man/man1/ranimove.1

.\" RCSid "$Id"
.SH NAME
ranimove - render a RADIANCE animation with motion
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ranimove
[
.B \-s
][
.B \-e
][
.B \-w
][
.B "\-f beg,end"
][
.B "\-n nprocs"
][
.B "\-t sec"
][
.B "\-d jnd"
]
.B rnmfile
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Ranimove
is a program for progressive animation rendering.
Variables in the given
.I rnmfile
indicate input files, output file names,
and various other controls and options.
.PP
Normally, progress reports are written to the standard output, but the
.I \-s
option tells
.I ranimove
to do its work silently.
The
.I \-e
option tells
.I ranimove
to explicate all variables used for the animation, including
default values not specified in the input file, and print them on
the standard output.
The
.I \-w
option turns off warnings about multiply and misassigned variables and
non-fatal rendering problems.
.PP
Normally,
.I ranimove
will produce one animation frame for each view given in the specified
view file.
If the
.I \-f
option is specified, the animation will resume at the given frame, and
continue to the end of the sequence, or to the second frame if one is given
(separated from the first by a comma but no space).
.PP
The
.I \-n
option specifies the number of processes to use for rendering.
The default value is 1, which is appropriate for most machines
that have a single central processing unit (CPU).
If you are running on a machine with multiple CPUs, a larger
value up to the number of processors may be used
to improve rendering speed, depending on the system load.
.PP
Because
.I ranimove
renders each frame progressively, it needs some criteria for when
to proceed to the next frame in the animation.
The
.I \-t
option is used to specify the maximum number of seconds to spend
on any one frame.
The default value for this option is 60 seconds.
Additionally, the
.I \-d
option may be used to specify a termination
threshold in just-noticeable-differences.
If the error can be reduced below this number of JNDs
over the whole frame before the time allocation is spent,
.I ranimove
will then proceed to the next frame.
A value of 2.0 JNDs is the point at which 75% of the people will notice
a difference, and this is the level usually selected for such a
termination test.
There is no default value for this option, which means that rendering
will proceed until the time allocation is spent for each frame, regardless.
If
.I \-t
is set to 0,
.I ranimove
will spend as much time as it takes to reduce the
visible error below the value set by the
.I \-d
option.
.PP
.I Ranimove
renders each frame in three stages.
In the first stage, a low-quality image
is rendered using one ray sample per 16 pixels.
In the second stage, pixels from the previous frame are extrapolated to
their corresponding positions in
this one, based on the given camera and object movements.
A set of heuristics is applied
to prevent errors in specular highlights and shadows, avoiding
some of the errors typical with the
.I pinterp(1)
program.
In the third stage, additional high-quality samples are used to refine
important regions of the image that are judged to have visible errors.
This proceeds until the stopping criteria specified by the
.I \-t
and
.I -d
options are met,
when the frame is filtered and written to the designated picture file.
.PP
The chief differences between this program and
.I ranimate(1)
are that motion blur is computed for objects as well as camera movement,
and its progressive rendering allows better control over the tradeoff
between frame accuracy and rendering time.
Fewer controls are provided for managing the picture files produced by
.I ranimove,
and no facilities for distributed rendering are available other
than executing
.I ranimove
on different machines using the
.I \-f
option to manually partition the work.
.PP
Animation variable assignments appear one per line in
.I rnmfile.
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.
Comments in
.I rnmfile
start with a pound sign ('#') and proceed to the end of line.
.PP
The animation variables, their interpretations and default values
are given below.
.TP 10n
.BR OCTREE
The name of the base octree file, which should be generated by the
.I oconv(1)
command using the
.I \-f
option.
There is no default value for this variable.
If no
.I RIF
variable is given, the octree must be specified.
.TP
.BR RIF
This variable specifies a
.I rad(1)
input file to use as a source of rendering options and other
variable settings.
If given,
.I ranimate
will execute
.I rad
and create an options file to control rendering parameters.
.I Ranimate
will also extract default settings for the common variables:
.I OCTREE,
.I RESOLUTION,
and
.I EXPOSURE.
Following the file name, overriding variable settings may be given,
which will be passed to
.I rad
on the command line.
Settings with spaces in them should be enclosed in quotes.
The execution of
.I rad
will also update the contents of the octree, if necessary.
There is no default value for this variable.
.TP
.BR move
This variable specifies an object (or objects) with a specific
motion and/or rendering priority.
Four value arguments are expected for each appearance of this variable.
The first is the name of a parent move object, or "void" if none.
If given, the object's transformation will be prepended to that
of its parent.
The second argument is the name of this object, which will be used
to name surfaces it contains, and as a modifier for any child objects
that reference it.
The third argument is the transformation string or file for this object.
If this argument is enclosed in quotes and begins with a hyphen
('-'), then it will be interpreted as a
static transform specification a la
.I xform(1).
Otherwise, the argument will be taken as the name of a file that contains
one such transform specification per line, corresponding to frames in the
animation.
A period ('.') may be given if no object transformation is desired.
The fourth argument is the name of a
.I RADIANCE
scene file (or files) to be given to
.I xform
for transformation.
If this argument begins with an exclamation point ('!'), then
it will be interpreted as a command rather than a file.
A final word corresponding to the frame number will be
appended to the command, and its output will be passed to
the input of
.I xform
for each frame.
An optinal fifth argument
specifies the rendering priority for this object.
Values greater than 1 will result in preferential rendering of
this object over other portions of the image when it appears in a frame.
Values less than 1 will cause the rendering to neglect this object in
favor of other parts of the image.
A value of 3.0 can be interpreted as saying the viewer is three times more
likely to look at this object than the background.
A file may be given rather than a floating point value, and this file must
contain one floating point number per line, corresponding to frames in the
animation.
.TP
.BR VIEWFILE
This variable names a file from which
.I ranimove
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.
An exception is made for a view file with only a single view, which
is used for every frame of the animation.
In this case, the
.I END
variable must also be specified.
This variable is required, and there is no default value.
.TP
.BR END
The final frame number in the animation.
The default value is computed from the number of views in the given
.I VIEWFILE.
Normally, this variable will only be given if the view is static.
.TP
.BR EXPOSURE
This variable tells
.I ranimate
how to adjust the exposure for each frame.
As in
.I 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
.I ranimate
will interpret as having one exposure value per line per frame,
beginning with frame 1 at line 1.
(See also the
.I VIEWFILE
variable, above.)\0
There is no default value for this variable.
If it is not given, no exposure adjustments will be made.
.TP
.BR BASENAME
The base output file name for the final frames.
This string should contain a
.I printf(3)
style integer field to distinguish one frame number from another.
The final frames will use this name with a ".pic" suffix.
The default value is "frame%03d".
.TP
.BR MBLUR
This variable specifies the fraction of a frame time that the shutter
is simulated as being open for motion blur.
Motion blur is computed by
.I ranimove
using image-based rendering methods, and will not be exact.
The default value is 0, meaning no motion blurring.
.TP
.BR RATE
This variable specifies the animation frame rate, in frames per second.
This is needed to compute the animation error visibility.
The default value is 8.
.TP
.BR 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.
.TP
.BR lowq
This variable may be used to specify rendering options
for the initial, low-quality ray samples.
It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
or as variable settings for the
.I rad
command, in which case the
.I RIF
variable must also be specified.
.TP
.BR highq
This variable may be used to specify rendering options
for the final, high-quality ray samples.
It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
or as variable settings for the
.I rad
command, in which case the
.I RIF
variable must also be specified.
.TP
.BR oconv
This variable may be used to specify special options for
.I oconv.
See the
.I oconv(1)
manual page for a list of valid options.
(The
.I \-f
option is specified by default.)\0
.SH EXAMPLES
A minimal input file for
.I ranimove
might look like this:
.IP "" .3i
.nf
::::::::::
sample.rnm
::::::::::
# The rad input file for our static scene:
RIF= tutor.rif
# The view file containing one view per frame:
VIEWFILE= anim1.vf
# Our central character and its motion:
move= void myguy myguy.xf myguy.rad 2.0
.fi
.PP
Note that most of the variables are not set in this file.
If we only want to see what default values
.I ranimove
would use without actually executing anything, we can invoke it
thus:
.IP "" .2i
ranimove -n 0 -e sample.rnm
.PP
This will print the variables we have given as well as default
values
.I ranimove
has assigned for us.
.PP
Usually, we execute
.I ranimove
in the background, redirecting the standard output and standard
error to a file:
.IP "" .2i
ranimove sample.rnm >& sample.err &
.PP
If we decide that the default values
.I ranimove
has chosen for our variables are not all appropriate, we can add
some more assignments to the file:
.IP "" .3i
.nf
RES= 1024                               # shoot for 1024x resolution
MBLUR= .25                              # apply camera motion blur
RATE= 15                                # 15 frames/second
EXP= anim1.exp                          # adjust exposure according to file
lowq= QUAL=Low                          # low quality ray sampling
highq= QUAL=Med                         # high quality ray sampling
.fi
.PP
Note the use of abbreviation for variable names.
.SH AUTHOR
Greg Ward
.SH "SEE ALSO"
oconv(1), pfilt(1), pinterp(1), rad(1), ranimate(1), rpict(1), xform(1)
Revision:	1.1
Committed:	Tue Mar 11 19:20:21 2003 UTC (21 years, 3 months ago) by greg
Branch:	MAIN
Log Message:	Added documentation to repository
#	User	Rev	Content
1	greg	1.1	.\" RCSid "$Id"
2			.SH NAME
3			ranimove - render a RADIANCE animation with motion
4			.SH SYNOPSIS
5			.B ranimove
6			[
7			.B \-s
8			][
9			.B \-e
10			][
11			.B \-w
12			][
13			.B "\-f beg,end"
14			][
15			.B "\-n nprocs"
16			][
17			.B "\-t sec"
18			][
19			.B "\-d jnd"
20			]
21			.B rnmfile
22			.SH DESCRIPTION
23			.I Ranimove
24			is a program for progressive animation rendering.
25			Variables in the given
26			.I rnmfile
27			indicate input files, output file names,
28			and various other controls and options.
29			.PP
30			Normally, progress reports are written to the standard output, but the
31			.I \-s
32			option tells
33			.I ranimove
34			to do its work silently.
35			The
36			.I \-e
37			option tells
38			.I ranimove
39			to explicate all variables used for the animation, including
40			default values not specified in the input file, and print them on
41			the standard output.
42			The
43			.I \-w
44			option turns off warnings about multiply and misassigned variables and
45			non-fatal rendering problems.
46			.PP
47			Normally,
48			.I ranimove
49			will produce one animation frame for each view given in the specified
50			view file.
51			If the
52			.I \-f
53			option is specified, the animation will resume at the given frame, and
54			continue to the end of the sequence, or to the second frame if one is given
55			(separated from the first by a comma but no space).
56			.PP
57			The
58			.I \-n
59			option specifies the number of processes to use for rendering.
60			The default value is 1, which is appropriate for most machines
61			that have a single central processing unit (CPU).
62			If you are running on a machine with multiple CPUs, a larger
63			value up to the number of processors may be used
64			to improve rendering speed, depending on the system load.
65			.PP
66			Because
67			.I ranimove
68			renders each frame progressively, it needs some criteria for when
69			to proceed to the next frame in the animation.
70			The
71			.I \-t
72			option is used to specify the maximum number of seconds to spend
73			on any one frame.
74			The default value for this option is 60 seconds.
75			Additionally, the
76			.I \-d
77			option may be used to specify a termination
78			threshold in just-noticeable-differences.
79			If the error can be reduced below this number of JNDs
80			over the whole frame before the time allocation is spent,
81			.I ranimove
82			will then proceed to the next frame.
83			A value of 2.0 JNDs is the point at which 75% of the people will notice
84			a difference, and this is the level usually selected for such a
85			termination test.
86			There is no default value for this option, which means that rendering
87			will proceed until the time allocation is spent for each frame, regardless.
88			If
89			.I \-t
90			is set to 0,
91			.I ranimove
92			will spend as much time as it takes to reduce the
93			visible error below the value set by the
94			.I \-d
95			option.
96			.PP
97			.I Ranimove
98			renders each frame in three stages.
99			In the first stage, a low-quality image
100			is rendered using one ray sample per 16 pixels.
101			In the second stage, pixels from the previous frame are extrapolated to
102			their corresponding positions in
103			this one, based on the given camera and object movements.
104			A set of heuristics is applied
105			to prevent errors in specular highlights and shadows, avoiding
106			some of the errors typical with the
107			.I pinterp(1)
108			program.
109			In the third stage, additional high-quality samples are used to refine
110			important regions of the image that are judged to have visible errors.
111			This proceeds until the stopping criteria specified by the
112			.I \-t
113			and
114			.I -d
115			options are met,
116			when the frame is filtered and written to the designated picture file.
117			.PP
118			The chief differences between this program and
119			.I ranimate(1)
120			are that motion blur is computed for objects as well as camera movement,
121			and its progressive rendering allows better control over the tradeoff
122			between frame accuracy and rendering time.
123			Fewer controls are provided for managing the picture files produced by
124			.I ranimove,
125			and no facilities for distributed rendering are available other
126			than executing
127			.I ranimove
128			on different machines using the
129			.I \-f
130			option to manually partition the work.
131			.PP
132			Animation variable assignments appear one per line in
133			.I rnmfile.
134			The name of the variable is followed by an equals sign
135			('=') and its value(s).
136			The end of line may be escaped with a backslash ('\\'), though it is
137			not usually necessary since additional variable values may be given
138			in multiple assignments.
139			Variables that should have only one value are given in upper case.
140			Variables that may have multiple values are given in lower case.
141			Variables may be abbreviated by their first three letters.
142			Comments in
143			.I rnmfile
144			start with a pound sign ('#') and proceed to the end of line.
145			.PP
146			The animation variables, their interpretations and default values
147			are given below.
148			.TP 10n
149			.BR OCTREE
150			The name of the base octree file, which should be generated by the
151			.I oconv(1)
152			command using the
153			.I \-f
154			option.
155			There is no default value for this variable.
156			If no
157			.I RIF
158			variable is given, the octree must be specified.
159			.TP
160			.BR RIF
161			This variable specifies a
162			.I rad(1)
163			input file to use as a source of rendering options and other
164			variable settings.
165			If given,
166			.I ranimate
167			will execute
168			.I rad
169			and create an options file to control rendering parameters.
170			.I Ranimate
171			will also extract default settings for the common variables:
172			.I OCTREE,
173			.I RESOLUTION,
174			and
175			.I EXPOSURE.
176			Following the file name, overriding variable settings may be given,
177			which will be passed to
178			.I rad
179			on the command line.
180			Settings with spaces in them should be enclosed in quotes.
181			The execution of
182			.I rad
183			will also update the contents of the octree, if necessary.
184			There is no default value for this variable.
185			.TP
186			.BR move
187			This variable specifies an object (or objects) with a specific
188			motion and/or rendering priority.
189			Four value arguments are expected for each appearance of this variable.
190			The first is the name of a parent move object, or "void" if none.
191			If given, the object's transformation will be prepended to that
192			of its parent.
193			The second argument is the name of this object, which will be used
194			to name surfaces it contains, and as a modifier for any child objects
195			that reference it.
196			The third argument is the transformation string or file for this object.
197			If this argument is enclosed in quotes and begins with a hyphen
198			('-'), then it will be interpreted as a
199			static transform specification a la
200			.I xform(1).
201			Otherwise, the argument will be taken as the name of a file that contains
202			one such transform specification per line, corresponding to frames in the
203			animation.
204			A period ('.') may be given if no object transformation is desired.
205			The fourth argument is the name of a
206			.I RADIANCE
207			scene file (or files) to be given to
208			.I xform
209			for transformation.
210			If this argument begins with an exclamation point ('!'), then
211			it will be interpreted as a command rather than a file.
212			A final word corresponding to the frame number will be
213			appended to the command, and its output will be passed to
214			the input of
215			.I xform
216			for each frame.
217			An optinal fifth argument
218			specifies the rendering priority for this object.
219			Values greater than 1 will result in preferential rendering of
220			this object over other portions of the image when it appears in a frame.
221			Values less than 1 will cause the rendering to neglect this object in
222			favor of other parts of the image.
223			A value of 3.0 can be interpreted as saying the viewer is three times more
224			likely to look at this object than the background.
225			A file may be given rather than a floating point value, and this file must
226			contain one floating point number per line, corresponding to frames in the
227			animation.
228			.TP
229			.BR VIEWFILE
230			This variable names a file from which
231			.I ranimove
232			may extract the view for each frame in the animation.
233			This file should contain one valid view per frame, starting with
234			frame 1 on line 1.
235			An exception is made for a view file with only a single view, which
236			is used for every frame of the animation.
237			In this case, the
238			.I END
239			variable must also be specified.
240			This variable is required, and there is no default value.
241			.TP
242			.BR END
243			The final frame number in the animation.
244			The default value is computed from the number of views in the given
245			.I VIEWFILE.
246			Normally, this variable will only be given if the view is static.
247			.TP
248			.BR EXPOSURE
249			This variable tells
250			.I ranimate
251			how to adjust the exposure for each frame.
252			As in
253			.I pfilt,
254			the exposure setting may be given either as a multiplier or as a
255			number of f-stop adjustments (eg. +2 or -1.5).
256			Alternatively, a file name may be given, which
257			.I ranimate
258			will interpret as having one exposure value per line per frame,
259			beginning with frame 1 at line 1.
260			(See also the
261			.I VIEWFILE
262			variable, above.)\0
263			There is no default value for this variable.
264			If it is not given, no exposure adjustments will be made.
265			.TP
266			.BR BASENAME
267			The base output file name for the final frames.
268			This string should contain a
269			.I printf(3)
270			style integer field to distinguish one frame number from another.
271			The final frames will use this name with a ".pic" suffix.
272			The default value is "frame%03d".
273			.TP
274			.BR MBLUR
275			This variable specifies the fraction of a frame time that the shutter
276			is simulated as being open for motion blur.
277			Motion blur is computed by
278			.I ranimove
279			using image-based rendering methods, and will not be exact.
280			The default value is 0, meaning no motion blurring.
281			.TP
282			.BR RATE
283			This variable specifies the animation frame rate, in frames per second.
284			This is needed to compute the animation error visibility.
285			The default value is 8.
286			.TP
287			.BR RESOLUTION
288			This variable specifies the desired final picture resolution.
289			If only a single number is given, this value will be used for both
290			the horizontal and vertical picture dimensions.
291			If two numbers are given, the first is the horizontal resolution and
292			the second is the vertical resolution.
293			If three numbers are given, the third is taken as the pixel aspect
294			ratio for the final picture (a real value).
295			If the pixel aspect ratio is zero, the exact dimensions given will
296			be those produced.
297			Otherwise, they will be used as a frame in which the final image
298			must fit.
299			The default value for this variable is 640.
300			.TP
301			.BR lowq
302			This variable may be used to specify rendering options
303			for the initial, low-quality ray samples.
304			It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
305			or as variable settings for the
306			.I rad
307			command, in which case the
308			.I RIF
309			variable must also be specified.
310			.TP
311			.BR highq
312			This variable may be used to specify rendering options
313			for the final, high-quality ray samples.
314			It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
315			or as variable settings for the
316			.I rad
317			command, in which case the
318			.I RIF
319			variable must also be specified.
320			.TP
321			.BR oconv
322			This variable may be used to specify special options for
323			.I oconv.
324			See the
325			.I oconv(1)
326			manual page for a list of valid options.
327			(The
328			.I \-f
329			option is specified by default.)\0
330			.SH EXAMPLES
331			A minimal input file for
332			.I ranimove
333			might look like this:
334			.IP "" .3i
335			.nf
336			::::::::::
337			sample.rnm
338			::::::::::
339			# The rad input file for our static scene:
340			RIF= tutor.rif
341			# The view file containing one view per frame:
342			VIEWFILE= anim1.vf
343			# Our central character and its motion:
344			move= void myguy myguy.xf myguy.rad 2.0
345			.fi
346			.PP
347			Note that most of the variables are not set in this file.
348			If we only want to see what default values
349			.I ranimove
350			would use without actually executing anything, we can invoke it
351			thus:
352			.IP "" .2i
353			ranimove -n 0 -e sample.rnm
354			.PP
355			This will print the variables we have given as well as default
356			values
357			.I ranimove
358			has assigned for us.
359			.PP
360			Usually, we execute
361			.I ranimove
362			in the background, redirecting the standard output and standard
363			error to a file:
364			.IP "" .2i
365			ranimove sample.rnm >& sample.err &
366			.PP
367			If we decide that the default values
368			.I ranimove
369			has chosen for our variables are not all appropriate, we can add
370			some more assignments to the file:
371			.IP "" .3i
372			.nf
373			RES= 1024 # shoot for 1024x resolution
374			MBLUR= .25 # apply camera motion blur
375			RATE= 15 # 15 frames/second
376			EXP= anim1.exp # adjust exposure according to file
377			lowq= QUAL=Low # low quality ray sampling
378			highq= QUAL=Med # high quality ray sampling
379			.fi
380			.PP
381			Note the use of abbreviation for variable names.
382			.SH AUTHOR
383			Greg Ward
384			.SH "SEE ALSO"
385			oconv(1), pfilt(1), pinterp(1), rad(1), ranimate(1), rpict(1), xform(1)