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Summary

Rhinoceros Render Developer Kit (RDK)

Current Version: 4.0 (released 9th May 2008)

Features

The Rhino RDK is a collection of tools that extend the Rhino application platform with visualization specific capabilities. In particular, the RDK provides:

• A fully extensible Material, Environment and Texture Editor.
• A full frame buffer implementation with post and channel handling.
• A pre-process custom mesh provision interface for 3rd party developers.
• Displacement mapping.
• Procedural textures.
• An improved render pipeline.
• A Rhino Sunlight.
• Property animation registration for Bongo 2.0 and other 3rd party animators.
• Automatic shader UI support for 3rd party Material/Environment/Texture providers.
• UI widgets for developers.

 

Many of these tools are available to Rhino users in their raw form, but the RDK’s real power is as a platform for developers of rendering software.

 

 

SDK downloads.

 

_The RDK is a C++ SDK that integrates with the Rhino 4.0 SDK to add renderer specific functionality to both platforms._

 

Note

This download is for end-users

The current RDK plug-in installer can be downloaded from here:

http://download.mcneel.com/rdk/1.0/redirect/rdk_plugin.asp

 

Note

This download is for software developers only.

The current RDK SDK installer can be downloaded from here:

http://download.mcneel.com/rdk/1.0/redirect/rdk_sdk.asp

 

When developing your RDK-aware render plug-in, you will need the SDK installed on your workstation. When distributing your plug-in, you will need to include the RDK installer as part of your own plug-in installer. To do this, simply install the RDK plug-in installer into the temp folder, and run it using the /silent command line option.

 

The RDK includes a demonstration project called Marmalade which you will find in the C:\Program Files\Rhino RDK\Marmalade folder. This plug-in shows how to set up your paths for header and lib files, and demonstrates many common RDK tasks such as creating custom materials and using the frame buffer.

 

A complete version of this text is part of the SDK download.

 

 

Example images.

Material editor :

 

 

Environment editor :

 

 

Texture Editor :

 

 

Frame buffer :

 

 

Displacement :

Displacement has been migrated into its own plugin, available here .

 

 

Procedural textures :

 

 

Sunlight calculator :