After years of us using high-quality rendering software for free, it just makes sense for their developers to eventually turn their endeavors into profit. This happened recently with Indigo and today, Ioannis Pantazopoulos, the creator of Kerkythea announced a similar move. Both have been freely available renderers for SketchUp and other 3D modeling applications.
Here are some of the details gathered from the announcement and forums. Beyond the standard “Kerky” features (3-platform software, modeling environment, various biased and unbiased rendering methods, advanced material editor etc.), “Thea” will have:
- Displacement textures
- Texture baking
- Exporters can be re-used
- “Interactive render” – whatever that means (possibly lights)
- Fair price – Good!
The new software’s home is at www.thearender.com. There is also a forum for questions etc. The new price hasn’t been announced yet but that should happen soon. In any case, Kerkythea will apparently remain free – but we have already been cautioned about longer development cycles.