[ViewVC] Diff of: Development/ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes

Comparing ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes (file contents):
Revision 1.55 by greg, Sat Oct 30 04:59:41 2004 UTC vs.
Revision 1.140 by greg, Thu Nov 15 18:33:50 2007 UTC

+Changed default temporary directory from /usr/tmp, which doesn't exist
+on a lot of systems these days, to /tmp.
-+
-+
+Eliminated many unused files and programs from the distribution, including
-+
+the following programs that were being built but no longer used:
-+
+        oki20   - printer driver for OkiMate 20 printer (B&W)
-+
+        oki20c  - printer driver for OkiMate 20 color printer
-+
+        pcwarp  - intended as more general substitute for macbetcal,
-+
+                        but never quite worked
-+
+        ra_avs  - convert to & from AVS image format
-+
+        ra_bn   - convert to & from Barneyscann format
-+
+        ra_pr   - convert to & from 8-bit Sun rasterfile format
-+
+        ra_pr24 - convert to & from 24-bit Sun rasterfile format
-+
+        thf2rad - convert GDS "things file" to Radiance scene format
-+
+If anyone is still wanting any of the above programs, let us know and we'll
-+
+reinstate it.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in pcond's acuity simulation for small view angles (less than
-+
+degrees horizontally or vertically).  Thanks to James Lee for figuring
-+
+this out.
-+
-+
+Added script to convert to/from ICT's Poskanzer Float Map, which I don't
-+
+care to support officially due to its machine-dependent byte order.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug that caused incorrect reporting of non-surface in set when
-+
+mixing meshes and instances.  (Thanks to Jack de Valpine for discovery.)
-+
-+
+Fixed inaccuracy in calculation of diffuse transmission in the presence
-+
+of pure specular (Fresnel reflection) using "trans" material.  Thanks
-+
+to Christoph Reinhart for pointing out the error.
-+
-+
+Made internal change to tone-mapping library to use structure pointer
-+
+rather than stack, making code re-entrant and more up to modern standards.
-+
-+
+Added -pd option to handle depth-of-field blur in rpict.  This requires
-+
+that the view directon (-vd option) include focal distance information,
-+
+which is now preserved by the various view file routines, and reported
-+
+by the vwright command.
-+
-+
+Added DBLUR variable to ranimate and pmdblur script to handle simultaneous
-+
+motion and depth-of-field blurring.  Thanks to Visarc for funding this work.
-+
-+
+Added setting of focus distance in rvu ("focus" command) and rholo
-+
+('f'/"frame" command).
-+
-+
+Changed default remote shell in ranimate to "ssh" rather than "rsh",
-+
+which has been abandoned on most Unix systems due to security issues.
-+
-+
+Fixed behavior of source primitive using illum with no alternate
-+
+material.  These now become transparent so one can see the sky or
-+
+light-probe background for use in image-based lighting.  Previously,
-+
+the user needed to specify the background glow as the alternate
-+
+material for a distant illum source to behave properly.  (This still
-+
+works.)
-+
-+
+Fixed some minor problems and inconsistencies with 16-bit/channel
-+
+TIFF i/o in ra_tiff.
-+
-+
+Created mksource program to generate distant sources for improved
-+
+image-based lighting with light probes.
-+
-+
+Changed ambient calculation so that -ad will not limit recursion
-+
+depth, and a minimum of 27 samples will be sent out for each stored
-+
+ambient value, or 3 samples if -aa is 0 (caching off).
-+
-+
+Added -oM option to rtrace to report material (rather than modifier)
-+
+for cases where actual material is aliased or further up modifier chain.
-+
-+
+Rearranged the way ray contributions are computed so that it might be
-+
+possible to use rtrace to derive daylight coefficients and optical
-+
+transfer functions.  The new -oTW option of rtrace produces color
-+
+contribution weights for each ray, which combined with the -ti (or -tI)
-+
+option permits the contribution of selected surfaces or sources to
-+
+be determined.  Using the -oTW option, one should also specify
-+
+options "-dt 0 -aa 0 -as 0" for optimal results.  In particular,
-+
+one cannot expect reasonable tallies with -ab >= 1 and irradiance
-+
+caching on (-aa > 0).
-+
-+
+The same code modifications included a change to the indirect computation
-+
+with caching switched off (-aa 0).  Whereas before, the number of secondary
-+
+rays after the first bounce were half of the previous generation, they are
-+
+now determined by the surface reflectance, making for a better and faster
-+
+calculation.  It should now be possible to compute many bounces with -aa 0,
-+
+which used to be prohibitively expensive.
-+
-+
+Added -T option to xshowtrace to trace rays to light sources.
-+
-+
+Added meta2bmp program to produce BMP files from metafile graphics.
-+
-+
+Added cct_x(t) and cct_y(t) to src/cal/cal/blackbody.cal to interpolate
-+
+CIE chromaticities for particular black-body temperatures.
-+
-+
+Increased maximum number of input pictures in pcomb and pcompos to 512.
-+
-+
+Created rtcontrib program for computing ray contribution coefficients.
-+
+This tool may be used to do standard optical ray tracing or daylight
-+
+coefficient calculations for annual simulations, among other uses.
-+
-+
+Added tilde ('~') output option as part of the -o* specification of
-+
+rtrace.  This permits ray trees to be parsed more easily in binary
-+
+output mode, as needed by rtcontrib.
-+
-+
+Implemented Russian roulette ray termination with -lr <= 0.
-+
+Made -lr -10 the default in rtcontrib.
-+
-+
+Made rtcontrib -f option search RAYPATH directories.
-+
-+
+Made it so -o option of rtcontrib can pipe -o output to a command.
-+
-+
+Added -if and -of options to total for binary i/o (following rcalc mold).
-+
-+
+Switched default options in rtrace to use Russian roulette.  (Rpict and rvu
-+
+still use biased ray termination.)
-+
-+
+Added rtcontrib -r option to recover partial output.
-+
-+
+Added -u rendering option for pure Monte Carlo sampling.
-+
+(Got rid of -DMC compile option, which this makes superfluous.)
-+
-+
+Changed -t option of rlam to accept strings as well as single characters.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in rcalc with -l option where it would sometimes go into an
-+
+infinite loop.
-+
-+
+Fixed truly ancient bug in bounding box computation for cones, which
-+
+could (and did) cause missing segments.
-+
-+
+Added -z option to normtiff to output LZW-compressed files.
-+
-+
+Last change to total causes it to produce results when it sees an empty
-+
+line on the input.  This was not intentional, but I decided I like this
-+
+behavior so I documented it rather than changing it.
-+
-+
+=====================
-+
+Version 3.8
-+
-+
+Fixed Russian roulette ray termination, which was doing the opposite of
-+
+what it should have been doing, resulting in overestimated values below
-+
+minimum ray sampling weight (serious).
-+
-+
+Changed mksource to use 98th percentile (rather than 99th) for threshold.
-+
-+
+(Above changes included in 3.7.1 patch release.)
-+
-+
+Eliminated writing of EXPOSURE= line in ra_tiff -r when source TIFF
-+
+does not have STONITS set.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in ambient calculation that caused black values for multiple
-+
+bounces in some scenes.  Thanks to Mark Stock for creating and sharing
-+
+the sophisticated test scene that demonstrated this problem.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in antimatter using Russian Roulette sampling.
-+
-+
+(Above changes included in 3.7.2 patch release 22 Aug 2005.)
-+
-+
+Created fieldcomb script to combine alternate fields in a rendering
-+
+sequence.  (Development generously sponsored by Iebele Abel.)
-+
-+
+Added missing preload of mesh objects for more efficient memory use
-+
+during parallel rendering -- this was a serious oversight.
-+
-+
+Created ran2tiff program to automate exposure setting of animation
-+
+sequences using a moving histogram in combination with pcond, and
-+
+converting frames to TIFF.
-+
-+
+Eliminated SPEED macro from makeall and source tree.
-+
-+
+Added -pj option to vwrays to allow jittering of sample locations.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in rtcontrib where it occasionally missed writing the
-+
+final bin file.  (Pretty serious, actually.)
-+
-+
+Added -Dfseeko=fseek to MACH= line for linux, as fseeko(3) seems to be
-+
+broken in current versions of Linux.  (Need to remove this later.)
-+
-+
+Rearranged struct's for better efficiency on 64-bit architectures.
-+
-+
+Added -i option to rlam so it works with binary input formats.
-+
-+
+Added rtcontrib -bn option to specify number of bins and fixed bug
-+
+in recovery of files containing multiple values per record.
-+
-+
+Added rtcontrib -fo option to write over existing files, which it now
-+
+refuses to do without this option.
-+
-+
+Made rtcontrib flush output when handed a zero-length ray vector,
-+
+to match behavior of rtrace.
-+
-+
+Improved color scale for falsecolor output.
-+
-+
+Added threshold test for Fresnel approximation to prevent its use
-+
+on smooth surfaces with unrealistically low specularities (less than 1.8%).
-+
+Water has a specular reflectance of 2.1% at room temperture.
-+
-+
+Removed NICE macro settings in rpict and rtrace, which was slowing down
-+
+the processes under Mac OS X (10.4) by about 60% due to processor napping.
-+
-+
+Made xform, replmarks and rad2mgf handle quoted modifiers and names properly.
-+
-+
+Fixed problem in genblinds, where it was generating slats that were too
-+
+wide with the +/-r option.  (Thanks to Helena Buelow-Huebe for discovering
-+
+this bug.)
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in ra_ppm for 16-bit/sample i/o, where it was getting the byte
-+
+order wrong (apparently).
-+
-+
+Added -V option to rtcontrib to report actual contributions, rather than
-+
+just ray coefficients.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in ranimate that caused it to fail in continuation of renderings.
-+
-+
+Renamed librt.a to librtrad.a, to avoid conflict on Solaris. Almost
-+
+everything now gets linked to -lrtrad instead of -lrt.
-+
-+
+Fixed problem with large sample sets, so -u+ option now is truly random.
-+
+Thanks to Rick Mistrick and Younju Yoon for identifying this problem,
-+
+which was related to a poorly designed hash function.
-+
-+
+Changed -u+ to be the default setting in rtrace (only).
-+
-+
+Fixed binary i/o for rlam and vwrays under Windows.
-+
-+
+Added tmCvLums() to tone-mapping routines using a 16-bit lookup table
-+
+on IEEE floats, which is also used to improve speed of COLOR conversions,
-+
+especially on machines with slow log() calls.  The first call to
-+
+tmCvLums(), tmCvGrays(), or tmCvColors() initializes the table.
-+
-+
+Created optics2rad.csh script to convert from Optics 5 material output
-+
+to something correct for Radiance.  Built on old glazing.cal function,
-+
+which is actually incorrect so removed from the distribution.
-+
-+
+Fixed nuisance bug in ximage under some SGI machines that caused it to
-+
+choose an inappropriate visual and display incorrect colors.  (Thanks
-+
+to Oskar Itzinger for debugging the problem.)
-+
-+
+Fixed long-standing inaccuracy of pcompos -t and +t thresholding options.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in handling of views with tabs rather than spaces.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug related to alias of alias.
-+
-+
+****** COMPATIBILITY CHANGE ********
-+
+Changed default sky turbidity in gensky from the original default of
-+
+.75 to the CIE 110-1994 standard value of 2.45.  Thanks to Marilyne
-+
+Anderson of MIT for pointing out this discrepancy.
-+
-+
+Added -o option to ra_xyze to produce original pixel values.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in tracing of virtual sources, where intervening glazing was
-+
+not being accounted for properly.
-+
-+
+Added -h option to pcompos and pcomb to eliminate verbose headers.
-+
-+
+=====================
-+
+Version 3.9
-+
-+
+Added -spec option to falsecolor to restore original spectral color scale.
-+
+Also added "-s auto" option to automatically set the maximum value.
-+
-+
+Added byte-swapping input and output to rcalc.
-+
-+
+Additional error-checking for source surfaces.
-+
-+
+Re-fixed bug in octree code that caused it to allocate 8 times as
-+
+much memory as it actually used(!) -- this was pointed out way back
-+
+in 1999 by Erik Reinhard and Erik Jansen, but the fix they gave me
-+
+got lost in the slightly borken release process at the time.  This
-+
+should make a big difference in memory usage, especially for the
-+
+new mesh primitive.  (I measured 30% less memory usage.)
-+
-+
+Corrected ray weights for material mixtures.
-+
-+
+Reduced the default -n setting for obj2mesh to take better advantage
-+
+of the smaller octree structure size.
-+
-+
+Fixed bug in shadow cache where it was adding surfaces with antimatter
-+
+holes cut in them to the obstructor list.  Thanks to John Mardaljevic
-+
+for discovering and reporting the problem.
-+
-+
+Adding ability in mkillum to incorporate BSDF data in calculation.
-+
+Internal interface (raypcalls) now used in place of rtrace process(es).
-+
-+
+Fixed pixel alignment in pcomb for size reduction and enlargement.
-+
-+
+Allow rtcontrib user to set -P and -PP options for persistent rendering.
-+
+The only caveat is that -n setting > 1 requires -PP rather than -P.

Diff Legend

-–
+Removed lines
-+
+Added lines
-<
+Changed lines
->
+Changed lines

Comparing ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes (file contents): Revision 1.55 by greg, Sat Oct 30 04:59:41 2004 UTC vs. Revision 1.140 by greg, Thu Nov 15 18:33:50 2007 UTC

Diff Legend

Comparing ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes (file contents):
Revision 1.55 by greg, Sat Oct 30 04:59:41 2004 UTC vs.
Revision 1.140 by greg, Thu Nov 15 18:33:50 2007 UTC