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Revision: 1.8
Committed: Fri Jul 11 01:52:38 2014 UTC (10 years, 11 months ago) by greg
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.7: +5 -3 lines
Log Message:
Corrected errors in description

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# Content
1 .\" RCSid "$Id: rcontrib.1,v 1.7 2013/11/01 15:32:58 greg Exp $"
2 .TH RCONTRIB 1 5/25/05 RADIANCE
3 .SH NAME
4 rcontrib - compute contribution coefficients in a RADIANCE scene
5 .SH SYNOPSIS
6 .B rcontrib
7 [
8 .B "\-n nprocs"
9 ][
10 .B \-V
11 ][
12 .B "\-c count"
13 ][
14 .B \-fo
15 |
16 .B \-r
17 ][
18 .B "\-e expr"
19 ][
20 .B "\-f source"
21 ][
22 .B "\-o ospec"
23 ][
24 .B "\-b binv"
25 ][
26 .B "\-bn nbins"
27 ]
28 {
29 .B "\-m mod | \-M file"
30 }
31 ..
32 [
33 .B $EVAR
34 ]
35 [
36 .B @file
37 ]
38 [
39 rtrace options
40 ]
41 .B octree
42 .br
43 .B "rcontrib [ options ] \-defaults"
44 .SH DESCRIPTION
45 .I Rcontrib
46 computes ray coefficients
47 for objects whose modifiers are named in one or more
48 .I \-m
49 settings.
50 These modifiers are usually materials associated with
51 light sources or sky domes, and must directly modify some geometric
52 primitives to be considered in the output.
53 A modifier list may also be read from a file using the
54 .I \-M
55 option.
56 The RAYPATH environment variable determines directories to search for
57 this file.
58 (No search takes place if a file name begins with a '.', '/' or '~'
59 character.)\0
60 .PP
61 If the
62 .I \-n
63 option is specified with a value greater than 1, multiple
64 processes will be used to accelerate computation on a shared
65 memory machine.
66 Note that there is no benefit to using more processes
67 than there are local CPUs available to do the work, and the
68 .I rcontrib
69 process itself may use a considerable amount of CPU time.
70 .PP
71 By setting the boolean
72 .I \-V
73 option, you may instruct
74 .I rcontrib
75 to report the contribution from each material rather than the ray
76 coefficient.
77 This is particularly useful for light sources with directional output
78 distributions, whose value would otherwise be lost in the shuffle.
79 With the default
80 .I -V-
81 setting, the output of rcontrib is a coefficient that must be multiplied
82 by the radiance of each material to arrive at a final contribution.
83 This is more convenient for computing daylight coefficeints, or cases
84 where the actual radiance is not desired.
85 Use the
86 .I -V+
87 setting when you wish to simply sum together contributions
88 (with possible adjustment factors) to obtain a final radiance value.
89 Combined with the
90 .I \-i
91 or
92 .I \-I
93 option, irradiance contributions are reported by
94 .I \-V+
95 rather than radiance, and
96 .I \-V-
97 coefficients contain an additonal factor of PI.
98 .PP
99 The
100 .I \-c
101 option tells
102 .I rcontrib
103 how many rays to accumulate for each record.
104 The default value is one, meaning a full record will be produced for
105 each input ray.
106 For values greater than one, contributions will be averaged together
107 over the given number of input rays.
108 If set to zero, only a single record will be produced at the very
109 end, corresponding to the sum of all rays given on the input
110 (rather than the average).
111 This is equivalent to passing all the output records through a program like
112 .I total(1)
113 to sum RGB values together, but is much more efficient.
114 Using this option, it is possible to reverse sampling, sending rays from
115 a parallel source such as the sun to a diffuse surface, for example.
116 Note that output flushing via zero-direction rays is disabled with
117 .I \-c
118 set to zero.
119 .PP
120 The output of
121 .I rcontrib
122 has many potential uses.
123 Source contributions can be used as components in linear combination to
124 reproduce any desired variation, e.g., simulating lighting controls or
125 changing sky conditions via daylight coefficients.
126 More generally,
127 .I rcontrib
128 can be used to compute arbitrary input-output relationships in optical
129 systems, such as luminaires, light pipes, and shading devices.
130 .PP
131 .I Rcontrib
132 sends the accumulated rays tallies
133 to one or more destinations according to the given
134 .I \-o
135 specification.
136 If a destination begins with an exclamation mark ('!'), then
137 a pipe is opened to a command and data is sent to its standard input.
138 Otherwise, the destination is treated as a file.
139 An existing file of the same name will not be clobbered, unless the
140 .I \-fo
141 option is given.
142 If instead the
143 .I \-r
144 option is specified, data recovery is attempted on existing files.
145 (If
146 .I "\-c 0"
147 is used together with the
148 .I \-r
149 option, existing files are read in and new ray evaluations are added
150 to the previous results, providing a convenient means for
151 progressive simulation.)\0
152 If an output specification contains a "%s" format, this will be
153 replaced by the modifier name.
154 The
155 .I \-b
156 option may be used to further define
157 a "bin number" within each object if finer resolution is needed, and
158 this will be applied to a "%d" format in the output file
159 specification if present.
160 The actual bin number is computed at run time based on ray direction
161 and surface intersection, as described below.
162 The number of bins must be specified in advance with the
163 .I \-bn
164 option, and this is critical for output files containing multiple values
165 per record.
166 A variable or constant name may be given for this parameter if
167 it has been defined via a previous
168 .I \-f
169 or
170 .I \-e
171 option.
172 Since bin numbers start from zero, the bin count is always equal to
173 the last bin plus one.
174 The most recent
175 .I \-b,
176 .I \-bn
177 and
178 .I \-o
179 options to the left of each
180 .I \-m
181 setting are the ones used for that modifier.
182 The ordering of other options is unimportant, except for
183 .I \-x
184 and
185 .I \-y
186 if the
187 .I \-c
188 is zero, when they control the resolution string
189 produced in the corresponding output.
190 .PP
191 If a
192 .I \-b
193 expression is defined for a particular modifier,
194 the bin number will be evaluated at run time for each
195 ray contribution.
196 Specifically, each ray's world intersection point will be assigned to
197 the variables Px, Py, and Pz, and the normalized ray direction
198 will be assigned to Dx, Dy, and Dz.
199 These parameters may be combined with definitions given in
200 .I \-e
201 arguments and files read using the
202 .I \-f
203 option.
204 The computed bin value will be
205 rounded to the nearest whole number.
206 For a single bin, you may specify
207 .I "\-b 0",
208 which is the default.
209 This mechanism allows the user to define precise regions or directions
210 they wish to accumulate, such as the Tregenza sky discretization,
211 which would be otherwise impossible to specify
212 as a set of RADIANCE primitives.
213 The rules and predefined functions available for these expressions are
214 described in the
215 .I rcalc(1)
216 man page.
217 Like
218 .I rcalc,
219 .I rcontrib
220 will search the RADIANCE library directories for each file given in a
221 .I \-f
222 option.
223 .PP
224 If no
225 .I \-o
226 specification is given, results are written on the standard output in order
227 of modifier (as given on the command line) then bin number.
228 Concatenated data is also sent to a single destination (i.e., an initial
229 .I \-o
230 specification without formatting strings).
231 If a "%s" format appears but no "%d" in the
232 .I \-o
233 specification, then each modifier will have its own output file, with
234 multiple values per record in the case of a non-zero
235 .I \-b
236 definition.
237 If a "%d" format appears but no "%s", then each bin will get its own
238 output file, with modifiers output in order in each record.
239 For text output, each RGB coefficient triple is separated by a tab,
240 with a newline at the end of each ray record.
241 For binary output formats, there is no such delimiter to mark
242 the end of each record.
243 .PP
244 Input and output format defaults to plain text, where each ray's
245 origin and direction (6 real values) are given on input,
246 and one line is produced per output file per ray.
247 Alternative data representations may be specified by the
248 .I \-f[io]
249 option, which is described in the
250 .I rtrace
251 man page along with the associated
252 .I \-x
253 and
254 .I \-y
255 resolution settings.
256 In particular, the color ('c') output data representation
257 together with positive dimensions for
258 .I \-x
259 and
260 .I \-y
261 will produce an uncompressed RADIANCE picture,
262 suitable for manipulation with
263 .I pcomb(1)
264 and related tools.
265 .PP
266 Options may be given on the command line and/or read from the
267 environment and/or read from a file.
268 A command argument beginning with a dollar sign ('$') is immediately
269 replaced by the contents of the given environment variable.
270 A command argument beginning with an at sign ('@') is immediately
271 replaced by the contents of the given file.
272 .SH EXAMPLES
273 To compute the proportional contributions from sources modified
274 by "light1" vs. "light2" on a set of illuminance values:
275 .IP "" .2i
276 rcontrib \-I+ @render.opt \-o c_%s.dat \-m light1 \-m light2 scene.oct < test.dat
277 .PP
278 To generate a pair of images corresponding to these two lights'
279 contributions:
280 .IP "" .2i
281 vwrays \-ff \-x 1024 \-y 1024 \-vf best.vf |
282 rcontrib \-ffc `vwrays \-d \-x 1024 \-y 1024 \-vf best.vf`
283 @render.opt \-o c_%s.hdr \-m light1 \-m light2 scene.oct
284 .PP
285 These images may then be recombined using the desired outputs
286 of light1 and light2:
287 .IP "" .2i
288 pcomb \-c 100 90 75 c_light1.hdr \-c 50 55 57 c_light2.hdr > combined.hdr
289 .PP
290 To compute an array of illuminance contributions according to a Tregenza sky:
291 .IP "" .2i
292 rcontrib \-I+ \-f tregenza.cal \-b tbin \-bn Ntbins \-o sky.dat \-m skyglow
293 \-b 0 \-o ground.dat \-m groundglow @render.opt scene.oct < test.dat
294 .SH ENVIRONMENT
295 RAYPATH path to search for \-f and \-M files
296 .SH AUTHOR
297 Greg Ward
298 .SH "SEE ALSO"
299 cnt(1), genklemsamp(1), getinfo(1), pcomb(1), pfilt(1), ra_rgbe(1),
300 rcalc(1), rpict(1), rsensor(1), rtrace(1), total(1), vwrays(1), ximage(1)