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Revision: 1.9
Committed: Mon Nov 10 19:08:17 2008 UTC (16 years, 5 months ago) by greg
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rad4R0
Changes since 1.8: +5 -7 lines
Log Message:
Changed ".pic" extension to ".hdr" throughout

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 greg 1.9 .\" RCSid "$Id: mkillum.1,v 1.8 2008/04/18 00:39:24 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 greg 1.9 ray tracing processes will be used to accelerate computation on a shared
36 greg 1.4 memory machine.
37     Note that there is no benefit to using more processes
38     than there are local CPUs available to do the work.
39     .PP
40     Remaining arguments to
41 greg 1.1 .I mkillum
42 greg 1.9 are interpreted as rendering options for
43 greg 1.1 .I rtrace(1),
44 greg 1.9 to compute the light distributions for the input surfaces.
45 greg 1.1 These surfaces can be any combination of polygons, spheres and rings.
46     Other surfaces may be included, but
47     .I mkillum
48     cannot compute their distributions.
49     .PP
50     By default,
51     .I mkillum
52     reads from its standard input and writes to its standard output.
53     It is possible to specify multiple input files in a somewhat
54     unconventional fashion by placing a lesser-than symbol ('<') before
55     the file names.
56     (Note that this character must be escaped from most shells.)
57     This is necessary so
58     .I mkillum
59 greg 1.9 can tell where the rendering arguments
60 greg 1.1 end and its own input files begin.
61     .SH VARIABLES
62     .I Mkillum
63     has a number of parameters that can be changed by
64     comments in the input file of the form:
65     .nf
66    
67     #@mkillum variable=value option switch{+|-} ..
68    
69     .fi
70     String or integer variables are separated from their values by the
71     equals sign ('=').
72     Options appear by themselves.
73     Switches are followed either by a
74     plus sign to turn them on or a minus sign to turn them off.
75     .PP
76     Parameters are usually changed many times within the
77     same input file to tailor the calculation, specify different
78     labels and so on.
79     The parameters and their meanings are described below.
80     .TP 10n
81     .BI o =string
82     Set the output file to
83     .I string.
84     All subsequent scene data will be sent to this file.
85     If this appears in the first comment in the input, nothing will be
86     sent to the standard output.
87     Note that this is not recommended when running
88     .I mkillum
89     from
90     .I rad(1),
91     which expects the output to be on the standard output.
92     .TP
93     .BI m =string
94     Set the material identifier to
95     .I string.
96     This name will be used not only as the new surface modifier, but it
97     will also be used to name the distribution pattern and the data files.
98     The distribution name will be
99     .I string
100     plus the suffix ".dist".
101     The data file will be named
102     .I string
103     plus possibly an integer plus a ".dat" suffix.
104     The integer is used to avoid accidently writing over an existing
105     file.
106     If overwriting the file is desired, use the
107     .I f
108     variable below.
109     .TP
110     .BI f =string
111     Set the data file name to
112     .I string.
113     The next data file will be given this name plus a ".dat" suffix.
114     Subsequent files will be named
115     .I string
116     plus an integer plus the ".dat" suffix.
117     An existing file with the same name will be clobbered.
118     This variable may be unset by leaving off the value.
119     (See also the
120     .I m
121     variable above.)
122     .TP
123     .BR a
124     Produce secondary sources for all of the surfaces in the input.
125     This is the default.
126     .TP
127     .BI e =string
128     Produce secondary sources for all surfaces except those modified by
129     .I string.
130     Surfaces modified by
131     .I string
132     will be passed to the output unchanged.
133     .TP
134     .BI i =string
135     Only produce secondary sources for surfaces modified by
136     .I string.
137     .TP
138     .BR n
139     Do not produce any secondary sources.
140 greg 1.7 All input will be passed to the output unaffected, except any
141     void surfaces will be removed.
142 greg 1.1 .TP
143     .BI b =real
144     Do not produce a secondary source for a surface if its average
145     brightness (radiance) is less than the value
146     .I real.
147     .TP
148     .BI c ={d|a|n}
149     Use color information according to the given character.
150     If the character is
151     .I d,
152     then color information will be used in three separate data files and
153     the distribution will be fully characterized in terms of color.
154     If the character is
155     .I a,
156     then only the average color is computed and the distribution will
157     not contain color information.
158     If the character is
159     .I n,
160     even the average distribution color will be thrown away,
161     producing secondary sources that are completely uncolored.
162     This may be desirable from a color-balancing point of view.
163     .TP
164     .BI d =integer
165     Set the number of direction samples per projected steradian to
166     .I integer.
167     The number of directions stored in the associated data file will be
168     approximately this number multiplied by pi for polygons and rings, and
169     by 4pi for spheres.
170     If
171     .I integer
172     is zero, then a diffuse source is assumed and no distribution is
173     created.
174     .TP
175 greg 1.7 .BI d =string
176     Set the surface Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function (BSDF)
177     to the given file.
178     The RADIANCE library path will be searched if the file does not begin
179     with a '.' or '~' character.
180     This file must contain an LBNL Window 6 XML specification of a valid
181     BSDF for the given surface, and all rays will be interpreted through
182     this function.
183     The orientation of the BSDF may be controlled with the
184     .I u
185     setting, described below.
186     The thickness of the surface may be controlled with the
187     .I t
188     setting.
189     If this variable has no setting or an integer is specified,
190     .I mkillum
191     returns to the default behavior of computing the output distribution
192     directly.
193     .TP
194 greg 1.1 .BI s =integer
195     Set the number of ray samples per direction to
196     .I integer.
197     This variable affects the accuracy of the distribution value for
198     each direction as well as the computation time for
199     .I mkillum.
200     .TP
201     .BR l{+|-}
202     Switch between light sources and illum sources.
203     If this switch is enabled
204     .I (l+),
205     .I mkillum
206     will use the material type "light" to represent surfaces.
207     If disabled
208     .I (l-),
209     .I mkillum
210     will use the material type "illum" with the input surface modifier
211     as its alternate material.
212     The default is
213     .I l-.
214 greg 1.7 .TP
215     .BI u =[+|-]{X|Y|Z}
216     The given axis will be considered "up" for the purposes of interpreting
217     BSDF data specified with the
218     .I d
219     variable.
220     The BSDF will be reoriented relative to the surface as necessary to keep
221     the up vector in the vertical plane that contains this axis and the
222 greg 1.8 surface normal, corresponding to an azimuth of 90 degrees.
223     The default up vector is +Z.
224 greg 1.7 .TP
225     .BI t =real
226     Set the surface thickness to
227     .I real
228     in world coordinates.
229     This value is used for determining where to start rays that need to begin
230     on the opposite side of the surface, specifically to compute the incoming
231     distribution for a BSDF computation.
232     The default value is 0.
233 greg 1.5 .SH EXAMPLES
234     The following command generates illum's corresponding to geometry
235     in the files "it1.rad" and "it2.rad":
236     .IP "" .3i
237 greg 1.6 mkillum \-ab 2 \-ad 1024 \-av .1 .1 .1 basic.oct "<" it1.rad it2.rad > illums.rad
238 greg 1.5 .PP
239     The output file "illums.rad" would then be combined with the original
240     scene geometry to create a more easily rendered composite.
241 greg 1.7 .SH ENVIRONMENT
242     RAYPATH the directories to check for auxiliary files.
243 greg 1.1 .SH AUTHOR
244     Greg Ward
245     .SH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
246     Work on this program was initiated and sponsored by the LESO
247     group at EPFL in Switzerland.
248     .SH "SEE ALSO"
249 greg 1.3 oconv(1), rad(1), rpict(1), rtrace(1), rvu(1)