Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, GMax, LightWave 3D, SketchUp, Silo and Wings3D; supports ray tracing and Metropolis light transport these two rendering modes; uses physically accurate materials and lights; provides necessary tools (such as GL real-time viewer, material editor, general/render settings, editors) to automate scene setup; supports for animation output, thermal radiation effect, multi-core operations and multiple computers cluster operations.

Some users may know Kerkythea from Alex Hogrefe’s tutorials about SketchUp, in which many SketchUp instances are rendered with Kerkythea. This case, you may have such a question “Compared with V-Ray, which is better?”. It ‘s hard to say, that depends. Because each of them has its own benefits that just fit users’ different using habits and meet their different needs. For example, if you pursue the photo-level rendering effects and are good at carrying out all kinds of adjustments, then the V-Ray with higher adjustability is of course better; But if you think the operation of V-Ray is too complicated, and it takes a long time to render, then Kerkythea is the preferred one among all free renders.

// Key Features //

Function	Detail
Supported 3D file formats	3DS format OBJ format XML (internal) format SIA (Silo) format (partially supported)
Supported image formats	All supported by FreeImage library (JPEG, BMP, PNG, TGA and 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 with 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 Faked 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
Application environment	OpenGL real-time viewer (basic staging capabilities) Integrated material editor Easy rendering customization Sun/sky customization Script system Command line mode

// Related Links //

• Kerkythea Getting Started Guide (PDF)
• Kerkythea Material Editor Guide (PDF)
• Kerkythea Gallery
• Kerkythea Official Resources download
• Kerkythea Official Tutorials download
• Kerkythea Quick Start (PDF)
• Kerkythea F.A.Q (PDF)

// Download URLs //

License	Version	Download	Size
Freeware	Latest		n/a

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