Kerkythea

[PaperStreet SoapCO]

I'm not sure how many other people have heard of this rendering program called Kerkythea but its absolutley open source and free. The best part is, is that its FAST! The only problem is I can't figure out how to get a revit model into it. It only imports .xml, .obj, .3ds, and .sia - I think.

Attached is an image of a model I had in sketchup (there is a ruby script available that allows you to export in .xml format even in the free version of sketchup). I spent about 2 min, literally, applying 2 materials and hit render. It took I'd say about 6 min to get the image here at 1280 x 1000 res. Applying materials is a breeze as well.

I guess if anyone knows a way to get a revit model into Kerkythea it would be well worth it to get some far superior images to accurender.

Also, I just realized I didn't do a search on this topic before I wrote this so I apologize if I am repeating info already posted.

[Mike Hahn]

I would recommend a program named to Accutrans (http://www.micromouse.ca/) to get for Revit to Kerkythea.

Just export from revit to DXF open the DXF in accutrans and save it a OBJ or 3DS

The program has a free 30 trial period and only costs 20 dollars to purchase

[PaperStreet SoapCO]

Thanks for the tip! I figure since we have SketchUp Pro we'll just dump the Revit model back into SketchUp and then dump it into Kerkythea. It seems like a tedious job but at least we get some good options for perspective rendering - handdrawn look in SketchUp and photoreal look in Kerkythea (see attached image). Both which require a small amount of knowledge and are easy to learn as far as I can tell.

I was kind of hoping there would be some direct way to export from Revit into Kerkythea though. I wonder why Revit doesn't have more export options. .3ds and .obj seem like they should be standard options.

In anycase, the attached image are 'quick' work studies to see how quickly I could get some decent results with barley scratching the surface of each program.

[snurresprett9]

A better option would be Indigo render. Also free and there is also a plug-in for SketchUp. It is also based on real physics like Maxwell render.

[iru69]

Sorry, but I don't really get it. In my opinion, the attached examples of Kerkythea don't look any better than what you can get out of accurender much more easily. I don't know what hardware you're running, but six minutes doesn't seem very fast for that either.

I did check out the gallery on the website, and granted, I think the best results are probably a step up from accurender in the photoreal department, but really nothing to write home about. If you're going to go through all the trouble to export and setup materials and everything, maybe it's worth spending the money on something like Viz or Maxwell for vastly better results?

Still, it's good to know what's out there. Thanks for posting about it.

[PaperStreet SoapCO]

I agree that the image I posted isn't the best and I was rendering it on a slower computer. I thought I would have had time this weekend to produce something better but I was in Durango for most of it. BUT my point in posting it was that I have had no previous experience with Kerkythea and I produced that image in 5 or 6 min. I doubt you can get someone with no experience in Accurender in Revit to produce something comparable to that and, like you said, if you spend some more time with it you can get results that are better than Accurender and the program is free. I guess that was the operable word in the original post.