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root/radiance/ray/README.txt
Revision: 1.2
Committed: Thu Jul 31 18:32:41 2014 UTC (9 years, 8 months ago) by greg
Content type: text/plain
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rad4R2P2, rad4R2, rad4R2P1
Changes since 1.1: +2 -2 lines
Log Message:
Preparation for 4.2 release

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 greg 1.2 RCSid "$Id: README.txt,v 1.1 2012/04/25 22:21:06 greg Exp $"
2 greg 1.1
3     Hello and welcome to the Radiance synthetic imaging system. This is
4 greg 1.2 the nineteenth release, Version 4.2, and it includes all source files
5 greg 1.1 for local compilation with a standard C compiler. To find out what's
6     new in this release, check the text file "doc/notes/ReleaseNotes".
7    
8     Radiance is OpenSource software copyrighted and distributed by
9     Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. By downloading
10     and installing this software, you are implicitly agreeing to the
11     OpenSource license appended to this README file. Please read it
12     carefully before proceeding -- this is very different from previous
13     licenses, and contains fewer restrictions on commercialization.
14    
15     Please read this entire file before sending e-mail asking
16     how to install this software or what to do with it. Some
17     frequently asked questions are answered here and also on our
18     website at:
19    
20     http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/
21    
22     The CVS source tree is available, including post-release bug-fixes and
23     mailing lists access at:
24    
25     http://www.radiance-online.org/
26    
27     The websites above should also have some precompiled Radiance binaries
28     and add-ons for common Unix platforms.
29    
30     We have attempted to make it easy for you (and for us) to install
31     the software on differently configured systems using a global make
32     script. To install the software, just type:
33    
34     ./makeall install
35    
36     You can clean up the .o files and so forth with:
37    
38     ./makeall clean
39    
40     Or, if you are confident you can do both at the same time with:
41    
42     ./makeall install clean
43    
44     You can give other make options at the end of the command as well. For
45     example, the -n option will tell you what makeall is going to do without
46     actually doing it.
47    
48     If you downloaded the binaries, so compilation is not necessary,
49     run the following command to install the library files only:
50    
51     ./makeall library
52    
53     The makeall may script ask you questions about your system and where you
54     want to install the executables and library files. The pathnames you
55     give should be relative to root for the programs to work properly. You
56     may also use the tilde ('~') character to give paths starting with
57     someone's home directory.
58    
59     If you do NOT have X11 support, please read the note "noX11.help" in
60     this directory. It explains what to change to make things work.
61    
62     Although it is set automatically by makeall, individuals may want to
63     set the RAYPATH environment variable manually. This variable tells
64     Radiance where to look for auxiliary files, and usually includes the
65     current directory as well as the system library (ray/lib in this
66     distribution). As you develop auxiliary files yourself, it is often
67     useful to add in your own library directory before the system directory.
68     An example setting such as this would go in a user's .login file:
69    
70     setenv RAYPATH .:${HOME}/mylib:/usr/local/lib/ray
71    
72     After installing the software, you may want to start by scanning the
73     troff input documentation contained in "doc/ray.1", which is also formatted
74     for web browsers in "doc/ray.html".
75     A PDF version of this manual may be found in
76     "doc/pdf/ray.pdf", along with an older tutorial by Cindy Larson,
77     "doc/pdf/raduser1_6.pdf".
78    
79     For complete documentation on the system as of release 3.1, refer to
80     "Rendering with Radiance" by Larson and Shakespeare, which used to be
81     available from Morgan Kauffman Publishing. Recently, the authors have
82     taken over printing of the book, which is now available from booksurge.com.
83     You may find it linked to the Radiance website page:
84    
85     http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/book/
86    
87     The first chapter of this book, which includes a basic tutorial and
88     serves as a good introduction for new users, may be found in
89     "doc/pdf/RwR01.pdf".
90    
91     Important additions since version 3.1 include the holodeck programs (rholo,
92     etc., built in src/hd), glrad, ranimove, the new "mesh" primitive,
93     and rtcontrib. Again, check doc/notes/ReleaseNotes for details.
94    
95     Individual manual pages may be found in the subdirectory "doc/man".
96     You may want to copy these to the system manual directory, or add this
97     directory to your MANPATH environment variable in your shell
98     initialization file. A good starting place is to print the text file
99     ray/doc/man/whatis, which gives a one line description of each program in
100     the Radiance package. To print out the manual pages, use the "-man"
101     macro package.
102    
103     The most important program to learn about if you are a new user of Radiance
104     (or have not used this program before) is "rad". It controls Radiance
105     lighting parameters, and automates much of the rendering process.
106     To get started, change directory to obj/misc and try running:
107    
108     % rad -o x11 daf.rif
109    
110     This works if you are running X11. If you are not, you can still generate
111     an image with:
112    
113     % rad daf.rif &
114    
115     When the picture is done, you can convert it to another format for display
116     with any of the ra_* programs listed in the doc/whatis database.
117    
118     There is a user interface built on top of this using Tcl/Tk, called trad.
119     If you do not have Tcl/Tk installed on your system, you must do so prior
120     to building this distribution if you want trad to install. (Try a google
121     search on "Tcl/Tk" or go to "http://www.scriptics.com/software/tcltk/".)