man/man1/ranimove.1

.\" RCSid "$Id$"
.TH RANIMOVE 1 1/30/03 RADIANCE
.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:	1.3
Committed:	Tue Dec 9 15:59:06 2003 UTC (20 years, 4 months ago) by greg
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	rad3R7P2, rad3R7P1, rad3R6, rad3R6P1
Changes since 1.2:	+1 -1 lines
Log Message:	Fixed RCSid specification
#	Content
1	.\" RCSid "$Id$"
2	.TH RANIMOVE 1 1/30/03 RADIANCE
3	.SH NAME
4	ranimove - render a RADIANCE animation with motion
5	.SH SYNOPSIS
6	.B ranimove
7	[
8	.B \-s
9	][
10	.B \-e
11	][
12	.B \-w
13	][
14	.B "\-f beg,end"
15	][
16	.B "\-n nprocs"
17	][
18	.B "\-t sec"
19	][
20	.B "\-d jnd"
21	]
22	.B rnmfile
23	.SH DESCRIPTION
24	.I Ranimove
25	is a program for progressive animation rendering.
26	Variables in the given
27	.I rnmfile
28	indicate input files, output file names,
29	and various other controls and options.
30	.PP
31	Normally, progress reports are written to the standard output, but the
32	.I \-s
33	option tells
34	.I ranimove
35	to do its work silently.
36	The
37	.I \-e
38	option tells
39	.I ranimove
40	to explicate all variables used for the animation, including
41	default values not specified in the input file, and print them on
42	the standard output.
43	The
44	.I \-w
45	option turns off warnings about multiply and misassigned variables and
46	non-fatal rendering problems.
47	.PP
48	Normally,
49	.I ranimove
50	will produce one animation frame for each view given in the specified
51	view file.
52	If the
53	.I \-f
54	option is specified, the animation will resume at the given frame, and
55	continue to the end of the sequence, or to the second frame if one is given
56	(separated from the first by a comma but no space).
57	.PP
58	The
59	.I \-n
60	option specifies the number of processes to use for rendering.
61	The default value is 1, which is appropriate for most machines
62	that have a single central processing unit (CPU).
63	If you are running on a machine with multiple CPUs, a larger
64	value up to the number of processors may be used
65	to improve rendering speed, depending on the system load.
66	.PP
67	Because
68	.I ranimove
69	renders each frame progressively, it needs some criteria for when
70	to proceed to the next frame in the animation.
71	The
72	.I \-t
73	option is used to specify the maximum number of seconds to spend
74	on any one frame.
75	The default value for this option is 60 seconds.
76	Additionally, the
77	.I \-d
78	option may be used to specify a termination
79	threshold in just-noticeable-differences.
80	If the error can be reduced below this number of JNDs
81	over the whole frame before the time allocation is spent,
82	.I ranimove
83	will then proceed to the next frame.
84	A value of 2.0 JNDs is the point at which 75% of the people will notice
85	a difference, and this is the level usually selected for such a
86	termination test.
87	There is no default value for this option, which means that rendering
88	will proceed until the time allocation is spent for each frame, regardless.
89	If
90	.I \-t
91	is set to 0,
92	.I ranimove
93	will spend as much time as it takes to reduce the
94	visible error below the value set by the
95	.I \-d
96	option.
97	.PP
98	.I Ranimove
99	renders each frame in three stages.
100	In the first stage, a low-quality image
101	is rendered using one ray sample per 16 pixels.
102	In the second stage, pixels from the previous frame are extrapolated to
103	their corresponding positions in
104	this one, based on the given camera and object movements.
105	A set of heuristics is applied
106	to prevent errors in specular highlights and shadows, avoiding
107	some of the errors typical with the
108	.I pinterp(1)
109	program.
110	In the third stage, additional high-quality samples are used to refine
111	important regions of the image that are judged to have visible errors.
112	This proceeds until the stopping criteria specified by the
113	.I \-t
114	and
115	.I -d
116	options are met,
117	when the frame is filtered and written to the designated picture file.
118	.PP
119	The chief differences between this program and
120	.I ranimate(1)
121	are that motion blur is computed for objects as well as camera movement,
122	and its progressive rendering allows better control over the tradeoff
123	between frame accuracy and rendering time.
124	Fewer controls are provided for managing the picture files produced by
125	.I ranimove,
126	and no facilities for distributed rendering are available other
127	than executing
128	.I ranimove
129	on different machines using the
130	.I \-f
131	option to manually partition the work.
132	.PP
133	Animation variable assignments appear one per line in
134	.I rnmfile.
135	The name of the variable is followed by an equals sign
136	('=') and its value(s).
137	The end of line may be escaped with a backslash ('\\'), though it is
138	not usually necessary since additional variable values may be given
139	in multiple assignments.
140	Variables that should have only one value are given in upper case.
141	Variables that may have multiple values are given in lower case.
142	Variables may be abbreviated by their first three letters.
143	Comments in
144	.I rnmfile
145	start with a pound sign ('#') and proceed to the end of line.
146	.PP
147	The animation variables, their interpretations and default values
148	are given below.
149	.TP 10n
150	.BR OCTREE
151	The name of the base octree file, which should be generated by the
152	.I oconv(1)
153	command using the
154	.I \-f
155	option.
156	There is no default value for this variable.
157	If no
158	.I RIF
159	variable is given, the octree must be specified.
160	.TP
161	.BR RIF
162	This variable specifies a
163	.I rad(1)
164	input file to use as a source of rendering options and other
165	variable settings.
166	If given,
167	.I ranimate
168	will execute
169	.I rad
170	and create an options file to control rendering parameters.
171	.I Ranimate
172	will also extract default settings for the common variables:
173	.I OCTREE,
174	.I RESOLUTION,
175	and
176	.I EXPOSURE.
177	Following the file name, overriding variable settings may be given,
178	which will be passed to
179	.I rad
180	on the command line.
181	Settings with spaces in them should be enclosed in quotes.
182	The execution of
183	.I rad
184	will also update the contents of the octree, if necessary.
185	There is no default value for this variable.
186	.TP
187	.BR move
188	This variable specifies an object (or objects) with a specific
189	motion and/or rendering priority.
190	Four value arguments are expected for each appearance of this variable.
191	The first is the name of a parent move object, or "void" if none.
192	If given, the object's transformation will be prepended to that
193	of its parent.
194	The second argument is the name of this object, which will be used
195	to name surfaces it contains, and as a modifier for any child objects
196	that reference it.
197	The third argument is the transformation string or file for this object.
198	If this argument is enclosed in quotes and begins with a hyphen
199	('-'), then it will be interpreted as a
200	static transform specification a la
201	.I xform(1).
202	Otherwise, the argument will be taken as the name of a file that contains
203	one such transform specification per line, corresponding to frames in the
204	animation.
205	A period ('.') may be given if no object transformation is desired.
206	The fourth argument is the name of a
207	.I RADIANCE
208	scene file (or files) to be given to
209	.I xform
210	for transformation.
211	If this argument begins with an exclamation point ('!'), then
212	it will be interpreted as a command rather than a file.
213	A final word corresponding to the frame number will be
214	appended to the command, and its output will be passed to
215	the input of
216	.I xform
217	for each frame.
218	An optinal fifth argument
219	specifies the rendering priority for this object.
220	Values greater than 1 will result in preferential rendering of
221	this object over other portions of the image when it appears in a frame.
222	Values less than 1 will cause the rendering to neglect this object in
223	favor of other parts of the image.
224	A value of 3.0 can be interpreted as saying the viewer is three times more
225	likely to look at this object than the background.
226	A file may be given rather than a floating point value, and this file must
227	contain one floating point number per line, corresponding to frames in the
228	animation.
229	.TP
230	.BR VIEWFILE
231	This variable names a file from which
232	.I ranimove
233	may extract the view for each frame in the animation.
234	This file should contain one valid view per frame, starting with
235	frame 1 on line 1.
236	An exception is made for a view file with only a single view, which
237	is used for every frame of the animation.
238	In this case, the
239	.I END
240	variable must also be specified.
241	This variable is required, and there is no default value.
242	.TP
243	.BR END
244	The final frame number in the animation.
245	The default value is computed from the number of views in the given
246	.I VIEWFILE.
247	Normally, this variable will only be given if the view is static.
248	.TP
249	.BR EXPOSURE
250	This variable tells
251	.I ranimate
252	how to adjust the exposure for each frame.
253	As in
254	.I pfilt,
255	the exposure setting may be given either as a multiplier or as a
256	number of f-stop adjustments (eg. +2 or -1.5).
257	Alternatively, a file name may be given, which
258	.I ranimate
259	will interpret as having one exposure value per line per frame,
260	beginning with frame 1 at line 1.
261	(See also the
262	.I VIEWFILE
263	variable, above.)\0
264	There is no default value for this variable.
265	If it is not given, no exposure adjustments will be made.
266	.TP
267	.BR BASENAME
268	The base output file name for the final frames.
269	This string should contain a
270	.I printf(3)
271	style integer field to distinguish one frame number from another.
272	The final frames will use this name with a ".pic" suffix.
273	The default value is "frame%03d".
274	.TP
275	.BR MBLUR
276	This variable specifies the fraction of a frame time that the shutter
277	is simulated as being open for motion blur.
278	Motion blur is computed by
279	.I ranimove
280	using image-based rendering methods, and will not be exact.
281	The default value is 0, meaning no motion blurring.
282	.TP
283	.BR RATE
284	This variable specifies the animation frame rate, in frames per second.
285	This is needed to compute the animation error visibility.
286	The default value is 8.
287	.TP
288	.BR RESOLUTION
289	This variable specifies the desired final picture resolution.
290	If only a single number is given, this value will be used for both
291	the horizontal and vertical picture dimensions.
292	If two numbers are given, the first is the horizontal resolution and
293	the second is the vertical resolution.
294	If three numbers are given, the third is taken as the pixel aspect
295	ratio for the final picture (a real value).
296	If the pixel aspect ratio is zero, the exact dimensions given will
297	be those produced.
298	Otherwise, they will be used as a frame in which the final image
299	must fit.
300	The default value for this variable is 640.
301	.TP
302	.BR lowq
303	This variable may be used to specify rendering options
304	for the initial, low-quality ray samples.
305	It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
306	or as variable settings for the
307	.I rad
308	command, in which case the
309	.I RIF
310	variable must also be specified.
311	.TP
312	.BR highq
313	This variable may be used to specify rendering options
314	for the final, high-quality ray samples.
315	It may be given either as a list of rendering parameter settings,
316	or as variable settings for the
317	.I rad
318	command, in which case the
319	.I RIF
320	variable must also be specified.
321	.TP
322	.BR oconv
323	This variable may be used to specify special options for
324	.I oconv.
325	See the
326	.I oconv(1)
327	manual page for a list of valid options.
328	(The
329	.I \-f
330	option is specified by default.)\0
331	.SH EXAMPLES
332	A minimal input file for
333	.I ranimove
334	might look like this:
335	.IP "" .3i
336	.nf
337	::::::::::
338	sample.rnm
339	::::::::::
340	# The rad input file for our static scene:
341	RIF= tutor.rif
342	# The view file containing one view per frame:
343	VIEWFILE= anim1.vf
344	# Our central character and its motion:
345	move= void myguy myguy.xf myguy.rad 2.0
346	.fi
347	.PP
348	Note that most of the variables are not set in this file.
349	If we only want to see what default values
350	.I ranimove
351	would use without actually executing anything, we can invoke it
352	thus:
353	.IP "" .2i
354	ranimove -n 0 -e sample.rnm
355	.PP
356	This will print the variables we have given as well as default
357	values
358	.I ranimove
359	has assigned for us.
360	.PP
361	Usually, we execute
362	.I ranimove
363	in the background, redirecting the standard output and standard
364	error to a file:
365	.IP "" .2i
366	ranimove sample.rnm >& sample.err &
367	.PP
368	If we decide that the default values
369	.I ranimove
370	has chosen for our variables are not all appropriate, we can add
371	some more assignments to the file:
372	.IP "" .3i
373	.nf
374	RES= 1024 # shoot for 1024x resolution
375	MBLUR= .25 # apply camera motion blur
376	RATE= 15 # 15 frames/second
377	EXP= anim1.exp # adjust exposure according to file
378	lowq= QUAL=Low # low quality ray sampling
379	highq= QUAL=Med # high quality ray sampling
380	.fi
381	.PP
382	Note the use of abbreviation for variable names.
383	.SH AUTHOR
384	Greg Ward
385	.SH "SEE ALSO"
386	oconv(1), pfilt(1), pinterp(1), rad(1), ranimate(1), rpict(1), xform(1)