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root/radiance/ray/doc/man/man1/rtcontrib.1
Revision: 1.24
Committed: Thu Jun 14 22:42:21 2012 UTC (12 years, 10 months ago) by greg
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: HEAD
Changes since 1.23: +1 -1 lines
State: FILE REMOVED
Log Message:
Reworked rtcontrib into rcontrib program

File Contents

# Content
1 .\" RCSid "$Id: rtcontrib.1,v 1.23 2010/09/26 15:51:14 greg Exp $"
2 .TH RTCONTRIB 1 5/25/05 RADIANCE
3 .SH NAME
4 rtcontrib - compute contribution coefficients in a RADIANCE scene
5 .SH SYNOPSIS
6 .B rtcontrib
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 "rtcontrib [ options ] \-defaults"
44 .SH DESCRIPTION
45 .I Rtcontrib
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 .I rtrace
65 processes will be used to accelerate computation on a shared
66 memory machine.
67 Note that there is no benefit to using more processes
68 than there are local CPUs available to do the work, and the
69 .I rtcontrib
70 process itself may use a considerable amount of CPU time.
71 .PP
72 By setting the boolean
73 .I \-V
74 option, you may instruct
75 .I rtcontrib
76 to report the contribution from each material rather than the ray
77 coefficient.
78 This is particularly useful for light sources with directional output
79 distributions, whose value would otherwise be lost in the shuffle.
80 With the default
81 .I -V-
82 setting, the output of rtcontrib is a coefficient that must be multiplied
83 by the radiance of each material to arrive at a final contribution.
84 This is more convenient for computing daylight coefficeints, or cases
85 where the actual radiance is not desired.
86 Use the
87 .I -V+
88 setting when you wish to simply sum together contributions
89 (with possible adjustment factors) to obtain a final radiance value.
90 Combined with the
91 .I \-i
92 or
93 .I \-I
94 option, irradiance contributions are reported by
95 .I \-V+
96 rather than radiance, and
97 .I \-V-
98 coefficients contain an additonal factor of PI.
99 .PP
100 The
101 .I \-c
102 option tells
103 .I rtcontrib
104 how many rays to accumulate for each record.
105 The default value is 1, meaning a full record will be produced for
106 each input ray.
107 For values greater than 1, contributions will be averaged together
108 over the given number of input rays.
109 If set to zero, only a single record will be produced at the very
110 end, corresponding to the sum of all rays given on the input
111 (rather than the average).
112 This is equivalent to passing all the output records through a program like
113 .I total(1)
114 to sum RGB values together, but is much more efficient.
115 Using this option, it is possible to reverse sampling, sending rays from
116 a parallel source such as the sun to a diffuse surface, for example.
117 Note that output flushing via zero-direction rays is disabled
118 for accumulated evaluations.
119 .PP
120 The output of
121 .I rtcontrib
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 rtcontrib
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 Rtcontrib
132 calls
133 .I rtrace(1)
134 with the \-oTW (or \-oTV) option to calculate the daughter ray
135 contributions for each input ray, and the output tallies
136 are sent to one or more destinations according to the given
137 .I \-o
138 specification.
139 If a destination begins with an exclamation mark ('!'), then
140 a pipe is opened to a command and data is sent to its standard input.
141 Otherwise, the destination is treated as a file.
142 An existing file of the same name will not be clobbered, unless the
143 .I \-fo
144 option is given.
145 If instead the
146 .I \-r
147 option is specified, data recovery is attempted on existing files.
148 (If
149 .I "\-c 0"
150 is used together with the
151 .I \-r
152 option, existing files are read in and new ray evaluations are added
153 to the previous results, providing a convenient means for
154 progressive simulation.)\0
155 If an output specification contains a "%s" format, this will be
156 replaced by the modifier name.
157 The
158 .I \-b
159 option may be used to further define
160 a "bin number" within each object if finer resolution is needed, and
161 this will be applied to a "%d" format in the output file
162 specification if present.
163 The actual bin number is computed at run time based on ray direction
164 and surface intersection, as described below.
165 If the number of bins is known in advance, it should be specified with the
166 .I \-bn
167 option, and this is critical for output files containing multiple values
168 per record.
169 A variable or constant name may be given for this parameter if
170 it has been defined via a previous
171 .I \-f
172 or
173 .I \-e
174 option.
175 Since bin numbers start from 0, the bin count is always equal to
176 the last bin plus 1.
177 Set the this value to 0 if the bin count is unknown (the default).
178 The most recent
179 .I \-b,
180 .I \-bn
181 and
182 .I \-o
183 options to the left of each
184 .I \-m
185 setting are the ones used for that modifier.
186 The ordering of other options is unimportant, except for
187 .I \-x
188 and
189 .I \-y
190 if the
191 .I \-c
192 is 0, when they control the resolution string
193 produced in the corresponding output.
194 .PP
195 If a
196 .I \-b
197 expression is defined for a particular modifier,
198 the bin number will be evaluated at run time for each
199 ray contribution from
200 .I rtrace.
201 Specifically, each ray's world intersection point will be assigned to
202 the variables Px, Py, and Pz, and the normalized ray direction
203 will be assigned to Dx, Dy, and Dz.
204 These parameters may be combined with definitions given in
205 .I \-e
206 arguments and files read using the
207 .I \-f
208 option.
209 The computed bin value will be
210 rounded to the nearest whole number.
211 This mechanism allows the user to define precise regions or directions
212 they wish to accumulate, such as the Tregenza sky discretization,
213 which would be otherwise impossible to specify
214 as a set of RADIANCE primitives.
215 The rules and predefined functions available for these expressions are
216 described in the
217 .I rcalc(1)
218 man page.
219 Unlike
220 .I rcalc,
221 .I rtcontrib
222 will search the RADIANCE library directories for each file given in a
223 .I \-f
224 option.
225 .PP
226 If no
227 .I \-o
228 specification is given, results are written on the standard output in order
229 of modifier (as given on the command line) then bin number.
230 Concatenated data is also sent to a single destination (i.e., an initial
231 .I \-o
232 specification without formatting strings).
233 If a "%s" format appears but no "%d" in the
234 .I \-o
235 specification, then each modifier will have its own output file, with
236 multiple values per record in the case of a non-zero
237 .I \-b
238 definition.
239 If a "%d" format appears but no "%s", then each bin will get its own
240 output file, with modifiers output in order in each record.
241 For text output, each RGB coefficient triple is separated by a tab,
242 with a newline at the end of each ray record.
243 For binary output formats, there is no such delimiter to mark
244 the end of each record.
245 .PP
246 Input and output format defaults to plain text, where each ray's
247 origin and direction (6 real values) are given on input,
248 and one line is produced per output file per ray.
249 Alternative data representations may be specified by the
250 .I \-f[io]
251 option, which is described in the
252 .I rtrace
253 man page along with the associated
254 .I \-x
255 and
256 .I \-y
257 resolution settings.
258 In particular, the color ('c') output data representation
259 together with positive dimensions for
260 .I \-x
261 and
262 .I \-y
263 will produce an uncompressed RADIANCE picture,
264 suitable for manipulation with
265 .I pcomb(1)
266 and related tools.
267 .PP
268 Options may be given on the command line and/or read from the
269 environment and/or read from a file.
270 A command argument beginning with a dollar sign ('$') is immediately
271 replaced by the contents of the given environment variable.
272 A command argument beginning with an at sign ('@') is immediately
273 replaced by the contents of the given file.
274 .SH EXAMPLES
275 To compute the proportional contributions from sources modified
276 by "light1" vs. "light2" on a set of illuminance values:
277 .IP "" .2i
278 rtcontrib \-I+ @render.opt \-o c_%s.dat \-m light1 \-m light2 scene.oct < test.dat
279 .PP
280 To generate a pair of images corresponding to these two lights'
281 contributions:
282 .IP "" .2i
283 vwrays \-ff \-x 1024 \-y 1024 \-vf best.vf |
284 rtcontrib \-ffc `vwrays \-d \-x 1024 \-y 1024 \-vf best.vf`
285 @render.opt \-o c_%s.hdr \-m light1 \-m light2 scene.oct
286 .PP
287 These images may then be recombined using the desired outputs
288 of light1 and light2:
289 .IP "" .2i
290 pcomb \-c 100 90 75 c_light1.hdr \-c 50 55 57 c_light2.hdr > combined.hdr
291 .PP
292 To compute an array of illuminance contributions according to a Tregenza sky:
293 .IP "" .2i
294 rtcontrib \-I+ \-b tbin \-o sky.dat \-m skyglow \-b 0 \-o ground.dat \-m groundglow
295 @render.opt \-f tregenza.cal scene.oct < test.dat
296 .SH ENVIRONMENT
297 RAYPATH path to search for \-f and \-M files
298 .SH AUTHOR
299 Greg Ward
300 .SH "SEE ALSO"
301 cnt(1), genklemsamp(1), getinfo(1), pcomb(1), pfilt(1), ra_rgbe(1),
302 rcalc(1), rpict(1), rsensor(1), rtrace(1), total(1), vwrays(1), ximage(1)