[Radiance-dev] rpiece and rad

[Gregory J. Ward]

Hi Christopher,

I have given this some thought in the past, and the problem is,  
rpiece is not really that reliable or well-supported.  I'm therefore  
reluctant to include it with the more dependable programs called by  
rad.  Also, rpiece is made to be run over multiple machines, which  
rad cannot easily support.

Have you tried using rvu (rad run with -o) and the -N option on your  
multiprocessor?  If what you're after is a quick preview, this works  
rather well in the latest release.

Best,
-Greg

> From: "Christopher Rush" <Christopher.Rush at arup.com>
> Date: January 7, 2009 1:22:40 PM PST
>
> Not sure how complicated this would become (but throwing it out there)
> ... Would it be feasible to implement an option to call rpiece via  
> rad?
> Maybe -p option similar to the -N option for rad could call multiple
> rpiece commands for each view instead of a rendering a view on each
> processor. This would be useful for speeding up single views or when
> getting that first output quickly is preferred.
>
> My little experience with rpiece has produces sometimes spotty  
> results,
> so I don't know if this might make errors trickier to troubleshoot.
>