WPF 3D - Kerkythea Exporter

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Introduction

WPF 3D is a real-time rendering method. To get the highest quality renderings of 3D scenes, it is necessary to use a non real-time method that uses techniques like raytracing or radiosity. This can be done in software like Kerkythea, Luxrender, Maxwell, Indigo, etc. These engines simulate the physics of light to achieve near perfect photorealistic renderings.

This article presents an exporter that converts a WPF 3D model to the XML format used by the Kerkythea render engine.

The source code is also located at Codeplex, and I hope other developers would like to contribute to make the exporter complete.

WPF Rendering

The test model consists of four spheres and a checkerboard (a typical raytracing demo scene). with one spot light and two directional lights.

Raytracing

This is the raytracing output from Kerkythea. I used diffuse materials ("Whitted materials" in Kerkythea) with reflections turned on for both the spheres and the checkerboard.

Metropolis Light Transport

The same model rendered using the metropolis light transport algorithm.

Comparison

Ray tracing - Photon map - Metropolis light transport:

Using the Code

The WPF3D model can be exported from a Viewport3D control by the following code:

KerkytheaExporter exporter = new KerkytheaExporter(file);
exporter.BackgroundColor = Colors.Black;
exporter.Width = 1920;
exporter.Height = 1200;
exporter.Reflections = true;
exporter.Shadows = true;
exporter.SoftShadows = true;
exporter.Export(ViewPort1);
exporter.Close();

This will traverse the scene graph, find all the light sources and use the current camera of the Viewport3D.

Issues

• The Media3D.ModelUIElement3D class is sealed. A new base class was created for the elements used in this scene.

Future Enhancements

• Support texture materials (it already exports texture coordinates)
• The scene graph traversal may be improved with LogicalTreeHelper?
• Unit tests

Links

• Kerkythea
• Luxrender (open source)
• Indigo (commercial, used to be freeware)
• Maxwell (commercial)
• WPF 3D vs. Ray tracing (Eric Sink)

History

• 2009-07-10: First post