Hello Everyone,
It's been a while since my last digest, judging by the amount of mail
that's backed up. I hope that everyone has seen the 2.0 release
announcement by now. A few of the enclosed messages are from
people who were working with beta copies of release 2 and a few are
from people who got the official release of 2, but most messages
are from people who were still working with release 1.4. The
order may seem a bit strange at times, as I was trying mightily
to collect together some sensible categories.
MODELING Textures, Surfaces and Lights
IMAGES Image Translators and Animations
GENERATORS Some new generator contributions
LUMFACTOR Change in luminous efficacy factor
MKILLUM New program for computing distributions
AUTOCAD CMU work on a new AutoCAD translator
MODELS Picking up and dropping off 3d models
ART Radiance in the arts
RS6000 Compiling Radiance on the IBM RS/6000
SUMANT Sumant Pattanaik's contributions
NIGHTTIME Rendering night time images
COMPILE Compile problems related to X11 and malloc.c
OPENWINDOWS Some nice additions for Sun's Open Windows
Any future mail to me should be addressed to GJWard@lbl.gov or
greg@hobbes.lbl.gov, as I have officially returned from Switzerland.
-Greg
===================================================================
MODELING Textures, Surfaces and Light Sources
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 10:55:54 +0200
From: her@compel.dk (Helge Egelund Rasmussen)
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Some Radiance questions
Hi Greg,
I have a few questions for you about Radiance, but first I'll mention a
little about the current state of the Amiga port of Radiance.
At the moment Per Bojsen has most of Radiance working on an Amiga 3000
with the latest version of the OS (2.0), while I work on an Amiga 2000
with an earlier version (1.3).
There's major differences between two versions, and we've agreed to base
the port on version 2.0 when it becomes available for the 2000 in the near
future. Because of this, the Amiga port probably won't be available before
October sometime.
Nearly all Radiance programs work (including pinterp and rview),
and I've rendered most of the models found on hobbes.
Now for the questions:
-I've created a 'cloud' pattern, and wanted to create an outdoor sceene with
nice clouds in the background.
My scene consist of a gensky source, and a big bubble with the cloud pattern
as a colorfunc. The bubble is made of translucent material so that the
gensky source and sun can pass it, and so that the cloud pattern is visible.
I however have some problems with this setup, for instance it is possible
for objects to make shadows on the sky! The radius of the bubble is 100,
while the typical object size is 5. I haven't been able to create a larger
bubble because oconv then can't subdivide the objects.
Do you have any suggestions on how to do this kind of thing?
-In the README file for the pod life model, you write:
Thanks goes to Seth Teller, who wrote the patch modeler that made this
all possible. Coming up with the correct patch parameters otherwise
would have been a nightmare.
Is this modeller available? (I don't like to have nightmares :-)
-I'm currently working on an Imagine to Radiance object converter.
Imagine is a commercial 3d modeller/renderer for the Amiga.
In Imagine you have full control over color (r,g,b), reflectance(r,g,b),
transmittance(r,g,b), specular reflection (r,g,b), index of refraction,
roughness and a few other things.
At the moment, I've hardcoded that certain intervals of the parameters lead
to certain Radiance materials. I would prefer to use a configuration file
instead, but the scheme for configuration files given in the converters
directory is too limited.
What I need is the possibility to say something like:
if reflectance < 10 or roughness 100 then
create plastic with same color as the Imagine object and roughness
given by some formula.
I've thought of using the calc routines for this, ie. writing a .cal
script which choses material type and parameters from the Imagine ditto.
Do you have any comments about this scheme?
-I've created a modified version of the gensurf utility, which create
an Imagine object instead of a Radiance object. The program use the
Radiance calc library. I'd like to distribute this program (w. source)
to other Imagine users, but I'm not sure that I may.
So the question is: May I distribute the cal*.c source together with the
new Imagine gensurf program? (I'll of course mention where the sources
came from!)
I hope that you have time to answer all these silly questions..
Helge
---
Helge E. Rasmussen . PHONE + 45 36 72 33 00 . E-mail: her@compel.dk
Compel A/S . FAX + 45 36 72 43 00 .
Copenhagen, Denmark
From greg Wed Sep 18 11:57:55 1991
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 11:57:54 +0200
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: her@compel.dk
Subject: Re: Some Radiance questions
Hello Helge,
The delay in the Amiga port sounds to be worth the while. I appreciate
the care you and Per Bojsen are taking to make things work properly.
By the way, did you contact the other people interested in Radiance at
the university where Per works?
I am glad that someone is finally doing something with clouds. I have
wanted to for some time, but haven't managed to squeeze it in. I recommend
that instead of a bubble, you should apply the colorfunc pattern to the
sky directly. Something like this should work:
!gensky 6 17 12
skyfunc colorfunc skybright
( your arguments... )
skybright glow skyglow
0
0
4 .8 .8 1.2 0
skyglow source sky
0
0
4 0 0 1 180
Note that your function must not use the ray parameters Px, Py and Pz, since
they are not defined for an infinitely distant object. You can use Dx,
Dy and Dz, however. The value that you give is multiplied by the brightness
of the sky as computed by gensky's skybright function. Where there are
no clouds, your colorfunc should be (1,1,1), and inside a cloud it should
be significantly greater than 1. You could probably get by with using
a brightfunc instead of a colorfunc if all you want to model is white clouds.
I don't know about the status of Seth's modeler or if he would be willing
to share it. It was originally written as a demonstration program for the
SGI IRIS workstation, so I doubt that it is very portable. Rather than
listen to my speculations, though, you should write to Seth directly. His
e-mail is seth@miro.berkeley.edu. He left some message about his being
in Isreal until the 22nd, so there may be a slight delay in his response.
As for the Imagine converter, translating material parameters is always
difficult, especially when the original parameters are non-physical (ie.
not energy-balanced). You can take a look at the nff2rad translator and
see what I did there. I don't think rcalc would work in this case, since
the logic is too complicated. I think a C program will probably be necessary.
Please feel free to use whatever routines you like from the Radiance
distribution. There are no legal problems as long as you do not resell the
software as your own and turn a big profit. Recognition is always welcome.
-Greg
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Textures in RADIANCE
From: Jerrell Ballard
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 15:11:14 EDT
Hi Greg,
Is there a way to use a RADIANCE data file in a function to produce
a texture for a surface? If so, is there a example I can examine?
Thank you.
Jerrell Ballard
Geographical Information Systems Team
Waterways Experiment Station
United States Army Corp Engineers
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waterways Experiment Station | Internet: ballard@mc1.wes.army.mil
ATTN: Jerrell R. Ballard, EN-A |
3909 Halls Ferry Road | FAX: (601) 634-3726
Vicksburg, MS 39180 | Voice: (601) 634-2946
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 09:45:44 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: ballard@mc1.wes.army.mil
Subject: Re: Textures in RADIANCE
Hi Jerrell,
Do you mean texture as in surface normal perturbation, or are you talking
about a pattern which affects the reflectance of a surface? In any case,
I think the answer to your question is yes. A Radiance picture or data file
can be used to define a pattern, and a Radiance data file can be used to
define a surface normal perturbation function.
Please give me a few more specifics about your problem and I will try to
furnish you with an appropriate example.
-Greg
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: Textures in RADIANCE
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 91 10:23:54 EDT
From: ballard@mc1.wes.army.mil
Hi Greg,
> Do you mean texture as in surface normal perturbation, or are you talking
> about a pattern which affects the reflectance of a surface?
My apologies for being vague. I am trying to create a texture for a polygon
that is a surface normal perturbation. I have a large set of x,y,z data
points for a surface. Using these data points I wanted to change a
flat surface into one with "hills" and "valleys". I have approached the
problem by splitting the surface into little triangles, with the vertices
being defined by my data points, but I keep running out of memory in
rendering.
> Please give me a few more specifics about your problem and I will try to
> furnish you with an appropriate example.
Here is a test case I was trying to get to work:
data file:
------------------
2
0 100 3
0 100 4
1.00 1.00 10.00 10.0
1.00 10.00 30.00 10.0
1.00 1.00 10.00 10.0
surface file:
-----------------
#
some_texture plastic some_material
0
0
5 .2 .8 .2 0 0
#
some_material polygon pertb_surface
0
0
12
0 0 0
100 0 0
100 100 0
0 100 0
#
The example data file when interpolated will cover the same area
as the defined polygon, so that a texture tiling is not necessary.
The data file would be interpolated to create pertubations on the
polygon surface. The data should make the surface appear to have
a "data spike" close to the center.
My purpose to this whole problem is to 1) be able to visualize
three dimensional statistics and 2) overlay satellite imagery onto
elevation data for a region.
Once again thank you for your help.
Jerrell Ballard
Geographical Information Systems Team
Waterways Experiment Station
United States Army Corp Engineers
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waterways Experiment Station | Internet: ballard@mc1.wes.army.mil
ATTN: Jerrell R. Ballard, EN-A |
3909 Halls Ferry Road | FAX: (601) 634-3726
Vicksburg, MS 39180 | Voice: (601) 634-2946
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 08:35:06 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: ballard@mc1.wes.army.mil
Subject: Re: Textures in RADIANCE
Hi Jerrell,
The problem with surface height data is that it doesn't really tell you
about the surface orientation. Even if you converted this information
to surface orientations, you would not generate shadows or contours
and you would still use quite a lot of memory.
Have you heard of the RayShade package written by Craig Kolb at Yale
University? I think it contains code specifically for rendering large
height fields for landscapes. You might want to investigate that free
package as a more practical alternative for your application. Radiance
was really designed more with architectural and lighting design
applications in mind.
If you have tried RayShade already unsuccessfully or have some other
compelling reason to stick with Radiance for your purpose, I will try a
little harder to think of some way to make it work.
-Greg
P.S. RayShade is available via anonymous ftp from weedeater.math.yale.edu
(130.132.23.17)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 19:52:35 PDT
From: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov (Charles Ehrlich)
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Source datafile questions
Greg,
I'm in the process of creating fixture descriptions using candlepower
distribution on paper media (no IES magnetic media available.) I need
to know under which circumstances does one use the various functions
in source.cal that have to do with illumination output. For example,
if my source object (type illum) is a sphere, do I need to use the
flatcorr or the corr functions (or perhaps none at all)? I've figured
out that phi2 is bilaterally symmetrical and that phi4 is quadrlateral
symmetrial output, but what is "type B photometry?" I suppose that
with a formal lighting design background I might know these answers,
but if this question is quickly answerable, that would be great, but
a reference to a good book would be fine too.
Secondly, I'm concerned about the fixture looking as realistic as possible,
so I am spending a good deal of time modelling the geometry of the fixtures.
Undoubtable I run into situations in which I have to make the illum
sphere larger than the actual fixture. If the fixture is a pendant whose
overall dimension is less than its distance from the ceiling, everything
is fine. But if the fixture is wall mounted or a pendant close to the
ceiling, there is the issue of illuminating those surface that lie
inside the envelope of the fixture-enclosing illum sphere. My solution has
been to put a small sphere entirely inside the fixture that "glows" with
the intensity of the fixture itself. It would be easier to simply give
those surfaces of the fixture that appear bright the glow material directly,
but since the "back" faces of the polygons face the non-illuminated
surfaces of the wall/ceiling, something inside the fixture is still
needed. If I did apply the glow material to the individual surfaces
that make up the fixture itself (several hundred) what is going to
happen to the distribution data? Does it need to be altered to account
for the fact that there are so many of these individual surfaces?
For the case of the glowing sphere inside the fixture, what is the best
way to describe its output. Should I use the same output distribution
pattern of the larger illum with a proper scaling factor for the smaller
size of the sphere? Or should I use a simple glow (no distribution)
with the correct radiance value as calculated from the intensity of the
lamps. My reasong for wanting to do it the second way would be to minimize
calculation times but my concern is that the distribution along the
nearby surfaces would not be accurate. This glow type will have a
radius of effect just larger than the distance to the furthest intersection
of the illum sphere with the nearby surface. In the areas where this
radius of effect is in fact greater than the bounds of the illum sphere,
does that area become twice as bright as the fixture output distribution?
My guess is that it does, and this is somewhat of a problem, except that
for the most part, this whole area is going to be much brighter than the
surrounding image and most likely not visible. But, a better solution
might be to give the illum material the ability to be opaque to source
rays looking for particular light source material names/types just as
the secondary source type mirror does.
One other minor question. From where does the radius of effect for the
glow material take effect? At the surface of the sphere? Or perhaps
more easily understood would be from the center of the sphere?
Well, there's a ethernet-packet-full to think about. In regards to
the work for my lighting designer client...I was 15 minutes late
getting the images to her because the Kodak printer wouldn't print
the last one...there seems to have been a problem in transfering it
back from the macintosh where I edited it with Adobe Photoshop.
Thanks for the help. This might be a good one for general distribution.
Chas
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 10:53:24 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: Source datafile questions
Hi Chas,
Gee, so many questions. I doubt this will be of general interest, since
most folks will never have to get into the nitty-gritty of light source
modeling (I hope!), but I will put it in the next digest just in case.
Type B photometry is a different measurement scheme where a plane of evenly
distributed photometers is used to measure the beam candlepower of a spotlight.
This measurement technique is used most frequently on car headlamps, although
you might find some floodlights measured this way as well. For most interior
fixtures, type A or type B photometry is used, and those differ only in the
definition of angles. A mediocre reference on the subject is the IES Lighting
Handbook, Reference Volume. (That is the only one I know of.)
I think the only way to define your light source correctly is to use illum
surfaces with the proper distribution, and have those surfaces enclose the
actual geometric description for the fixture. If you use a single sphere
to enclose the fixture, then you should NOT use the flatcorr function
defined in source.cal. Use the corr function if you would like another
place to insert a multiplier (A1), but I use the predefined noop function
ordinarily. If you enclose the fixture with polygons, then DO use the
flatcorr function. You may use the same material to modify all polygons,
applying the lamp distribution to this material. In any case, you must
use the recipricol of the projected emitting area in square meters as you
have defined it with your illum surfaces. This determines the total
light output of the combined fixture.
As for the illumination of the fixture and wall/ceiling surfaces, you
should get adequate results if you are careful in assigning glow
surfaces and your enclosing illum geometry. Make every attempt to
enclose the fixture as tightly as possible so that surfaces above
or behind the fixture are illuminated. If a sphere would intersect
a neighboring surface, use a box instead. This will only increase
computation time slightly. Under no circumstances should you use
a hundred light source polygons to describe your fixture. Although it
might work (and you could use the same distribution function for each),
the cost would be enormous. Use glow materials to modify your fixture
geometry, with zero as the radius of influence. (The radius is measured
from the center of a sphere by the way.)
If your light fixture is designed to be flush mounted, you may find it
necessary to space it a short distance from the wall or ceiling in
order to squeeze your illum surface between. This is still preferable
to putting an emitting glow surface inside the light source, I think.
I hope that this answers most of your questions. Getting detailed models
of light fixtures is a real challenge!
-Greg
From: Krister Lagerstr|m
Subject: Re: Radiance mailing list
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 15:03:51 GMT-1:00
>
> Would you like for your name to be included on our mediated mailing list
> for Radiance users? To people on this list, I mail periodic summaries of
> e-mail discussions with users as well as update announcements.
>
> -Greg
>
Yes, I'm interested in getting the mailing list. I haven't really used
the package much yet, but it seems like one of the best public ray-
tracers around.
Another thing I'm interested in is some sort of CAD program that can
use radiance's features and produce .rad-files. Perhaps something
like the 'preview' program, but more interactive and user-friendly
with the option to add objects, change colors and textures, and
change views run-time. If you know of such a program, please let me
know...
/ Krister Lagerstrom
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 16:36:14 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: ksla@me.chalmers.se
Subject: Re: Radiance mailing list
Hi Krister,
Gee, I sure wish I did know of such a program! There is an editor
for the MacIntosh written by Paul Bourke of New Zealand and available
on hobbes in the pub/mac directory that will edit and write out polygonal
descriptions in Radiance format. I know of no program tailored to
Radiance's particular talents, but you can use AutoCAD to produce a
DXF file then use either the AutoLISP converter written by Robert Amor
or the C dxfcvt program written by Ning Zhang to get a Radiance file
minus the material descriptions. Both of these programs are included
in the standard distribution.
Jennifer Schuman has written a HyperCard-based interface to the arch2rad
program for assigning and even defining materials to go with an Architrion
description. This is probably the most sophisticated translator we have,
but it only works under A/UX on the MacIntosh at the moment.
Next year I plan to do more work in the user interface area, but primarily
for running the simulation and not so much for modeling. It's just too
difficult to work on modeling for me...
-Greg
From: malle@rpksun1.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bernhard Malle)
Subject: Architectural buildings
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 91 9:20:07 MET
Hello Greg,
I have built a house, with all the windows, doors and the garden (with the
help of our modeller).
I would like to know, how did you specify the "environment" in the example
picture that comes with the radiance-package, i.e. how did you define
the sky? Is it a great sphere, whith the house right in the middle? ( I know
from the testroom, how to define a window with the skyfunc ).
Which material did you attach to the walls? I think there is no stone-
material in radiance, what shoud I use instead (plastic or metal)
Concerning the acis-modeller and the radiance package, I didn't have the
time to take a closer look imot the code to see whether and how I could
integrate the modeller-routines.
But I hope I can start with it before christmas.
Thanks for your help.
Bernhard
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 91 09:35:38 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: malle@rpksun1.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de
Subject: Re: Architectural buildings
Hello Bernhard,
The description of the exterior is accomplished with glowing sources
at an infinite distance, as shown in the example.rad file in the
tutorial. You should not use a sphere, as it is a finite object.
However, you may want to put down a ground plane, to make the
outdoor shadows appear correct. I usually create a large polygon
or disk with its center under the house and extending to some
reasonable distance on all sides, say 5 times the size of your
structure.
Unfortunately, I do not have a nice stone pattern, but if you have a picture
you can digitize it and make it into a Radiance pattern with a little effort.
The following will give you a rather featureless concrete:
void brightfunc dirty
2 dirt dirt.cal
0
1 .3
dirty plastic concrete
0
0
5 .3 .3 .3 0 0
The dirt function gives at least a little variation on the surface
appearance so it doesn't just look flat.
-Greg
From: malle@rpksun1.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bernhard Malle)
Subject: Re: Architectural buildings
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov (Gregory J. Ward)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 91 20:06:58 MET
Hello Greg,
thanks for your answer and the hints. The example, that I mailed to
you was just a very very simple small example. Normally the cone
is replaced by a large houese with several rooms, windows stairs,
the thin block is replaced by a garden shaped after a real
existing landscape ( actually the house of my parents). So I do
have the need to simulate daylight.
I hope that I will have finished this example unitl chritsmas, as
I hoped to present a real foto-realistic image as a present to
my parents (apart from implementing the possibility to specify
material conditions in our cad-system.)
So I wish you a wonderful christmas.
Bernhard
ps I have succeded in unpacking and unstuffing most of the documentation of
mac.sit.hqx. the only thing that is missing seems to be the flow of
data ( a mac-draw-document)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 91 11:11:18 PST
From: greg (Gregory J. Ward)
To: malle@rpksun1.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de
Subject: Re: Architectural buildings
If you are serious about daylight, I recommend going through the tutorial
(ray/doc/tutorial.1) and following those examples to learn how to do it right.
====================================================================
IMAGES Image Translators etc.
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 11:23:40 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: rpict and image size
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
Scream...great gnashing of teeth...Am I correct in assuming that at the
moment RPICT only generates square images? I get the a 256x256 image
whether or not I do
-x 256 -y 256
-x 512 -y 256
-x 256 -y 512
I want to generate a 324x244 quicktime animation, oh well I'll find another
way of doing it.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 20:03:04 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: QuickTime movie
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
You may know that QuickTime has been shipped to developers (beta release
anyway!) I have been writing some QuickTime stuff over the last few days
and have deposited(*) our first (and possibly the world first) QuickTime
"movie" for which the frames were generated using Radiance. The scene was
generated in a bit of a rush (don't know why there isn't a mirror above
the sofa, we certainly think there should be one there) and the frames
were put into a QT movie using very crude software of our own...but it
kinda works. I'm doing a visualisation (flyaround) of a Steiner surface
next for the Maths department here.
(*) it's been deposited in the Mac directory or course.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 09:04:50 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: QuickTime movie
Hi Paul,
I just read your blurb about QuickTime, and unfortunately we don't have
new enough systems on our Mac's to run it right now. (Drat!)
Rpict by default adjusts the size of the image to guarantee square PIXELS,
not square images. If your pixels are not square, you may enter their
aspect ratio (height/width) with the -p option, or if you specify -p 0,
rpict will use the explicit x and y dimensions you give it. Normally,
rpict uses the x and y dimensions as a maximum rectangle in which to put
a picture whose pixels have the given aspect ratio.
If you are doing walk-through (or fly-through) animations, you really
should avail yourself of the -z option of rpict and the pinterp picture
interpolation program. This is what I use for all my animation, and it
has the potential to smooth animations at a very reasonable cost. However,
I'm not sure it's worth it at 9 frames/second. It depends on what kind
of delta you have between images. I can send you a shar file example if
you like.
By the way, someone I know (Charles Ehrlich) has been using Russell's
Super3D translator to great effect.
-Greg
P.S. Sorry things have been slow getting the 3d-editor and converters
online. We're waiting for some cooperation from the folks back
home...
From: nfotis%theseas.ntua.gr@Csa2.lbl.gov (Nikolaos)
Subject: About the Sun RasterFiles problem
To: gjward@Csa2.lbl.gov (Greg Ward)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 17:13:45 EET
Subject: Here's the solution with SunRast files
Dear Mr. Ward,
Remember when I talked about the strange behaviour of PBM+ tools with
Sun 24-bit rasters produced from Radiance?
Well, it seems that here's the solution:
-- From the USENET comp.graphics group:
Sven-Ove Westberg writes of problems with sunraster
24-bit format: it's not clear whether the order of values in a pixel is
R,G,B or B,G,R.
Graeme Gill says:
> From my experience in getting the Portable Bit Map (pbm) utilities
>and xloadimage to agree on sun raster files, I came to the conclusion that
>both were broken in coping with RGB and 32 bit format files. It seems probable
>that other programs are also broken.
I ran into this quite a while ago, and eventually got a definitive answer
by asking on comp.sys.sun, or someplace like that. It seems that BOTH
orders are right --- Sun changed their mind at some point!
I've already submitted a bug report to Poskanzer for PBMPLUS; it doesn't
look like he's done anything about it in the latest release.
>From my archives:
To: Jef Poskanzer
Subject: Sun rasterfiles again
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 91 15:57:23 EST
Message-ID: <7473.669589043@G.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>
>From: Tom.Lane@G.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
This little tidbit indicates that you had better support *both*
color orderings in 24-bit Sun rasterfiles. Don't know if you
were aware of that.
tom
------- Forwarded Message
>From: Bob Myers
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1991 09:31:08 PST
Organization: Unocal Science and Technology Division
To: tgl@CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: Color assignment in Sun rasterfiles
>From the man pages for SunOS4.1.1:
NAME
redxblue - swap red and blue for a 24 or 32 bit rasterfile.
SYNOPSIS
redxblue [-v] [-q] [inrasf|-] [outrasf]
DESCRIPTION
redxblue converts an old-style 24 or 32 bit rasterfile into
the newer, Sun-standard format. The old format had the byte
ordering RGB for 24-bit rasterfiles and XRGB for 32-bit
rasterfiles. The new format has BGR for 24-bit rasterfiles
and XBGR for 32-bit rasterfiles.
The conversion is performed simply by swapping the red and
blue bytes.
The primary use of this utility is to prepare rasterfiles in
the old format for dithering with 24to8 or viewing with the
NeWS 'readcanvas' operator.
It is also possible to use this filter for converting from a
new style format into the old format.
OPTIONS
-v Verbose mode will print information as it processes the
image. (The default is to be silent.)
-q Query (prints list of options)
SEE ALSO
24to8(1)
- --
Bob Myers [714] 528-7201 x2339
Unocal Science & Technology Division stssram@unocal.com
Brea, California myers%unocal.uucp@sunkist.west.sun.com
------- End of Forwarded Message
So there you have it: you may need to support both orders depending on the
age of the software and/or image files you have. Yech.
--
tom lane
Internet: tgl@cs.cmu.edu BITNET: tgl%cs.cmu.edu@cmuccvma
--- End of Usenet message.
I think that it should be included in the next version of Radiance Docs,
or in the next digest.
Me? We've got back the H-P, but now the disk space is absent... :-(
(I HATE multiple architectures, binaries and administration headaches!)
Greetings,
Nick.
--
Nikolaos Fotis National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece
16 Esperidon St., UUCP: mcsun!ariadne!theseas!nfotis
Halandri, GR - 152 32 or InterNet : nfotis@theseas.ntua.gr
Athens, GREECE FAX: (+30 1) 77 84 578
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 17:12:08 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: nfotis%theseas.ntua.gr@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: About the Sun RasterFiles problem
Thanks for the information about Sun rasterfiles. Ra_pr24 does support
both formats on input, but only produces BGR ordering (the older format)
on output. Perhaps you are right, and I should provide an option to
produce the RGB ordering, but this comes with a different value for the
image type and some programs will still bomb. Basically, there are
programs out there that you MUST provide with a bogus rasterfile in
order for them to function. This I don't feel the need to support.
Anyway, here is a new version of ra_pr24.c with a -rgb option for you:
[included in release 2.0]
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 91 17:41:41 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: rad2pict
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
I don't know if you have been informed but we have got a radiance to PICT
converter going. It takes a Radiance image file and creates a 24bit PICT.
Yesterday I wrote a flight path generator. It takes a file of key frames
vp, vd, vu vectors and the number of tweens and any other rpict parameters.
It generates a whole stack of rpict calls with the inbetween vp, vd, vu,
the other rpict parameters are just replicated. Currently supports linear
interpolation only, plan to do spline interpolation today. This is all
for a really nice animation that is a flight over a landscape for the
terrestial botanists here.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 10:01:25 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: ra2pict
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
I have deposited the Radiance to PICT converter in the TRANSLATORS directory.
It also includes a Radiance to RGB RAW converter.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
From greg Wed Oct 23 09:44:06 1991
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 09:44:05 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Lbl.Bitnet
Subject: Re: rad2pict
Status: RO
Thanks very much for your ra2pict program. With your permission, I would
like to rename it ra_pict and include it with the standard distribution.
I agree that ra2pict is a little nicer, but the convention I started with
is to us this2that for CAD translators and this_that for image format
translators. Also, since most of the image translators I've written
support translation both ways, the underscore seems a little more
appropriate since it is a little less directional.
By the way, I am curious why you found the need for the ra2raw program
when pvalue can produce the same output with the -i and -h options?
I have written a rather involved script for walk-through animation
using pinterp for inbetweening and rcalc to compute Catmull-Rolm
spline interpolated camera positions. It is not with me at the
moment, but I will bring it in tomorrow from home and mail you
a shar file. I have wanted to write a general animation controller
for some time, but I do animations so infrequently that I don't really
have it down well enough to warrent going away from a script.
I was hoping that you might use some of what you find in the script to
enhance the controller you're developing.
-Greg
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 7:55:45 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Lbl.Bitnet
Subject: animation
To: greg%lesosun1.epfl.ch@Lbl.Bitnet
> By the way, I am curious why you found the need for the ra2raw program
> when pvalue can produce the same output with the -i and -h options?
I didn't know about these options for pvalue, but the real reason was
to make sure we had something that correctly read Radiance image files.
> I have written a rather involved script for walk-through animation
> using pinterp for inbetweening and rcalc to compute Catmull-Rolm
> spline interpolated camera positions. It is not with me at the
> moment, but I will bring it in tomorrow from home and mail you
> a shar file. I have wanted to write a general animation controller
> for some time, but I do animations so infrequently that I don't really
> have it down well enough to warrent going away from a script.
I would like the maths for Catmull-Rolm spline...
> I was hoping that you might use some of what you find in the script to
> enhance the controller you're developing.
I don't remember exactly how much of my flight path generator I described
last time but here goes (possibly again)
Usage: flightpath keyframefile interpolation [rpict options] octfile
where the key frame file contains one line per key frame with nine numbers
(3 vectors) naemly vp vd and vu. The interpolation at the moment is either
'l' or 'b' for linear or bezier. Might do some spline today, at least
something that actually passes through the key frame points whereas bezier
is inside the complex hull, more annoying than I thought. The rpict options
just get copied into a file (name is hardwired at the moment) which contains
a list of rpict calls. Oh yes I almost forgot, the first line of the
keyframefile contains the number of inbetweens for each keyframe.
Since I've written this for my needs at the moment, the ra2pict (ra_pict)
calls are also placed after the rpict calls. We transfer these frames to
the Mac as PICT files and convert them into either a QuickTime animation or
merge them into MacroMind director. I intend to write a PICS converter
maybe although it's not to high a priority.
Anyway I had a animation generating last night, 100 frames of that terrain
model I was talking about last time with 45000 polygons. Preliminary
work looks real good and I am seeing the people I'm doing it for today so
I had better sign off and see how it went.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 14:24:16 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Lbl.Bitnet
Subject: Re: animation
Hi Paul,
At the end of this message is a shar file containing the script from my
latest animation venture. Note that the keyframes it takes are in a .cal
file called keys.cal rather than a view file. I wrote the view command
in rview so that multiple views can be written to the same file, and this
is how I selected the key frames. The view command also takes any number
of additional arguments after the view file name, and these are appended
to the view specification which is itself appended (as I said) to the file.
I use this feature to add a value for the time between the last frame and
this one, usually in seconds. I have found this to be the most intuitive
way for me to control the spacing of keyframes. Easier than thinking about
the number of frames inbetween, since I don't know for sure what framing
rate I might use later on. Unfortunately, I do not currently have a
method from going from the keyframe view file created with rview and the
keys.cal file used by rcalc to generate the view parameters for rpict.
Anyway, take a look at it. The formulas for Catmull-Rolm interpolation are
in the file spline.cal, if you can read it! Take note of how pinterp is
used in the script to generate 7 interpolated frames for every frame
rendered directly by rpict.
-Greg
#! /bin/sh
# This is a shell archive, meaning:
# 1. Remove everything above the #! /bin/sh line.
# 2. Save the resulting text in a file.
# 3. Execute the file with /bin/sh (not csh) to create:
# script
# keys.cal
# view.fmt
# spline.cal
# This archive created: Thu Oct 24 13:56:29 1991
[The rest was deleted because it can be found in the ray/obj/cabin/anim1
directory of the standard 2.0 distribution.]
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 13:49:27 NDT
From: russells%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: Image translators
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
Hi Greg,
I have made a few improvments to ra2pict -- removing potentially
nasty bugs, writing a man page, that sort of thing. If there
is any interest I will the new version sent over.
There is one remaining problem, however. Most of Radiance
is byte-order independent, right? The files produced on different
types of machines may not be interchangable, but the code
works on any type.
Unfortunately, PICT files expect their word and longs to be in the
big-endian order. I am trying to find methods to tell the machine
type from header files and/or libraries, but with little success.
As far as I can tell only things like ra_t8 (Targa format) depend
on byte orders. Does this program work on a little endian machine?
Also, is there any call for Radiance to GIF. I have the 87a and 89a
formats, and code for decoding 87a gifs (both 8 bit formats, as far
as I can work out).
While I am at it, how about Radiance to rle (Utah Raster Toolkit RLE)?
... to ppm? (Portable Pix maps)
... to tiff?
... X Windows bitmaps?
... SG gl files?
... IRIS images?
... jpeg?
(Just while I am in the mood.)
I have some of these libraries available. In most cases if you
can turn the image into a stream of raw bytes there are
routines to translate these into the other formats.
Bye
-------------------------------------------------------------
Russell Street russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
Auckland University, New Zealand
"Baldrick, I believe the phrase rhymes with 'clucking bell'."
-- Edmund Blackadder
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 11:16:38 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: russells%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: Image translators
Status: RO
Hi Russell,
Thank you for your letter and for all your work on Radiance translators!
Of course, I am very interested in getting your latest version and man
page for ra2pict. I am presently putting together release 2.0 of the
software, and would like to include ra2pict within the main distribution
(with your permission) because it is such a useful program. I have been
using the older version myself without problems so far, but I am glad that
you are a perfectionist in removing potential bugs. Did you make the
compiler compatibility changes I suggested to your version? Also, there
have been some minor changes to the calls to open a Radiance picture since
you wrote your original version. At the end of this letter I have included
a skeletal translator using the new calls.
Byte order is indeed a problem for some of the so-called "standard" image
formats. I have made all Radiance files byte-order independent, including
the picture files, but the Sun rasterfile format used by ra_pr and ra_pr24
does depend on byte ordering. Fortunately, the Targa file format specifies
byte ordering and is thus not dependent on machine differences in this
regard. If the PICT format specifies ordering, then we must follow. It
is not necessary to find out the byte ordering of the host machine, simply
use getc() and putc() to do all your input and output and pack/unpack the
words yourself as I do in ra_t8.c.
I have indeed had requests for Radiance conversion to GIF format, but have
not done anything about it myself. GIF seems to me to be a rather nasty
format and it varies between the PC and the Macintosh. Also, since it is
limited to 8 bits, I have decided to skip it.
I have written translators between Radiance pictures and ppm as well as
tiff. For the latter, I used the excellent public domain library written
by Sam Leffler. I figure that you can go from these formats to many
other formats by picking up the Utah Raster Toolkit and the pbmplus package.
If you are really interested in writing direct translators, though, I think
having one to GIF would be nice.
Thanks again!
-Greg
[File deleted because it is include in 2.0 distribution under
ray/src/px/ra_skel.c]
===================================================================
GENERATORS New object generators
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 91 8:43:48 NDT
From: pdbourke%ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz@Lbl.Bitnet
To: greg%lesosun1.epfl.ch@Lbl.Bitnet
> The generators sound nice. I suppose they're all MacIntosh applications.
No, actually I've started doing some programming under UNIX and I thought
these would be a nice way to learn. They are modelled after genbox, xform
etc. Also some of the things we've been doing require some higher level
generators, for example, I will probably write a stairwell generator for
someone here...floor height, number of landings, step size, width...etc
Someone else also wants a column generator...?
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
=======================================================================
LUMFACTOR Luminous Efficacy changed from 470 to 179
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 14:40:06 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: BUG!!!!
Hi Chas,
I just discovered to my dismay that I have been using the wrong value for
the conversion from lumens to watts. Remember, this was the subject of
a recent mail exchange regarding the conversion for luminaires. Anyway,
470 is not the correct value, and neither is 683. The correct value is
(may I have the envelope, please): 179 lumens/watt. This is the luminous
efficacy (as it's called) of white light over the visible spectrum. I
don't know what I did before to get 470, but I obviously did it very badly.
The good news is that this does not invalidate all of the previous work
we have done or make the luminances we quoted to people less accurate.
Fortunately, whatever value was used before was used twice, once when
converting luminaire values to radiance, and again when converting the
computed radiance values to luminances. Thus, the two mistakes cancelled
each other. This is a good part of why I never knew the value was so far
off.
The bad news is that the next time you compile the Radiance sources, and
in the official release of 2.0, the values in all the luminaire data files
and all the gensky output will suddenly be wrong by a factor of roughly 2.6!
Also, using the newer version of ximage on an older file will give the wrong
luminance values with the 'l' command. This is a major pain and it is
really causing me great grief and remorse. It would almost be better to
leave everything alone and let the wrong value stand. Progress, who needs it?
Hobbes now has the updated versions of the source, but I have not compiled
it there nor have I given you the corrected binaries for the Mac. I thought
you could wait until a quiet point to tell me when you wanted them, when you
have time to make the correction to your luminaire data files. Just divide
all the values by 2.63 -- in vi you can go to the first line of data in each
file and execute:
:.,$!rcalc -e '$1=$1/2.63'
-Greg
[This change has been incorporated in version 2.0. See the note in the
file ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes for more information.]
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 07:08:33 PDT
From: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov (Charles Ehrlich)
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Subject: Re: BUG!!!!
Greg,
It just goes to show that we are all human and are all allowed
to make mistakes. Congratulations!
Just a few clarifications.
When saying that previous work from gensky and such will be off
by a factor of 2.63, does that mean when re-calculated, or only
in the stored image files?
Could this bug cause my sources appear too bright when using
consistant older binaries?
The luminarire data files in question are the *.dat files and
not any of the .rad files that might contain brightfunc or
illum definitions with correction factors?
I haven't yet downloaded the Mac binaries. I think this latest
event is cause for me to get them. Could you please update
them and I will convert my luminaire data files pronto.
This all reminds me of another suggestion that I've had
a hard time justifying but always thought would be great
to have, namely, a VERSION entry in output files. That way
ximage would know when an image was calculated with the older
values.
Another concern with regard to header entries...I wish there
was a more exact way of quickly knowing the resolution of
an image. With the PIXASPECT and "maxima" definitions for
the -x and -y options, one can not tell what the resolution
of the store image is. A RESOLUTION entry would solve that.
The world will not focus on this one mistake and judge you
and your work by it! I still really believe in the work
we're doing!
Chas
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 91 16:01:09 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: BUG!!!!
Hi Chas,
Do you ever sleep? The problem with gensky is two-fold. First, if
you have files that were GENERATED by the old version of gensky, the
radiance files therein will be in error, but consistent with the
errors in the image display and analysis programs that give luminance.
Second, pictures produced using these files by either the old software
or the new software will be wrong in terms of absolute radiance.
Scene files that merely contain a call to gensky (using an exclamation
point) will give the correct results with the new software.
Perhaps gensky is not so much of a concern. Given the enormous variability
of daylight conditions, a factor of 2 or 3 is not so huge.
Much more concerning is what to do about pictures generated using luminaire
data and older versions of ies2rad (or handmade files). The pictures and
data files will both be wrong when handed to the newer programs. The only
fix I can think of for the picture files is to manually edit the EXPOSURE
value in the header with the following:
% echo EXPOSURE=.381 > newpicture
% cat picture >> newpicture
The reason this works is because ximage applies the inverse of the exposure
values stored in the file to get back the original absolute radiances
before doing any conversion to luminance. Thus, by claiming that we
changed the values in the file by a factor of .381 when we really didn't,
the new ximage will end up using corrected original values. This also
works for the -o options of pvalue, pcomb, etc. It doesn't matter
where the correction appears in the header -- they are all multiplied
together. I've added the following alias to my .cshrc file for convenience:
alias pfixabs '( echo EXPOSURE=.381 ; cat \!:1 ) > \!:1.$$ ; mv \!:1.$$ \!:1'
Note that this alias overwrites the existing file, so you may want to take
off the mv command at the end if you don't want this to happen.
To answer your other question, light sources should not "appear" too
bright using the older versions. The absolute values in fact do not
affect appearance at all. Only using the 'l' command in ximage or
some other means to get at the actual numbers can you ever know
the difference. Again, using the old version of ximage with the old
version of ies2rad or gensky will produce the same results as the
new with the new. It is only in mixing the new and the old that
the results will be screwed up.
There is now a -version option to the renderers that allows you to
know exactly what you're working with. This same version is also
entered into the output picture in a SOFTWARE= line. Check it out!
The -d option of getinfo will tell you the exact resolution of an image,
as well as the bounding cube of an octree. I'm surprised you didn't
know about it, but Radiance by this time has so many nooks and crannies
I guess no one knows it all (including myself sometimes).
-Greg
=================================================================
MKILLUM New program to compute light distributions
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 02:21:15 PST
From: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov (Charles Ehrlich)
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: mkillum
Greg,
I'm here with Deanan looking at the manual pages for
mkillum. It says that there is no default data file name.
Why did you choose to do it this way. It seems to make
a lot of sense to have the option to allow mkillum to automatically
create data and dist files based on the name of the surface
modifiers. I understand that the best way of getting accurate
results it to tweak the parameters for each surface, but for
a good-enough first-run, this seems incredibly time consuming.
Deanan says that mkillum is a great idea and I fully agree.
I'm looking into this with Deanan at this time in preparation
for the EEC project which will involve a lot of daylighting.
Deanan is currently working on a fantastically detailed
atrium space and is discouraged with the time it is taking to
do a regular ambient calculation.
What we were wondering is if it is reasonable to define a small
number of somewhat large illum surfaces in our input scene file
that we want to use as the eventual illum secondary sources of
our mkillum processed scene file. What I am anticipating as being
a problem is what to define these temporary illum surfaces as if we
have not yet done the mkillum process. A catch-22. In other words,
we don't want to process the thousands of surfaces that comprise
the surrounding walls of our atrium. We instead want to define
dummy walls made up of some invisible material that mkillum will
not try to interpret during its pre-process as light sources. Is
this case handled by the illum type already? or do we need another
"invisible" surface material type to deal with this scenario.
Just to verify our understanding of how mkillum works...it creates
a complete copy of the input scene file, right? Does this new
scene file then have to be re-oconv'd? What if the "main" scene
file is our "invisible" illum patches and then a bunch of instances
and \!xforms of other parts of the scene. We've already decided that
we can just turn off mkillum just before all of the \!xforms, but
is kmillum going to expand each of these such that the new scene
file will have to re-oconv'ed (and all of its gory detail). The
scene as it is now can't even be oconv'd unless it is broken up
and instanced, then put together. Comprede? If we have xform without
the -e flag set, will mkillum not expand these?
Well, I guess you weren't expecting this kind of feedback so soon, huh?
Chas
Deanan
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 12:05:59 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: mkillum
Hi Chas,
I apologize for the wording in the mkillum manual page. Thanks for reminding
me to fix it. (I had read it and been confused before myself!) In fact,
the data file is set automatically based on the material name as described
for the m variable above. The only reason the f option is there is so you
can override the default naming. Also, when the m option is used to name
both the material name and the data file, the number of data files will
grow with each rerun of mkillum, not deleting the old files. I have this
as a protection against overwriting files in the directory that happen to
collide with the name chosen automatically by mkillum. Using the f option
is the best way to insure the names you want without gathering a whole lot
of extra files on your system. Also, the names are incremented so that
you only need give this option once (at the beginning of the file) and
then you can forget it.
Good question on the invisible surfaces. I guess I would recommend
using a trans surface with a transmission of 1, color of 1 1 1, and
transmitted specularity of 1 with roughness 0. Such a surface would
be completely invisible in Radiance. Face the surface normals away
from the walls so mkillum will create the sources you want. Also,
use the b option of mkillum to prevent the creation of light sources
that have little or no output. If your atrium walls are diffuse, you
can set the d option to 0 so it will save time and create diffuse sources.
Finally, you should create enough of these initial surfaces (using
gensurf if you like) so that you don't have one big source on each
interior facade that results in an inaccurate distribution. I wouldn't
consider using fewer than 16 sources per wall for a roughly cubical
atrium space.
You can switch mkillum "off" as you say, but it still expands all
inline commands and requires rerunning oconv on the output. The
way I meant it to be used was on a separate file containing the
surfaces you want changed into light sources using an octree with
the basic description. If you use transparent surfaces, you don't
even have to include these in the original octree. You can then
add the output of mkillum to the octree incrementally, thus avoiding
a complete rebuild. For surfaces that do participate in the calculation
(as most do), you can have two incremental branches of the base octree,
one without illum sources and one with. This also permits easy comparison
of results and runtimes for the two approaches. I will send you a
shar file with the test scene I've been using.
-Greg
P.S. I'm glad you're interested in mkillum. I think it's pretty nifty,
if I do say so myself.
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 23:54:42 PST
From: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov (Charles Ehrlich)
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: mkillum ...continued
Thanks for the shar of the test mkillum scene file.
Going back to the atrium problem. The trans type definition is great
and just what the architect ordered. Another problem I anticipate has
to do with the fact that these trans/illum surfaces will exist some
distance from the face of the atrium walls. The atrium walls are also
varriegated, with balconies and catwalks connecting opposite sides.
The problem of not being able to shape the illum to the exact contours
of the source fixture (walls or pendants) comes up again. It doesn't
seem like defining a trans/illum box, or even a two-sided trans/illum
will eliminate the inevitable black (or default ambient value) zones
between where the illum intersects the catwalk and where the wall
of the atrium and catwalk actually intersect WITHOUT also making
the illumination of walls themselves inacurate. If there was a source
material type (as described in previous mail) that had the ability
to NOT cast shadows (which also implies always being visible) within
a certain radius of effect, our trans/illum surfaces could reside
well inside the atrium walls thereby avoiding the illum/surface
intersection problems. Another solution might be to make a source
material type that could be selectively visible to named materials.
Deanen noticed a nice feature of mkillum. If the temporary trans
surface definitions (and also any #@mkillum declarations) are
kept to the end of the scene file, mkillum does not expand the
\!xform parts of the scene (whether or not the -e flag of xform
is set.) This seems like a very nice, and very possibly
unintentional feature, no? I haven't actually tested this myself,
but even if it did expand the xform parts of the scene, one could
always delete the unwanted parts of the new scene file, then
incorporate the new mkillum created parts into the original
file with xform's intact then re-oconv the scene. No problem, eh?
Keep in touch,
Chas
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 13:35:52 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: chas@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Re: mkillum ...continued
Hi Chas,
In fact, I thought a little more about what I said about using a trans
type and I realized that it was totally unnecessary. You can just
define surfaces with the modifier "void" that you never create an
octree for at all. This will be soley for input to mkillum, and it
will create illum surfaces in their place with no alternate type.
This is in fact much preferred to the stupid solution I suggested,
and what I had in mind when I wrote the program. I just forgot!
I think that the best solution is really the one Deanan suggests of
giving the actual wall surfaces to mkillum as the ones to modify.
This will avoid the intersection problems that you anticipate (and
rightly so) from using mkillum with a free floating surface. As
long as the wall surfaces are not in the hundreds and teeny-tiny or
just one huge surface, things should work out.
I just tested the expansion of files by mkillum and it does it
unconditionally as I thought. I made it this way so that illum
objects and commands might appear in subfiles, but maybe this isn't
optimal for large files. I really didn't write mkillum with an ENTIRE
scene description in mind. It's much better if you can separate
the relevant pieces into a separate file. This might mean two runs
of arch2rad with two different mapping files for example.
-Greg
================================================================
AUTOCAD Carnegie Mellon working on DXF translator
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 91 11:56:47 EST
From: vanwyk@arc.cmu.edu (Skip Van Wyk)
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Subject: xRAD
Greg, I have just spent about 2.5-3 weeks on a new AutoCAD to Radiance
translater. It does not alter the drawing file, and does more than the
one from down under. I'll upload it in about a week, if all goes
well. I have the following questions, however. Can you *not*
distribute my stupidity to the globillum mailing list until we're
ready?
(1) I wonder if you would be willing to add an extruded polygon, much
as you have an extruded circle=cylinder. This would make our .rad
files much much simpler and easy to read. Would "prism" be an
appropriate name for this shape?
(2) I force the use of "handles" in autoCAD and so the id of each
entity is "entity-. in your "mod polygon id" requirement.
The part comes from my having to extrude sides, top, and bottom, for
plines, etc. (this makes the .rad files large and difficult to read
and edit). Is the id *really* required? can they be redundant, in the
event that different .rad files be brought into the scene. I notice
that you do check for the existance of this identifier, but I have no
idea how you use it.
(3) The use of sphere/bubble, cylinder/tube etc., seem confusing.
Could we formalize this to be something like sphere and -sphere,
cylinder and -cylinder, prism and -prism, etc., to discuss inward
versus outward pointing normals of solid primitives?
(4) Ring is essentially a surface primitive while cylinder is a line
primitive. What I like about ring is its "direction" and it would be
so nice if it additionally handled "extrusion". It seems to me that
polygon, cone, cylinder, and ring could all be generalized to use this
xdir,ydir,zdir feature with extrusion, -- and again, it would simplify
the input files tremendously.
(5) As of today, my translator does not do traces, solids, insert,
text, or block, but it does do line, point, circle, 3dpoly, 3dface,
3dline, and parts of pline. And, the interface allows one to query
drawing entities, change files (for example, when outputing blocks to
separate files), and to set system parameters, like default radius,
extrusion length, and arc resolution.
I hope these questions/suggestions are helpful. I have spent so much
time with my students building models that we have not had the time to
really work with the Radiance software. And so organization of models
and automatically constructing .oconv files, material files, etc., has
been a big objective of my translator.
Let me know your feelings thus far.
--Skip
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 10:33:49 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: vanwyk@arc.cmu.edu
Subject: Re: xRAD
Hi Skip,
Thanks for your input. It sounds like you have done a lot of work on this
translator. I will respond to your questions in order
(1) You can use the genprism command to get a more reasonable representation
of a prism. I have endeavored to keep the primitive surface types in
Radiance as simple and basic as possible, with higher order surface types
supported by external generator programs. The following line in a Radiance
scene file would expand to a collection of surfaces (aptly named) describing
a 5-sided prism:
!genprism red_plastic prism 3 10 4 -3 1 6 12 -l 0 0 5
The vertices of the base polygon lie in the XY plane, and are (10,4), (-3,1),
and (6,12). The extrusion is straight up in Z, length 5. The ordering of
the vertices means that this prism will have its surface normals pointing
outwards.
(2) The surface identifiers are used only in error messages so that the
user can easily locate problematic sections of the input scene file. If
a few polygons in the file have the same name, the user may still be able
to find the one causing difficulties, but if all the polygons are named "joe",
it's hopeless. Identifier names for modifier types (patterns, materials, etc.)
are used to link to the surfaces they modify, but you may still reuse the
modifier names if you choose. The most recent definition of a modifier is
always the one which is used.
(3) I like your suggestion of naming surface types with inward normals
using -sphere instead of bubble, etc., and I wish I'd thought of that
when I wrote the input language seven years ago, but I think it's a
little too late to be making such fundamental changes. There are other
decisions I would like to change as well, but out of respect for the
work others have done with the software already, I leave well enough
alone. One thing I have done (for the next release) is made the input
for spheres and cones more forgiving. If given a negative radius for a
sphere or bubble, for example, the programs invert the type and the
radius and print a warning message instead of bombing. The same goes
for cylinders, tubes, cones and cups. I did this with translator
writers specifically in mind, following some suggestions made by Paul Bourke.
(4) With the exception of the source and instance types, I see all the
so-called surface types of Radiance as surface boundary primitives.
The extrusion of a boundary would necessarily be a solid, and solids
do not really have meaning in Radiance. Are you really asking for
cones and cylinders whose ends are cut at oblique angles?
-Greg
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 11:08:28 EST
From: vanwyk@arc.cmu.edu (Skip Van Wyk)
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Subject: Re: xRAD
Thanks, Greg.
The problem with genprism as it now stands is its lack of generality.
The vertices, if extended to [x,y,z], along with -l vecx vecy vecz or
-l distance, could be very helpful to most modelers. AutoCAD lets
users establish an arbitrary coordinate system on which to construct
objects . . . for me to rotate those back to a world coordinate system
before using genprism means one transformation, genprism, and then
another transformation or xform . . .
I'll alter your genprism to a new "genprismx" to accomplish the above.
And, I think this is also the kind of contribution you hope users
make!
By the way, I have to do some daylighting calibrations. While in
Stutgart at the Institut for Bauphysik, I was given a pre-release copy
of their comparisons of Radiance with other lighting models. Have you
seen it yet? And, I didn't really watch you very carefully this summer
as you demonstrated "taking off" luminance values from the picture. I
assume that one mustdo a hemispheric view, from a specific point of
interest. Correct?
Thanks, Skip
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 17:15:36 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: vanwyk@arc.cmu.edu
Subject: Re: xRAD
Hi Skip,
It should be possible to use genprism and pipe the output to xform to
get any prism orientation you want. I don't know how easy it is to go
from an AutoCAD coordinate system to the necessary translations and
rotations for xform, but it should not be necessary to perform two
transformations as I understand the problem.
A cursor pick or drag followed by the 'l' command in ximage will display
the luminance value for a point or area, respectively. It is not necessary
to do a hemispherical view unless you want to know the illuminance at a
point. In that case, you should probably use rtrace separately with the -i
option.
The next release of Radiance, which is due out this month, provides many
more features for daylight calculation, including illuminance and daylight
factor routines.
I have not seen the Stuttgart report, which is surprising since we have
been collaborating on this work for a couple of years now. I suppose
I should ask them to send me a copy.
-Greg
===============================================================
MODELS Scene model data bank
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 91 15:29:21 Z
From: Augusto Sousa
To: Greg Ward
Subject: NFF Files
Dear Greg,
How are you since the rendering workshop in Barcelona? I hope that you
are well.
I am sending you this email because (if I well understood) you have
3D scenes for Ray-Tracing in the NFF format that we could get by ftp.
How can we get them and, perhaps, add some more?
Awainting the favour of your reply,
Kind regards,
A. Augusto de Sousa
P.S. Let me know if I can help you in any thing.
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 91 09:41:39 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: aa_sousa@inescn.pt
Subject: Re: NFF Files
Dear Augusto,
Thank you for your letter. I do indeed have scene descriptions that you
can pick up by anonymous ftp, but they are in my own Radiance format rather
than NFF. I have a translator to go from NFF to Radiance, but not vice versa.
You can pick up both Radiance and the scene descriptions from hobbes.lbl.gov
(128.3.12.38). The README files should explain where everything is, but
just to save time you should pick up ray1R4.tar.Z from the ftp directory
if you want to run Radiance, and the scene descriptions are in various
tar files in pub/models. There is also a collection of Radiance objects
(furniture and the like) in pub/objects/gjward.tar.Z. I will send in a
following message a PostScript form of the document describing Radiance's
input format.
If you have any descriptions to offer in NFF format, I invite you to deposit
them in either the pub/models or pub/objects directories on hobbes. Please
follow the directions in the README files contained therein, or ask me if
you have any additional questions.
-Greg
=========================================================================
ART Radiance in the Arts
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 91 08:55:13 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: raylist@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Radiance in the Arts
Hello Everyone,
Here is a question about Radiance in the art community that was sent to me
today, and my response. If anyone wants to contact this person, please address
it or cc to his e-mail. I would appreciate a copy also so I can post it
later to the group.
In related news, there is a fellow at IBM in New York (Dr. Cliff Pickover)
who is collecting computer graphic art for a book. I can put you in touch
with him if you are interested.
-Greg
------------------------------
From: axolotl@socs.uts.EDU.AU
Subject: Radiance in the fine arts?
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 91 16:17:48 EST
Greg,
I was wondering if you knew of any examples where Radiance had been
used in the fine arts? I fired up the 'podlife' model, and it
looked great. So I'm curious to know if any more exist, or at least
if Rad has been installed at any "fine arts" sites (whatever they
may be)...
I'm reluctant to use Radiance because it doesn't have the kind of
massively anti-aliased, polished output that I need. (I know you can
render it very large and scale it down, but this is clumsy, and
isn't too good for animation). The soda-store image in your (88?)
paper looks good- that's the sort of thing I'm after.
I hear Sumant Pattanaik is going to use your modeling language for
his PhD in Radiosity. Sounds good.
--
Iain Sinclair University of Technology, Sydney
axolotl@socs.uts.edu.au +61 2 2812552
irsincla@uts.edu.au +61 2 3301807 (fax)
>From greg Wed Nov 6 08:35:08 1991
To: axolotl@socs.uts.EDU.AU
Subject: Re: Radiance in the fine arts?
Hello Iain,
Thanks for the complement on the Pod Life sculpture. Cindy and I have
done a couple of other "artsy" scenes, another (less sophisticated)
sculpture and a decorated Christmas tree.
There is a group in New Zealand that did some nice things with Radiance
a long time ago. I don't know if they're still using it as I haven't
heard from them recently, but you might contact them and ask them about
their experiences. Here is their address:
Richard Cranenburgh
Auckland Technical Institute
Private Bag C.P.O Auckland
1 Wellesley St.
New Zealand
I'm sorry, but I don't seem to have their e-mail or phone number, but maybe
you can look it up.
As for other "Art" colleges using the software, I don't know. I'm afraid
that I don't run in those circles and I don't really know an art college
from a business school from a hole in the wall. I will send your request
to the mailing list, though, and perhaps we will get a response.
I have done animations and high resolution anti-aliased images, and I don't
really agree with your comments about Radiance not producing high quality
output. The separation of rendering from filtering seems quite natural
once you get used to it, and it provides greater control over the
time/quality tradeoffs. I don't think that other programs do it any
differently, they only take away some of the control.
If you think Radiance is awkward for animation, you may be right. I
have a C-shell script I could send you that calls all the
necessary programs for a walk-through animation. At some point it
would be nice to have a program to do it all from key frames, but
for how often I would use it, it's probably not worth it for me.
-Greg
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 91 8:01:55 NDT
From: pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
Subject: Re: Radiance in the Arts
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
> >From: axolotl@socs.uts.EDU.AU
> Subject: Radiance in the fine arts?
> To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
> Date: Wed, 6 Nov 91 16:17:48 EST
>
> Greg,
>
> I was wondering if you knew of any examples where Radiance had been
> used in the fine arts? I fired up the 'podlife' model, and it
> looked great. So I'm curious to know if any more exist, or at least
> if Rad has been installed at any "fine arts" sites (whatever they
> may be)...
Greg passed your note onto other possibly interested parties...
We installed radiance about six months ago on our SG here. While we are
one of the two Architecture Schools in NZ, we are known as the "design"
school. An increasing number of strudents are looking at experimenting
with Radiance although there has only been one "official" project being
completed at the moment. We have written some generators, parametric
textures, etc.
> I'm reluctant to use Radiance because it doesn't have the kind of
> massively anti-aliased, polished output that I need. (I know you can
> render it very large and scale it down, but this is clumsy, and
> isn't too good for animation).
I also originally thought that his method of antialiasing was not so
hot but I've changed my mind, it gives the user much more control in
the end.
Regarding animation, we have done quite a bit of this using Radiance.
At the moment I have done most of it for scientific visualisation work.
Although it requires the writting of code there are some nice things that
can be done. In particular because many forms can be generated by mathematical
expression, it is possible to create animation that transform object shapes
easily. Also, texture animation is easy. Most of the stuff I've done has
been camera path animation, otherwaise known as flight path animation.
I have written a frame generator which I will eventually install on Gregs
site, it takes a file of key frames (vp, vd and vu) and generates n calls
to rpict with either linear, bezier, or spline interpolation (except spline
is not working yet) I play most of my animations with QuickTime on the Mac.
We have written a Super3D translator if that helps...
A student is about to look at particle systems, applications, etc...
I have talked to John Fairclough at the Elam school of fine arts here, he
is interested but they don't yet have ethernet to their building.
------------------------------
Paul D. Bourke
pdbourke@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
(130.216.1.5)
From: desilva@ced.berkeley.edu
Subject: Radiance in the arts
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 91 10:50:42 PST
Hi greg,
I don't know if you remember some stuff I did using radiance a
about two years ago that involved a projecting slides onto a
floating sculpture sort of thing? Anyway, I only have one of those
images left on my mac and all the slides were sent off to competitions
and never returned. Oh well, I should have backed them up to tape!
I can definitely say that Radiance is definitely a powerful tool for
artists.
As for the animation stuff, appartently PD Bourke is working
on a flight path program that will interpolate splines from key frames.
How did you do the mmack animation?
I have a few questions about ambient calculations.
Any hints at all about choosing the right ambient parameters
whould be of great help!
I guess the the most basic question would be what options can
I change on the second pass? It seems most logical that you can
only change the resolution but I tried changing the -av and got
some hatchlike marks in the shadow areas.
When doing the first run I did it at a resolution of 200 x 200.
Too low? I appears that the resolution doesn't matter because on
the second pass, ambient values are also added. Is this because of
the change in resolution or does it add values for each run? If so,
then I suppose subsequent runs will increase the accuracy, albeit by
small amounts.
And a few more:
Whats a good way of figuring out the -av value?
Also, is -ab 2 worthwhile? and how what is the increase in time?
Oh, and one more:
In trying to properly estimate colors, I'm following the
.3*r+.59*g+.11*b formula to get a reflectance value.
The colors I'm getting are very saturated and not too close to
my guess at what the reflectancy should be. Is there some
standard set of values that I can look up to approximate
the reflectancies?
I also borrowed a light mate light meter that can be used to
figure out the reflectivity of a surface by comparing it to a
reference surface. The manual for the meter suggests using a
100% reflective board. Does such a thing exist? I understand the
white paper is about 68% reflective. Also, would the reflectivity
value I get from the meter correspond to the formula above and radiance?
I apologize for unloading soooo many questions on you!
thanks,
deanan
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 91 10:34:07 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: desilva@ced.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Radiance in the arts
Hi Deanan,
Yes, I do remember your work with the famous art projections. In fact, I
did save some of the Radiance picture files on tape for myself. I didn't
keep everything, but I did keep the following:
40b1 Looking blue from ditch
40b2 Sculpture floating in blue
40b3 Closeup of sculpture in blue
40b4 Looking orange from ditch
40b5 Sculpture floating in orange
40b6 Closeup of sculpture in orange
40b7 View with robot arm
40o1 Long view of ditch
40o2 Looking down in ditch with Van Gough prominent
Chas can get them off of tape if you like now, or I can get them when I
get back. They have taken away our film recorder, so buying a new one
is high on my list. When that happens, I can make as many copies as
you like. I know about submissions dissappearing! Where is Xavier now,
by the way?
I did the mmack animation as well as a new animation sitting on 6 tapes
in my desk drawer using a C-shell script. I can send you a shar file
if you are interested. For fly-by animations, the program pinterp smooths
out the animation at minimal cost by using z-buffer inbetweening.
The only values that are safe to change on the second pass are -ad and -as.
In fact, it may make sense to use slightly larger values for these parameters
on the first pass so that you get more accurate results for the values that
matter the most.
I often use a resolution of only 64x64 on the first pass. I'm sure that
200x200 is more than adequate. Additional values will be added with each
pass because slightly different nooks and crevices will be sampled each
time, and some of these may need new values. The low-frequency first pass
just puts in values that have a large field of influence, and these
values are the most important for good appearance.
Saturated colors are not very true to life. I try and avoid them myself.
The value you get from a reflectance meter should match the .3*r+.59*g+.11*b
value you use in Radiance. 99% reflectance standards are available
from LabSphere at a cost of around $180. The address is in my file at
LBL, but since I'm here in Switzerland that doesn't do me much good.
-Greg
From: Nick (Nikolaos) C. Fotis
Subject: Re: Radiance in the Arts
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 91 18:08:26 EET
>
> I have done animations and high resolution anti-aliased images, and I don't
> really agree with your comments about Radiance not producing high quality
> output. The separation of rendering from anti-aliasing is quite natural
> once you get used to it, and it provides greater control over the
> time/quality tradeoffs. I don't think that other programs do it any
> differently, they only take away some of the control.
It would be VERY nice if you could write a small giude in how to
do a nice, antialiased image. It's somewhat necessary for us to
have separated tutorials for these small, but important details.
>
> If you think Radiance is awkward for animation, you may be right. I
> have some a C-shell script I could send you that calls all the
> necessary programs for a walk-through animation. At some point it
> would be nice to have a program to do it all from key frames, which is
> quite possible but for how often I use would use it, probably not worth
> it for me.
>
> -Greg
Perhaps we (the Royal "WE") could make an interface to 2-3 animation programs.
I'm waiting for the new version of BRL-CAD, which says that provides
articulated animation, so I'm interested in building an interface to it.
(And to Rayshade 4.0 or greater).
Greetings,
Nick.
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 09:46:38 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: nfotis@ithaca.ntua.gr
Subject: Re: Radiance in the Arts
Hi again. I agree that there should be some better hints on generating
nice images. The so-called "ambient" calculation and its parameters are
particularly difficult to master. I keep hoping to find the time to
document this stuff, but the task is daunting. Next year I will be
writing a real user interface to Radiance, and into it I will build
a lot of my knowledge about how to properly run the programs. Still,
documentation is inevitable at some point -- the bane of all programmers!
-Greg
=============================================================
RS6000 Compiling Radiance on the IBM RS/6000
Date: 9 Nov 91 10:22:00 PST
From: cvetp035@csupomona.edu ()
Subject: Compiling Radiance on IBM RS6000
To: gjward@Csa2.lbl.gov (gjward)
Hi Greg,
Do you know if anyone has compiled Radiance on RS6000? I got a lot
of errors when I tried to install it as a RISC machine. BTW, Radiance is
running great on the Sun Sparcstation IPCs here. I'd love to run it on
the RS6000 to compare the performance.
Jack
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 91 19:13:37
From: marc@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com (Marc Andreessen)
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: Radiance on RS/6000
Greg -
Unpacked Radiance last night and got it working under AIX 3.1 on
IBM RS/6000 with X11; if you're interested in the port, here's what
it took:
o Using defines -DBSD -D_BSD -DBSD_INCLUDES along with
those for SGI (-DSTRUCTASSIGN and -DALIGN=double).
o Adding -lbsd to the final link stage for each
executable.
o Possibly minor changes to source (#ifndef'ing out
malloc decls, etc); these are probably not necessary
since I moved to BSD emulation after I'd made these
changes, which probably makes the changes useless.
If you're interested in a genuine, clean-as-possible port I'll redo it and
send you the results.
Also, src/px/Makefile makes reference to 'glimage', but glimage.c
is missing from the distribution; can I get my hands on that?
Otherwise I'll write my own...
The package looks great - thanks for making it available.
Marc
--
Marc Andreessen
Graphics Subsystem Development
IBM Advanced Workstations Division
marc@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 08:47:05 +0200
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: marc@innerdoor.austin.ibm.com
Subject: Re: Radiance on RS/6000
Hello Marc,
Glad to hear that you got it running OK. I've got some timings someone
else did on the RS/6000 if you're interested:
-----------------------
>From emo@ogre.cica.indiana.edu Tue Feb 26 14:47:25 1991
To: ray@hobbes.lbl.gov
Subject: Misc. Radiance 1.3 benchmarks
Program: rpict, version 1.3,
Date: February 22, 1991
This benchmark involves the example 1000x1000 picture described in
./ray/examples/textures as rendered from the associated makefile,
./ray/examples/textures/Makefile.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(all times are in seconds)
System Real User System
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun-4/330 (ogre) 10:27.9 8:10.5 8.5
SGI Personal Iris (pico) 5:41.0 5:26.5 1.6
-IBM RS6000 model 320 (off-site) 4:19.2 4:13.9 0.3
+Stardent Titan-3000 (tuna) l 4:13.9 4:04.3 7.8
-IBM RS6000 model 540 (off-site) 2:50.3 2:45.2 0.2
*Stardent Titan-3000 (tuna) 1:52.2 1:45.7 4.8
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legend:
+[Note: The entire image was rendered on 1 processor]
*[Note: Each processor renders 1/4 image, so this is the MAX of all timings.
The -x, -y, -vv, and -vh parameters were adjusted accordingly.]
-[Note: The IBM timings were performed by our IBM representative off-site.]
System Configurations:
Architecture Operating System RAM Processor #
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun-4/330 SunOS Release 4.0.3_CG9 24 MB 20 MhZ SPARC (1)
SGI Personal Iris IRIX System V Release 3.2 16 MB 20 MhZ R3000 (1)
Stardent Titan-3000 Unix System V Release 3.0 32 MB 25 MhZ R3000 (4)
IBM RS6000 model 320 Unix System V Release ? 16 MB 20 MhZ RS6000 (1)
IBM RS6000 model 540 Unix System V Release ? ?? MB 30 MhZ RS6000 (1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would be happy to answer any questions pertaining to these timings.
In no way am I suggesting that these timings are the best possible for
a given architecture; rather, they were the ones I obtained and may or
may not be repeatable at another site. No special fine-tuning was done
either to the system or to Radiance before performing these timings.
Each system was relatively quiescent and therefore had a minimal load average.
eric
---------------------------
I'm not sure how 1.3 compares to 1.4, but I don't expect there is much
difference.
I was wondering, though, why you chose to go the BSD route, when you could
have more simply removed the BSD definition and gone from there? Oh well,
whatever works, I always say.
For some reason, glimage.c was clobbered in this distribution. It's
not very sophisticated, so if you write a better one please let me know.
-Greg
Date: 13 Nov 91 13:18:00 PST
From: cvetp035@csupomona.edu ()
Subject: Compiling Radiance on RS6000
To: gjward@Csa2.lbl.gov (gjward)
Greg, thanks for forwarding the message from Marc Andreessen about
compiling Radiance on RS6000. I've encountered serveral problems
following his instructions, and my email doesn't seem to get through
to him. I've included the email below.
Hi Marc, Greg forwarded the message you sent him on how to compile
Radiance 1.4 on the RS6000 running AIX 3.1. I followed your advice,
but I ran into some problems. First, the compiler gave warnings about
the macro fabs being redefined. I don't think this is serious. Then
during the linking of psign, pvalue, pcompos, colorscale, prot, and
pflip, the compiler complained that .logb, .scalb, and .finite were
unresolved variables. Thus those programs were not made. Could you
help me out? Thanks.
Jack
cvetp035@csupomona.edu
PS, should I send questions about Radiance to ray@lbl.gov instead of
directly to you?
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 09:40:39 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: cvetp035@csupomona.edu
Subject: Re: Compiling Radiance on RS6000
Hi Jack,
I'm afraid that I know next to nothing about the IBM RS/6000. Perhaps
you are not linking to all the necessary libraries. I suspect that you
should add -lm to the compilation of those programs. On most Unix
implementations it is unecessary, but on the IBM, who knows?
-Greg
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 10:19:56 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: csw22@seq1.keele.ac.uk
Subject: Re: compile problems
On some C compilers, there should be a space between the -L option and
its argument. Try changing the -L../lib lines in the Makefiles to
-L ../lib and see what happens. Also, did you install the library in
the src/common subdirectory first? Makeall does this automatically, at
least it should.
-Greg
=============================================================
NIGHTTIME Nighttime renderings
From: Alexander Keith Barber
Subject: night time rendering; mailing list
To: greg@hobbes.lbl.gov
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 91 3:43:28 CST
Greg-
Dwayne Fontenot and I have been using Radiance here at Rice U for the past few
weeks, and it is exactly what we've been looking for. Dwayne works here at
RAVL - the Rice Advanced Visualizaion Lab - and I'm a junior architecture
major. We've been using the Radiance program to render projects that I've
rendered in IBM's AES modeler. Radiance beats everything else by far for
interior views! The raytracer in AES is powerful, but the setup to get a
photorealistic rendered image is a pain in a the ass and then some. I still
haven't produced any ray-traced images that look like I want them to. There
is RayShadev.4, a great program, but it "just" rayshades; trying to render an
image with natural light or with an interior view from external sources of
light is not what RayShade was written for. Now that we have Radiance to
play with, producing images of buildings that I or anyone else has designed
is going to be a lot easier.
I wanted to ask you about using Radiance with NIGHT TIME images. That is, we
would like to try to render at night using the moon for a light source, along
with any artificial lights that a particular building would need. I recently
saw an issue of the French architecture magazine "L'architecure d'Aujourd'hui"
- today's architecture - that had a lengthly special on night and light.
There were pictures from old black and white films, there were shots of
Notre-Dame in Paris lit by different schemes designed by local and inter-
national firms, there were free-form projects throwing light around a pitch
black setting. All of this got me very interested in reproding this kind of
setting in Radiance. I would LOVE to render my last project from an exterior
and interior point of view at night; it would be great to see them. We
would like to know, therefore, how we should set up this kind of scene in
Radiance. Any help you can give would be great.
The other part of my subject is the mailing list. I would just like to be
added to the list of users of Radiance and receive any info you send out to
them. My physical mailing address here at school is:
Alex Barber
School of Architecture
Rice University
6100 S Main
Houston, TX 77005
My home phone is currently 713.795.4402. I can be emailed at barber@spanish.
rice.edu.
I would just like to finish by telling you that there has been nothing like
seeing the views in Radiance of my projects, since this is the closest I will
get to being "built" until I work for a firm someday. There is nothing like
the confirmation of your architectural ideas and how you "see" your building
than having a detailed rendering on the computer that matches your "vision"
for that building. Thank you for writing this program and making it
available over the Internet.
-Alex Barber
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 10:57:17 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: barber@ravl.rice.edu
Subject: Re: night time rendering; mailing list
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your kind letter and words of encouragement. I have added
your name and Dwayne's to the mailing list and you will get the announcement
when I release version 2.0 of Radiance later this week.
Regarding night time scenes in Radiance, you can define the moon like so:
void light moon_brightness
0
0
3 12 12 12
moon_brightness source moon
0
0
4 xdir ydir zdir 0.5
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to calculate the actual location of the
moon based on time of night and year. I only know its approximate radiance
and size. You will have to figure out the xdir, ydir and zdir values
yourself (or fake them for your convenience).
What other information do you need for your night renderings? Do you need
to know about light sources? That is a more complicated topic. I have
included some example electric lights in the lib/source/ies subdirectory
from which you can pick and choose. If you have a particular light fixture
in mind, you will need to get an IES data file from the manufacturer and
translate it using ies2rad, or build up the Radiance input files yourself
by hand (a little tricky). You may also use the new 2.0 program lampcolor
to compute the radiance of diffuse light sources if you just want something
approximate.
Let me know where you need further help.
-Greg
=============================================================
SUMANT Sumant Pattanaik's contributions
From daemon Thu Nov 14 13:13:35 1991
To: "(Greg Ward)"
Subject:
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 17:34:18 +0530
From: sumant@shakti.ernet.in
Status: RO
Dear Greg,
Its a very long time since I last communicated with U.
Had some problems. (Occupational hazards U know.)
Things have not straightened out yet.
Got some breathing time for last two days.
Managed to make a bit of progress in that radiosity stuff.
One version is ready. I think I should release it to the
Radiance users now. At least if the pressure from user group
builds up I'll be able to add things to it. Otherwise
it does not progress at all.
One small thing. It'll be better if I generate output in
the radiance output format. All I support now are UTAH RLE format,
binary (....) and text ( ....).
I am not too sure about radiance output format.
If U have a write up handy pl mail it to me.
Or any pointer to the radiance source would do.
My distribution will have following things:
1. previewer ---- A better version of the earlier
previewer.
2. rad ---- The radiosity package.
It does full-matrix solution.
I think I'll also be able to include the progressive
solution soon.
2. radfilter ---- To convert radiance input data
to the input format understood by "rad".
Earlier I promised to send U the PostScript version of my MonteCarlo
paper. Sorry that I havenot sent it yet. It is 167K.
Shall I break it down and send it in pieces ?
I dont hear much from HOBBES these days. Have U removed
me from the mailing list ?
----
sumant
(email : sumant@shakti.ernet.in)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Sumant Narayan Pattanaik
N.C.S.T.
Juhu, Bombay 400 049
From greg Mon Nov 18 10:10:40 1991
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 91 10:10:40 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: sumant@shakti.ernet.in
Subject: Re:
Status: RO
Hello Sumant,
Of course I haven't removed you from the mailing list! Maybe I had the
wrong address, though. I changed it to sumant@shakti.ernet.in now. Did you
get the announcement about test simulations available from hobbes? I mentioned
you as a possible contributor. Did you ever finish your comparison runs? Do
you subscribe to the global illumination mailing list? If not, you should
write to Paul Heckbert and tell him I said you should
be on it.
I am about to release version 2.0 of Radiance. If you want to distribute
your radiosity package from hobbes as well, I would be honored. I agree
that having a user base forces you to be a little more thorough...
As for your request on how to write Radiance pictures, below is a skeletal
program to write out a floating point picture. You will need to link to the
Radiance library, or individually to color.o, resolu.o and header.o. All
this will make more sense when you pick up your copy of 2.0 (available both
from hobbes and from dasun2.epfl.ch <128.178.62.2> by anonymous ftp). You
might want to wait a few days, as I plan to make a couple of minor changes
before announcing it.
/*-----------------------------------------*/
#include
#include "color.h"
#include "resolu.h"
computepicture(xmax, ymax, fp) /* compute and write picture */
int xmax, ymax; /* image resolution */
FILE *fp; /* output file */
{
COLOR *scanout;
int y;
register int x;
/* put format and resolution */
fputformat(COLRFMT, fp);
putc('\n', fp);
fprtresolu(xmax, ymax, fp);
/* allocate scanline */
scanout = (COLOR *)malloc(xmax*sizeof(COLOR));
if (scanout == NULL)
quiterr("out of memory");
/* produce image */
for (y = ymax-1; y >= 0; y--) {
/* compute this scanline */
computscan(scanout, xmax, y);
/* write it out */
if (fwritescan(scanout, xmax, fp) < 0)
quiterr("error writing Radiance picture");
}
/* clean up */
free((char *)scanout);
if (fclose(fp) < 0)
quiterr("error closing Radiance picture");
}
/*------------------------------------*/
Please do send me your paper, either whole or in pieces. Thanks!
-Greg
====================================================================
COMPILE Compile problems relating to X11 and malloc.c
From: dirty@engin.umich.edu (Cameron Javad Esfahani)
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 16:27:39 EST
To: GJWard@Csa2.lbl.gov
Subject: How to get Radiance to work with X11
Hello,
In the makeall script, it asks you whether you
have support for X10. If you answer no, and insert
x11 in the "special" commandline arguments, I am getting
a large number of errors. If I answer yes, I get a few
errors. So my question is, if we have X11R4, what should
I do to get it run under that? Do you know if the errors
I am getting when I say yes when asked if I have support
for X10 are just local errors? Thank you for any information
you can give me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Esfahani What can we do?
dirty@engin.umich.edu We can go to the center of darkness.
VizLab, USENET, Macintosh, Where's that?
X-windows CAEN Support New Jersey.
From greg Mon Nov 25 10:30:14 1991
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 10:30:08 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: dirty@engin.umich.edu
Subject: Re: How to get Radiance to work with X11
Status: RO
I'm sorry for the confusion. Just answer "no" to the X10 question,
makeall makes the programs for X11 by default. I should have made
this more clear.
-Greg
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 91 05:05:28 -0500
From: ugli
To: "(Greg Ward)"
Subject: Re: How to get Radiance to work with X11
Status: RO
Actually, i tried that right after I mailed you. I feel a little sheepish
now. I do wonder if there is better documentation other than the
quick tutorial and the man pages. I haven't looked at the macintosh
document. Does this tell me what I need to know about Radiance?
Thanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Esfahani What can we do?
dirty@engin.umich.edu We can go to the center of darkness.
VizLab, USENET, Macintosh, Where's that?
X-windows CAEN Support New Jersey.
From: apian@ise.fhg.de (Peter Apian-Bennewitz)
Subject: rpict fails on hp720
To: gjward@Csa2.lbl.gov (Greg Ward)
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 91 14:35:42 MEZ
Dear Greg,
rpict fails with bus error in src/common/readfargs.c line 80 .
Workaround: ln -s ../common/bmalloc.c malloc.c in the rt directory.
Hm. I guess you introduced you own malloc routines to speed things
up. Please excuse my ignorance, but does it pay ?
Peter
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 91 08:57:22 PST
From: greg (Gregory J. Ward)
To: apian@ise.fhg.de
Subject: Re: rpict fails on hp720
Hi Peter,
I'm really surprised that my malloc is not working on your HP. Do you know
what the alignment size is? Do you know what the size of a double is? Can
you run the following program on your machine for me?
main()
{
printf("%d\n", sizeof(double));
}
If the result is more than 8, then I might know what the problem is.
Otherwise, I can only suppose that there is a bug unless you forgot to
specify an HP when you ran makeall and the define -DALIGN=double did not
get into the rmake command. Just to check, are you running make manually
instead of rmake? This might explain why the correct definitions are not
going in for your machine.
-Greg
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 91 09:18:37 PST
From: greg (Gregory J. Ward)
To: apian@ise.fhg.de
Subject: Re: rpict fails on hp720
Hi Peter,
In reply to your question about malloc, I wrote my own both for
speed and storage efficiency reasons. As it turns out, there are some
very good and some very bad implementations of malloc on the systems
out there. I don't claim that mine is the best, or even that it's much
better than average. It just performs well with my programs, which
differentiate between memory that might be freed later and memory that
will be kept for the life of the process (malloc vs. bmalloc). It also
avoids some of the computational overhead in some of the more primitive
malloc's and some of the unreasonable storage overhead in others. Last
time I checked, BSD 4.3 was using a version of malloc that for requests
just near half the system page size (4k requests on the Sun) ended up
using twice the system page size. That's a memory utilization of 25%!
On average, my version of malloc gets a memory utilization of 75%,
which isn't wonderful, but it makes up for this in raw speed, processing
memory requests and free's and realloc calls faster than any other
malloc that I know of. And the alternative call, bmalloc, is not
only fast, but it gets nearly 100% memory utilization, limited only by
the alignment size of the machine.
The best malloc I've seen is the one currently used by Sun, which
is reasonably fast while providing very good memory utilization.
Best of all, the Sun implementation coalesces memory as it is freed,
something that is pretty difficult to do. I only recently added this
capability to my malloc routines, and it doesn't work nearly as well
as Sun's code. Unfortunately, the Sun routines are very complicated
and not everybody uses their algorithm so I figure I'm better off
being conservative on other people's machines.
-Greg
From: Peter Apian-Bennewitz
Subject: Re: rpict fails on hp720
To: "Gregory J. Ward"
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 91 15:08:02 MEZ
Dear Greg,
> what the alignment size is? Do you know what the size of a double is? Can
> you run the following program on your machine for me?
here's the output: (looks pretty normal to me)
datatype bytes
Size of Integer : 4
Size of short Integer : 2
Size of long Integer : 4
Size of unsigned Integer : 4
Size of long unsigned Integer: 4
Size of char : 1
Size of float : 4
Size of double : 8
I haven't checked the bus error in detail, however when using xdb
its possible to check the contents of the variable without error.
a read acces seems to work !??!?!?!
Currently its all WIHIH to me (WhatInHellIsHappening).
When running, the programs complains about "exp: range error". ??
Yet another question: The Hp720 b/w flavour comes with X11 visual
type "GrayScale", same thing as "PseudoColor" (8 planes), but b/w.
That's the only visual the server supports.
I'd be more than happy to write an add-on, but before jumping into
source code, how much work would that be (beside the X11 stuff).
Thanks a lot for the malloc explanation, it looked like an xtra
to me, but your program does use incredible small amounts of memory
when running, so it's probably a good thing.
Peter
--
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 91 18:30:45 PST
From: greg (Gregory J. Ward)
To: apian@ise.fhg.de
Subject: Re: rpict fails on hp720
Hi Peter,
The only thing I can think of is that you compiled with make instead of
rmake or makeall and the wrong defines were used on malloc.c. Did you
check this possibility? You can remove malloc.o and run rmake in the
rt subdirectory and you should get a cc line with -DALIGN=double in it.
(Don't forget to relink malloc.c instead of bmalloc.c.) Were you serious
about Radiance not using much memory? Obviously, you haven't gotten to
any of the larger models.
What model were you rendering when you got the exp range error? This
message often shows up when there is an underflow condition, something
we would all like to ignore (eg. exp(-500) = 0), but some math
libraries won't let us. Were you using a model with a call to exp()
in a library file, or were you using gensky? It could have come from
that. If it is coming from internal underflows of exp(), I would like
to know about it so I could avoid this message in the future.
With regards to the GrayScale visual, I should be checking for that in
x11.c I suppose, but I just assumed that all grayscale servers would
accept the PseudoColor visual type. Rview and ximage should work with
greyscale displays using the -b options of each. Unless you add in a
test to allow for it, though, both programs will insist on getting
PseudoColor visuals. Personally, I think the way X11 handles the various
display possibilities sucks. Testing for every possible configuration
is a programming nightmare. Since I'm not exactly sure how a grayscale
monitor is supposed to map its values, I don't know if you would have
to add anything besides the one test to rt/x11.c and px/x11raster.c.
-Greg
=====================================================================
OPENWINDOWS
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 16:03:28 Z
From: Environmental Design Unit
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Subject: RADIANCE
Greg,
I've got v2.0 up and running, no trouble at all thanks
to your installation script. I haven't had the time to
do anything interesting with it yet - other (thermal)
work has taken priority - but I hope to start a programme
of daylighting simulation work in the near future.
In the meantime could you advise on the best way to get hold
of the PLINK translator. My supervisor, Kevin Lomas, spoke to
Raphael Compagnon about this at the PLEA conference.
Perhaps we should also get hold of SUPERLITE and include it
in any validation work we may do. Any ideas?
The DF contour in RADIANCE v2.0 is a great help. However,
for direct visual comparison of different cases, fixing of
the contour levels, at say 1, 2, 4, 10, 20, 40%, would make
evaluation much easier. I think i've figured out how the
routine works, but I can't see how the levels could be fixed.
On a more trivial note, users of OpenWindows may find some
bindings helpful. So far, i've bound *.pic, *.rad & *.oct
to their own icons. Application ximage is bound to *.pic
and getinfo to *.oct (which of course appears in the console).
Simple stuff, but it does speed things up being able to
use the file manager to browse through pic files and 'get the info'
on oct files. You may wish to pass this on to Sun - SunOS 4.1.1
users of RADIANCE.
Hope you enjoyed your vist to the UK.
-John
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 12:18:30 +0100
From: greg (Greg Ward)
To: edu@leicester-poly.ac.uk
Subject: Re: RADIANCE
Hi John,
I did have a pleasant visit to the UK. I'm sorry again that our schedules
didn't work well together. I have forwarded your request for a copy of
PLINK and Superlite to Raphael, and he should send you one shortly. I
forget whether you need to go through official channels or if we can just
send you a copy. It would be nice to include it in your validation studies.
I am glad you have had some luck with the dayfact script. I have been rather
disappointed in the output I have gotten, which seems to be of low quality
due to the abnormal use of pfilt to enlarge a tiny image. Anyway, I think
you are right that control of the output is critical for comparisons, so
here is a fixed-up version of the script that always sets the maximum
value to 100%. You can alter this to whatever you like with the -s option
(see the falsecolor manual page), and the -n option will determine how
many contours you will get.
I know zip-diddley about OpenWindows, but I will put your suggestions in
the next digest. Thanks!
-Greg
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 91 15:19:00 Z
From: Environmental Design Unit
To: greg@lesosun1.epfl.ch
Subject: RADIANCE and OpenWindows
Hi Greg,
Here's the trivial mods (accelerators?) to the OpenWindows filemanager.
The aesthetics of the icons are questionable!
Yours,
-John
Using RADIANCE in OpenWindows 21 Oct 1991
-----------------------------
Modifications to filemanager bindings
Edit the file rad.filetype giving the applications "ximage" and
"getinfo" the correct path name from root. Do the same for the icons
pic, rad and oct. Copy rad.filetype to your home directory and put the
icons in your icon directory. Goto your home directory and type the
command:
cat .filetype rad.filetype >> .filetype
Then remove rad.filetype.
Quit the filemanager (if you have one running) and restart it. All
*.pic, *.rad and *.oct files will be identified by their own icon.
Double clicking (SELECTING) with the left mouse button on a *.pic icon
in the filemanager will execute "ximage" and put that picture up on the
screen. The same on an *.oct icon will execute "getinfo", writing the
output to the console. To all *.rad files the print script "pr"
(paging) has been added.
You can change the colours by re-setting rgb values (5th argument on
each line).
(You can assign whatever applications, print-scripts and icons to a
file which, by default appears as a "text" file in the filemanager.
Giving executables new icons may cause the icon to almost fade-out,
depending on the colour set, when selected - instead of changing to
black like it should. This appears to be a bug, originating deep in
the system software.)
-John Mardaljevic e-mail: edu@uk.ac.leicp
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