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Revision: 1.8
Committed: Fri Apr 18 00:39:24 2008 UTC (16 years, 1 month ago) by greg
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rad3R9
Changes since 1.7: +3 -3 lines
Log Message:
Added clarification of "up" orientation for BSDFs

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 greg 1.8 .\" RCSid "$Id: mkillum.1,v 1.7 2007/12/13 07:03:36 greg Exp $"
2 greg 1.1 .TH MKILLUM 1 10/6/95 RADIANCE
3     .SH NAME
4     mkillum - compute illum sources for a RADIANCE scene
5     .SH SYNOPSIS
6     .B mkillum
7     [
8 greg 1.4 .B "\-n nprocs"
9     ][
10 greg 1.1 .B "rtrace options"
11     ]
12     .B octree
13     .B "[ \< file .. ]"
14     .br
15     .B "mkillum [ rtrace options ] \-defaults"
16     .SH DESCRIPTION
17     .I Mkillum
18     takes a prepared RADIANCE scene description and an octree and computes
19     light source distributions for each surface, replacing them with
20     secondary sources whose contributions can be computed more efficiently by
21     .I rpict(1)
22     and
23 greg 1.3 .I rvu(1).
24 greg 1.1 This type of optimization is most useful for windows and skylights which
25     represent concentrated sources of indirect illumination.
26     .I Mkillum
27     is not appropriate for very large sources or sources with highly
28     directional distributions.
29     These are best handled respectively by the ambient calculation
30     and the secondary source types in RADIANCE.
31     .PP
32 greg 1.4 If the
33     .I \-n
34     option is specified with a value greater than 1, multiple
35     .I rtrace(1)
36     processes will be used to accelerate computation on a shared
37     memory machine.
38     Note that there is no benefit to using more processes
39     than there are local CPUs available to do the work.
40     .PP
41     Remaining arguments to
42 greg 1.1 .I mkillum
43     are passed directly to
44     .I rtrace(1),
45     which is used to compute the light distributions for the input surfaces.
46     These surfaces can be any combination of polygons, spheres and rings.
47     Other surfaces may be included, but
48     .I mkillum
49     cannot compute their distributions.
50     .PP
51     By default,
52     .I mkillum
53     reads from its standard input and writes to its standard output.
54     It is possible to specify multiple input files in a somewhat
55     unconventional fashion by placing a lesser-than symbol ('<') before
56     the file names.
57     (Note that this character must be escaped from most shells.)
58     This is necessary so
59     .I mkillum
60     can tell where the arguments to
61     .I rtrace(1)
62     end and its own input files begin.
63     .SH VARIABLES
64     .I Mkillum
65     has a number of parameters that can be changed by
66     comments in the input file of the form:
67     .nf
68    
69     #@mkillum variable=value option switch{+|-} ..
70    
71     .fi
72     String or integer variables are separated from their values by the
73     equals sign ('=').
74     Options appear by themselves.
75     Switches are followed either by a
76     plus sign to turn them on or a minus sign to turn them off.
77     .PP
78     Parameters are usually changed many times within the
79     same input file to tailor the calculation, specify different
80     labels and so on.
81     The parameters and their meanings are described below.
82     .TP 10n
83     .BI o =string
84     Set the output file to
85     .I string.
86     All subsequent scene data will be sent to this file.
87     If this appears in the first comment in the input, nothing will be
88     sent to the standard output.
89     Note that this is not recommended when running
90     .I mkillum
91     from
92     .I rad(1),
93     which expects the output to be on the standard output.
94     .TP
95     .BI m =string
96     Set the material identifier to
97     .I string.
98     This name will be used not only as the new surface modifier, but it
99     will also be used to name the distribution pattern and the data files.
100     The distribution name will be
101     .I string
102     plus the suffix ".dist".
103     The data file will be named
104     .I string
105     plus possibly an integer plus a ".dat" suffix.
106     The integer is used to avoid accidently writing over an existing
107     file.
108     If overwriting the file is desired, use the
109     .I f
110     variable below.
111     .TP
112     .BI f =string
113     Set the data file name to
114     .I string.
115     The next data file will be given this name plus a ".dat" suffix.
116     Subsequent files will be named
117     .I string
118     plus an integer plus the ".dat" suffix.
119     An existing file with the same name will be clobbered.
120     This variable may be unset by leaving off the value.
121     (See also the
122     .I m
123     variable above.)
124     .TP
125     .BR a
126     Produce secondary sources for all of the surfaces in the input.
127     This is the default.
128     .TP
129     .BI e =string
130     Produce secondary sources for all surfaces except those modified by
131     .I string.
132     Surfaces modified by
133     .I string
134     will be passed to the output unchanged.
135     .TP
136     .BI i =string
137     Only produce secondary sources for surfaces modified by
138     .I string.
139     .TP
140     .BR n
141     Do not produce any secondary sources.
142 greg 1.7 All input will be passed to the output unaffected, except any
143     void surfaces will be removed.
144 greg 1.1 .TP
145     .BI b =real
146     Do not produce a secondary source for a surface if its average
147     brightness (radiance) is less than the value
148     .I real.
149     .TP
150     .BI c ={d|a|n}
151     Use color information according to the given character.
152     If the character is
153     .I d,
154     then color information will be used in three separate data files and
155     the distribution will be fully characterized in terms of color.
156     If the character is
157     .I a,
158     then only the average color is computed and the distribution will
159     not contain color information.
160     If the character is
161     .I n,
162     even the average distribution color will be thrown away,
163     producing secondary sources that are completely uncolored.
164     This may be desirable from a color-balancing point of view.
165     .TP
166     .BI d =integer
167     Set the number of direction samples per projected steradian to
168     .I integer.
169     The number of directions stored in the associated data file will be
170     approximately this number multiplied by pi for polygons and rings, and
171     by 4pi for spheres.
172     If
173     .I integer
174     is zero, then a diffuse source is assumed and no distribution is
175     created.
176     .TP
177 greg 1.7 .BI d =string
178     Set the surface Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function (BSDF)
179     to the given file.
180     The RADIANCE library path will be searched if the file does not begin
181     with a '.' or '~' character.
182     This file must contain an LBNL Window 6 XML specification of a valid
183     BSDF for the given surface, and all rays will be interpreted through
184     this function.
185     The orientation of the BSDF may be controlled with the
186     .I u
187     setting, described below.
188     The thickness of the surface may be controlled with the
189     .I t
190     setting.
191     If this variable has no setting or an integer is specified,
192     .I mkillum
193     returns to the default behavior of computing the output distribution
194     directly.
195     .TP
196 greg 1.1 .BI s =integer
197     Set the number of ray samples per direction to
198     .I integer.
199     This variable affects the accuracy of the distribution value for
200     each direction as well as the computation time for
201     .I mkillum.
202     .TP
203     .BR l{+|-}
204     Switch between light sources and illum sources.
205     If this switch is enabled
206     .I (l+),
207     .I mkillum
208     will use the material type "light" to represent surfaces.
209     If disabled
210     .I (l-),
211     .I mkillum
212     will use the material type "illum" with the input surface modifier
213     as its alternate material.
214     The default is
215     .I l-.
216 greg 1.7 .TP
217     .BI u =[+|-]{X|Y|Z}
218     The given axis will be considered "up" for the purposes of interpreting
219     BSDF data specified with the
220     .I d
221     variable.
222     The BSDF will be reoriented relative to the surface as necessary to keep
223     the up vector in the vertical plane that contains this axis and the
224 greg 1.8 surface normal, corresponding to an azimuth of 90 degrees.
225     The default up vector is +Z.
226 greg 1.7 .TP
227     .BI t =real
228     Set the surface thickness to
229     .I real
230     in world coordinates.
231     This value is used for determining where to start rays that need to begin
232     on the opposite side of the surface, specifically to compute the incoming
233     distribution for a BSDF computation.
234     The default value is 0.
235 greg 1.5 .SH EXAMPLES
236     The following command generates illum's corresponding to geometry
237     in the files "it1.rad" and "it2.rad":
238     .IP "" .3i
239 greg 1.6 mkillum \-ab 2 \-ad 1024 \-av .1 .1 .1 basic.oct "<" it1.rad it2.rad > illums.rad
240 greg 1.5 .PP
241     The output file "illums.rad" would then be combined with the original
242     scene geometry to create a more easily rendered composite.
243 greg 1.7 .SH ENVIRONMENT
244     RAYPATH the directories to check for auxiliary files.
245 greg 1.1 .SH AUTHOR
246     Greg Ward
247     .SH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
248     Work on this program was initiated and sponsored by the LESO
249     group at EPFL in Switzerland.
250     .SH "SEE ALSO"
251 greg 1.3 oconv(1), rad(1), rpict(1), rtrace(1), rvu(1)