Radiance ranimate program
Radiance ranimate program
RANIMATE(1) RANIMATE(1)
NAME
ranimate - compute a RADIANCE animation
SYNOPSIS
ranimate [ -s ][ -n ][ -e ][ -w ] ranfile
DESCRIPTION
Ranimate is an executive program that reads the given ranfile and makes
appropriate calls to rad(1), rpict(1), pinterp(1), and/or pfilt(1) to
render an animation. Variables in ranfile indicate input files,
process servers (execution hosts), output directories and file names,
and various other controls and options.
Normally, commands are echoed to the standard output as they are exe-
cuted. The -s option tells ranimate to do its work silently. The -n
option tells ranimate not to take any action (ie. not to actually exe-
cute any commands). The -e option tells ranimate to explicate all
variables used for the animation, including default values not speci-
fied in the input file, and print them on the standard output.
The -w option turns off warnings about multiply and misassigned vari-
ables.
Normally, ranimate will produce one animation frame for each view given
in the specified view file. If an animation has ended or been killed
in an incomplete state, however, ranimate will attempt to pick up where
the earlier process left off. If the process is still running, or was
started on another machine, ranimate will report this information and
exit.
Animation variable assignments appear one per line in ranfile. The
name of the variable is followed by an equals sign ('=') and its
value(s). The end of line may be escaped with a backslash ('\'),
though it is not usually necessary since additional variable values may
be given in multiple assignments. Variables that should have only one
value are given in upper case. Variables that may have multiple values
are given in lower case. Variables may be abbreviated by their first
three letters, except for "host", which must have all four. Comments
in ranfile start with a pound sign ('#') and proceed to the end of
line.
The animation variables, their interpretations and default values are
given below.
DIRECTORY The name of the animation directory. All temporary files
generated during the animation will be placed in this direc-
tory, which will be created by ranimate if it does not exist.
A file named "STATUS" will also be created there, and will
contain current information about the animation process.
This variable has no default value, and its setting is
required.
OCTREE The name of the octree file for a static scene walk-through
animation. There is no default value for this variable, and
any setting will be ignored if the ANIMATE variable is also
set (see below).
ANIMATE The scene generation command for a dynamic animation. This
command, if given, will be executed with the frame number as
the final argument, and on its standard output it must pro-
duce the complete octree for that frame. Care must be taken
that this command does not create any temporary files that
might collide with same-named files created by other anima-
tion commands running in parallel. Also, the command should
produce no output to the standard error, unless there is a
fatal condition. (I.e., switch all warnings off; see the
BUGS section, below.) There is no default animation command,
and either this variable or the OCTREE variable must be set.
VIEWFILE This variable names a file from which ranimate may extract
the view for each frame in the animation. This file should
contain one valid view per frame, starting with frame 1 on
line 1, regardless of the setting of the START variable. An
exception is made for a view file with only a single view,
which is used for every frame of a dynamic scene animation.
This variable is required, and there is no default value.
START The initial frame number in this animation sequence. The
minimum value is 1, and if a later starting frame is given,
ranimate assumes that the earlier frames are included in some
other ranfile, which has been previously executed. (See the
NEXTANIM variable, below.) The default value is 1.
END The final frame number in this sequence. The minimum value
is equal to the START frame, and the default value is com-
puted from the number of views in the given VIEWFILE.
EXPOSURE This variable tells ranimate how to adjust the exposure for
each frame. As in pfilt, the exposure setting may be given
either as a multiplier or as a number of f-stop adjustments
(eg. +2 or -1.5). Alternatively, a file name may be given,
which ranimate will interpret as having one exposure value
per line per frame, beginning with frame 1 at line 1. (See
also the VIEWFILE variable, above.) There is no default
value for this variable. If it is not given, an average
level will be computed by pfilt for each frame.
BASENAME The base output file name for the final frames. This string
will be passed to the -o and -z options of rpict, along with
appropriate suffixes, and thus should contain a printf(3)
style integer field to distinguish one frame number from
another. The final frames will use this name with a ".hdr"
suffix. The default value is the assigned DIRECTORY followed
by "/frame%03d".
host A host to use for command execution. This variable may be
assigned a host name, followed by an optional number of par-
allel processes, followed by an optional directory (relative
to the user's home directory on that machine), followed by an
alternate user name. Multiple host assignments may appear.
It is not advisable to specify more than one process on a
single-CPU host, as this just tends to slow things down. The
default value is "localhost", which starts a single process
in the current directory of the local machine.
RIF This variable specifies a rad input file to use as a source
of rendering options and other variable settings. If given,
ranimate will execute rad and create an options file to later
pass to rpict or rtrace. Besides prepending the render vari-
able, ranimate will also extract default settings for the
common variables: OCTREE, RESOLUTION, EXPOSURE and pfilt.
Following the file name, overriding variable settings may be
given, which will be passed to rad on the command line. Set-
tings with spaces in them should be enclosed in quotes. The
execution of rad will also update the contents of the octree,
if necessary. There is no default value for this variable.
DISKSPACE Specify the amount of disk space (in megabytes) available on
the destination file system for temporary file storage. Ran-
imate will coordinate its batch operations based on this
amount of storage, assuming that there is either enough addi-
tional space for all the final frames, or that the given
TRANSFER command will move the finished frames to some other
location (see below). The default value is 100 megabytes.
ARCHIVE After each batch rendering is finished and checked for com-
pleteness, ranimate will execute the given command, passing
the names of all the original pictures and z-buffer files
generated by rpict. (The command is executed in the destina-
tion directory, and file names will be simple.) Normally,
the archive command copies the original files to a tape
device or somewhere that they can be retrieved in the event
of failure in the frame interpolation stages. After the ar-
chive command has successfully completed, the original ren-
derings are removed. There is no default value for this
variable, meaning that the original unfiltered frames will
simply be removed. Note that the last one or two rendered
frames may not be copied, archived or removed in case there
is a another sequence picking up where this one left off.
TRANSFER The command to transfer the completed animation frames. The
shell changes to the destination directory and appends the
names of all the finished frames to this command before it is
executed. Normally, the transfer command does something such
as convert the frames to another format and/or copy them to
tape or some other destination device before removing them.
The fieldcomb(1) script may be used to conveniently combine
fields into frames for field-based animations. If this vari-
able is not given, the final frames are left where they are.
(See BASENAME, above.)
RSH The command to use instead of ssh(1) to execute commands
remotely on another machine. The arguments and behavior of
this program must be identical to the UNIX ssh command,
except that the -l option will always be used to specify an
alternate user name rather than the user@host convention.
The -l option may or may not appear, but the -n option will
always be used, and the expected starting directory will be
that of the remote user, just as with ssh.
NEXTANIM This variable specifies the next ranfile to use after this
sequence is completed. This offers a convenient means to
continue an animation that requires different control options
in different segments. It is important in this case to cor-
rectly set the START and END variables in each ranfile so
that the segments do not overlap frames.
OVERSAMPLE
This variable sets the multiplier of the original image size
relative to the final size given by the RESOLUTION variable.
This determines the quality of anti-aliasing in the final
frames. A value of 1 means no anti-aliasing, and a value of
3 produces very good anti-aliasing. The default value is 2.
(A fractional value may be used for previews, causing low
resolution frames with large, blocky pixels to be produced.)
INTERPOLATE
This variable sets the number of frames to interpolate
between each rendered frame in a static scene walk-through.
Z-buffers for each rendered frame will be generated by rpict,
and pinterp will be called to perform the actual "tweening."
This results in a potentially large savings in rendering
time, but should be used with caution since certain informa-
tion may be lost or inaccurate, such as specular highlights
and reflections, and objects may even break apart if too few
renderings are used to interpolate too much motion. The
default value for this variable is 0, meaning no interpola-
tion. Interpolation is also switched off if the ANIMATE
variable is specified.
MBLUR This variable specifies the fraction of a frame time that the
shutter is simulated as being open for motion blur. A number
of samples may be given as a second argument, which controls
the number of additional frames computed and averaged
together by pinterp. If this number is less than 2, then
bluring is performed by rpict only, resulting in greater
noise than the combination of rpict and pinterp used other-
wise. (The default value for number of samples is 5.) The
default fraction is 0, meaning no motion blurring. This
option does not currently work with the ANIMATE variable,
since pinterp only works for static environments.
DBLUR This variable specifies the aperture diameter for depth-of-
field blurring, in world units. A number of samples may be
given as a second argument, which controls the number of
additional frames computed and averaged together by pinterp.
If this number is less than 2, then blurring is performed by
rpict only, resulting in greater noise than the combination
of rpict and pinterp used otherwise. (The default value for
number of samples is 5.) To simulate a particular camera's
aperture, divide the focal length of the lens by the f-num-
ber, then convert to the corresponding world coordinate
units. For example, if you wish to simulate a 50mm lens at
f/2.0 in a scene modeled in meters, then you divide 50mm by
2.0 to get 25mm, which corresponds to an effective aperture
of 0.025 meters. The default aperture is 0, meaning no
depth-of-field blurring. This option does not currently work
with the ANIMATE variable, since pinterp only works for
static environments.
RTRACE This boolean variable tells ranimate whether or not to employ
rtrace during frame interpolation using the -fr option to
pinterp. If set to True, then the same rendering options and
static octree are passed to rtrace as are normally used by
rpict. The default value is False. Note that this variable
only applies to static environment walk-throughs (i.e., no
ANIMATE command).
RESOLUTION
This variable specifies the desired final picture resolution.
If only a single number is given, this value will be used for
both the horizontal and vertical picture dimensions. If two
numbers are given, the first is the horizontal resolution and
the second is the vertical resolution. If three numbers are
given, the third is taken as the pixel aspect ratio for the
final picture (a real value). If the pixel aspect ratio is
zero, the exact dimensions given will be those produced.
Otherwise, they will be used as a frame in which the final
image must fit. The default value for this variable is 640.
render This variable may be used to specify additional options to
rpict or rtrace. These options will appear after the options
set automatically by rad, and thus will override the default
values.
pinterp This variable may be used to specify additional options to
pinterp, which is used to interpolate frames for a static
scene walk-through. (See the pinterp man page, and the
INTERPOLATE variable.) Do not use this variable to set the
pinterp -fr option, but use the RTRACE setting instead.
pfilt This variable may be used to specify additional options to
pfilt. If this variable is given in the ranfile, then pfilt
will always be used. (Normally, pfilt is called only if pin-
terp is not needed or automatic exposure is required.) See
the pfilt manual page for details.
EXAMPLES
A minimal input file for ranimate might look like this:
::::::::::
sample.ran
::::::::::
# The rad input file for our static scene:
RIF= tutor.rif
# The spool directory:
DIRECTORY= anim1
# The view file containing one view per frame:
VIEWFILE= anim1.vf
# The amount of temporary disk space available:
DISKSPACE= 50 # megabytes
Note that most of the variables are not set in this file. If we only
want to see what default values ranimate would use without actually
executing anything, we can invoke it thus:
ranimate -n -e sample.ran
This will print the variables we have given as well as default values
ranimate has assigned for us. Also, we will see the list of commands
that ranimate would have executed had the -n option not been present.
Usually, we execute ranimate in the background, redirecting the stan-
dard output and standard error to a file:
ranimate sample.ran >& sample.err &
If we decide that the default values ranimate has chosen for our vari-
ables are not all appropriate, we can add some more assignments to the
file:
host= rays 3 ~greg/obj/tutor ray # execute as ray on multi-host "rays"
host= thishost # execute one copy on this host also
INTERP= 3 # render every fourth frame
RES= 1024 # shoot for 1024x resolution
MBLUR= .25 # apply camera motion blur
EXP= anim1.exp # adjust exposure according to file
pfilt= -r .9 # use Gaussian filtering
ARCHIVE= tar cf /dev/nrtape # save original renderings to tape
Note the use of abbreviation for variable names.
FILES
$(DIRECTORY)/STATUS animation status file $(DIRECTORY)/* other
temporary files $(BASENAME).hdr final animation frames
AUTHOR
Greg Ward
BUGS
Due to the difficulty of controlling processes on multiple execution
hosts, the -n option of ranimate is not useful in the same way as rad
for generating a script of executable commands to render the sequence.
It may give an idea of the sequence of events, but certain temporary
files and so forth will not be in the correct state if the user
attempts to create a separate batch script.
If multiple processors are available on a given host and the RTRACE
variable is set to True, then the -PP option of rtrace should be
employed, but it is not. There is no easy way around this problem, but
it has only minor consequences in most cases. (The -PP option is used
for rpict, however.)
The current implementation of the remote shell does not return the exit
status of the remote process, which makes it difficult to determine for
sure if there has been a serious error or not. Because of this, rani-
mate normally turns off warnings on all rendering processes, and takes
any output to standard error from a remote command as a sign that a
fatal error has occurred. (This also precludes the use of the -t
option to report rendering progress.) If the error was caused by a
process server going down, the server is removed from the active list
and frame recovery takes place. Otherwise, ranimate quits at that
point in the animation.
The current execution environment, in particular the RAYPATH variable,
will not be passed during remote command execution, so it is necessary
to set whatever variables are important in the remote startup script
(e.g., ".cshrc" for the C-shell). This requirement may be circumvented
by substituting the on(1) command for ssh(1) using the RSH control
variable, or by writing a custom remote execution script.
If a different remote user name is used, ranimate first attempts to
change to the original user's directory with a command of the form cd
uname . This works under csh(1), but may fail under other shells such
as sh(1).
If multiple hosts with different floating point formats are used, pin-
terp will fail because the Z-buffer files will be inconsistent.
(Recall that pinterp is called if INTERPOLATE > 0 and/or MBLUR is
assigned.) Since most modern machines use IEEE floating point, this is
not usually a problem, but it is something to keep in mind.
SEE ALSO
fieldcomb(1), pfilt(1), pinterp(1), pmblur(1), rad(1), ran2tiff(1),
ranimove(1), rpict(1), ssh(1), rtrace(1)
RADIANCE 6/24/98 RANIMATE(1)
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