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Comparing ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes (file contents):
Revision 1.46 by greg, Sun Sep 19 08:42:22 2004 UTC vs.
Revision 1.100 by greg, Mon Sep 19 02:23:58 2005 UTC

# Line 1256 | Line 1256 | Added -I option to replmarks for mesh instancing.
1256   Made similar change for virtual sources to allow modifiers and aliases
1257   on the mirror and prism types to work properly.
1258  
1259 < Rob Guglielmetti dded -lw and -lh options to falsecolor to control the
1259 > Rob Guglielmetti added -lw and -lh options to falsecolor to control the
1260   legend dimensions.  Made it so -lw 0 and/or -lh 0 turns legend off.
1261  
1262   Made it so pcompos will read everything from a stream even if it doesn't
# Line 1296 | Line 1296 | Fixed a very obscure bug in rpict that caused a dark h
1296   line in certain cylindrical projections due to improper drawing
1297   of the sky dome source in rt/srcdraw.c.
1298  
1299 < Fixed problems with effective ray lenths computed for dielectric
1299 > Fixed problems with effective ray lengths computed for dielectric
1300   and BRTDfunc materials.  This was most evident in breakup of holodeck
1301   views when VDISTANCE=True.
1302  
# Line 1311 | Line 1311 | designation, any -m option is ignored.
1311  
1312   Added -n option to mkillum for (shared memory) parallel processing.
1313  
1314 < Fixed long-standing bug in parallel processing code that only seemed
1315 < to manifest with the new mkillum -n option, where rtrace would
1316 < deadlock upon termination.
1314 > Fixed a long-standing bug in parallel processing code that only
1315 > seemed to manifest with the new mkillum -n option, where rtrace
1316 > would deadlock upon termination.  The reason it never showed up
1317 > before is because I always closed processes in the reverse order
1318 > of opening them in other programs.  I went through and found similar
1319 > (potential) bugs in the rview device subprocess code and util/netproc.c.
1320 >
1321 > Corrected the normalization of the Gaussian reflectance model.  This will
1322 > cause an increase in specularity for low-lying light sources.
1323 > Thanks to Don Walters of Boeing and Arne Duer of the Univ. of Innsbruck
1324 > for pointing out this error.  The square root used for the two cosines
1325 > in the denominator of the normalization factor should not be present.
1326 > This was a serious mistake I made in the original model, which went
1327 > undiscovered (at least to my knowledge) for over a decade.  I think
1328 > Bruce Walter of Cornell may have known about it, but I never heard
1329 > the details of his discovery.
1330 >
1331 > Enabled the -p option for primary conversion without tone-mapping
1332 > in ra_bmp.  Also provides for XYZE input conversion to RGB.
1333 >
1334 > Fixed what I consider a bug in pvalue -o when taking XYZE files on input,
1335 > where it was inappropriately undoing the exposure value so that it always
1336 > reported radiance rather than XYZ values with Y in cd/m^2.
1337 >
1338 > Made it so ra_bmp only produces run-length encoded 8-bit output for
1339 > grayscale images that are tone-mapped.  This minimizes circumstances
1340 > under which output scanline order is reversed.
1341 >
1342 > Fixed bug in rcalc where it sometimes wasn't parsing the input format
1343 > correctly.
1344 >
1345 > =====================
1346 > Version 3.7
1347 >
1348 > Fixed bug in source occluder cache which caused consistency error
1349 > for distant sources and mist materials.  (Thanks to Mark Stock for
1350 > finding the problem.)
1351 >
1352 > Fixed serious bug in source drawing routines for rpict, where the edges
1353 > of light sources were appearing through obstructions.  (Thanks to Veronica
1354 > Sundstedt for pointing this out.)
1355 >
1356 > (The above were included in the 3.6.1 patch release.)
1357 >
1358 > Changed default temporary directory from /usr/tmp, which doesn't exist
1359 > on a lot of systems these days, to /tmp.
1360 >
1361 > Eliminated many unused files and programs from the distribution, including
1362 > the following programs that were being built but no longer used:
1363 >        oki20   - printer driver for OkiMate 20 printer (B&W)
1364 >        oki20c  - printer driver for OkiMate 20 color printer
1365 >        pcwarp  - intended as more general substitute for macbetcal,
1366 >                        but never quite worked
1367 >        ra_avs  - convert to & from AVS image format
1368 >        ra_bn   - convert to & from Barneyscann format
1369 >        ra_pr   - convert to & from 8-bit Sun rasterfile format
1370 >        ra_pr24 - convert to & from 24-bit Sun rasterfile format
1371 >        thf2rad - convert GDS "things file" to Radiance scene format
1372 > If anyone is still wanting any of the above programs, let us know and we'll
1373 > reinstate it.
1374 >
1375 > Fixed bug in pcond's acuity simulation for small view angles (less than
1376 > 4 degrees horizontally or vertically).  Thanks to James Lee for figuring
1377 > this out.
1378 >
1379 > Added script to convert to/from ICT's Poskanzer Float Map, which I don't
1380 > care to support officially due to its machine-dependent byte order.
1381 >
1382 > Fixed bug that caused incorrect reporting of non-surface in set when
1383 > mixing meshes and instances.  (Thanks to Jack de Valpine for discovery.)
1384 >
1385 > Fixed inaccuracy in calculation of diffuse transmission in the presence
1386 > of pure specular (Fresnel reflection) using "trans" material.  Thanks
1387 > to Christoph Reinhart for pointing out the error.
1388 >
1389 > Made internal change to tone-mapping library to use structure pointer
1390 > rather than stack, making code re-entrant and more up to modern standards.
1391 >
1392 > Added -pd option to handle depth-of-field blur in rpict.  This requires
1393 > that the view directon (-vd option) include focal distance information,
1394 > which is now preserved by the various view file routines, and reported
1395 > by the vwright command.
1396 >
1397 > Added DBLUR variable to ranimate and pmdblur script to handle simultaneous
1398 > motion and depth-of-field blurring.  Thanks to Visarc for funding this work.
1399 >
1400 > Added setting of focus distance in rvu ("focus" command) and rholo
1401 > ('f'/"frame" command).
1402 >
1403 > Changed default remote shell in ranimate to "ssh" rather than "rsh",
1404 > which has been abandoned on most Unix systems due to security issues.
1405 >
1406 > Fixed behavior of source primitive using illum with no alternate
1407 > material.  These now become transparent so one can see the sky or
1408 > light-probe background for use in image-based lighting.  Previously,
1409 > the user needed to specify the background glow as the alternate
1410 > material for a distant illum source to behave properly.  (This still
1411 > works.)
1412 >
1413 > Fixed some minor problems and inconsistencies with 16-bit/channel
1414 > TIFF i/o in ra_tiff.
1415 >
1416 > Created mksource program to generate distant sources for improved
1417 > image-based lighting with light probes.
1418 >
1419 > Changed ambient calculation so that -ad will not limit recursion
1420 > depth, and a minimum of 27 samples will be sent out for each stored
1421 > ambient value, or 3 samples if -aa is 0 (caching off).
1422 >
1423 > Added -oM option to rtrace to report material (rather than modifier)
1424 > for cases where actual material is aliased or further up modifier chain.
1425 >
1426 > Rearranged the way ray contributions are computed so that it might be
1427 > possible to use rtrace to derive daylight coefficients and optical
1428 > transfer functions.  The new -oTW option of rtrace produces color
1429 > contribution weights for each ray, which combined with the -ti (or -tI)
1430 > option permits the contribution of selected surfaces or sources to
1431 > be determined.  Using the -oTW option, one should also specify
1432 > options "-dt 0 -aa 0 -as 0" for optimal results.  In particular,
1433 > one cannot expect reasonable tallies with -ab >= 1 and irradiance
1434 > caching on (-aa > 0).
1435 >
1436 > The same code modifications included a change to the indirect computation
1437 > with caching switched off (-aa 0).  Whereas before, the number of secondary
1438 > rays after the first bounce were half of the previous generation, they are
1439 > now determined by the surface reflectance, making for a better and faster
1440 > calculation.  It should now be possible to compute many bounces with -aa 0,
1441 > which used to be prohibitively expensive.
1442 >
1443 > Added -T option to xshowtrace to trace rays to light sources.
1444 >
1445 > Added meta2bmp program to produce BMP files from metafile graphics.
1446 >
1447 > Added cct_x(t) and cct_y(t) to src/cal/cal/blackbody.cal to interpolate
1448 > CIE chromaticities for particular black-body temperatures.
1449 >
1450 > Increased maximum number of input pictures in pcomb and pcompos to 512.
1451 >
1452 > Created rtcontrib program for computing ray contribution coefficients.
1453 > This tool may be used to do standard optical ray tracing or daylight
1454 > coefficient calculations for annual simulations, among other uses.
1455 >
1456 > Added tilde ('~') output option as part of the -o* specification of
1457 > rtrace.  This permits ray trees to be parsed more easily in binary
1458 > output mode, as needed by rtcontrib.
1459 >
1460 > Implemented Russian roulette ray termination with -lr <= 0.
1461 > Made -lr -10 the default in rtcontrib.
1462 >
1463 > Made rtcontrib -f option search RAYPATH directories.
1464 >
1465 > Made it so -o option of rtcontrib can pipe -o output to a command.
1466 >
1467 > Added -if and -of options to total for binary i/o (following rcalc mold).
1468 >
1469 > Switched default options in rtrace to use Russian roulette.  (Rpict and rvu
1470 > still use biased ray termination.)
1471 >
1472 > Added rtcontrib -r option to recover partial output.
1473 >
1474 > Added -u rendering option for pure Monte Carlo sampling.
1475 > (Got rid of -DMC compile option, which this makes superfluous.)
1476 >
1477 > Changed -t option of rlam to accept strings as well as single characters.
1478 >
1479 > Fixed bug in rcalc with -l option where it would sometimes go into an
1480 > infinite loop.
1481 >
1482 > Fixed truly ancient bug in bounding box computation for cones, which
1483 > could (and did) cause missing segments.
1484 >
1485 > Added -z option to normtiff to output LZW-compressed files.
1486 >
1487 > Last change to total causes it to produce results when it sees an empty
1488 > line on the input.  This was not intentional, but I decided I like this
1489 > behavior so I documented it rather than changing it.
1490 >
1491 > =====================
1492 > Version 3.8
1493 >
1494 > Fixed Russian roulette ray termination, which was doing the opposite of
1495 > what it should have been doing, resulting in overestimated values below
1496 > minimum ray sampling weight (serious).
1497 >
1498 > Changed mksource to use 98th percentile (rather than 99th) for threshold.
1499 >
1500 > (Above changes included in 3.7.1 patch release.)
1501 >
1502 > Eliminated writing of EXPOSURE= line in ra_tiff -r when source TIFF
1503 > does not have STONITS set.
1504 >
1505 > Fixed bug in ambient calculation that caused black values for multiple
1506 > bounces in some scenes.  Thanks to Mark Stock for creating and sharing
1507 > the sophisticated test scene that demonstrated this problem.
1508 >
1509 > Fixed bug in antimatter using Russian Roulette sampling.
1510 >
1511 > (Above changes included in 3.7.2 patch release 22 Aug 2005.)
1512 >
1513 > Created fieldcomb script to combine alternate fields in a rendering
1514 > sequence.  (Development generously sponsored by Iebele Abel.)
1515 >
1516 > Added missing preload of mesh objects for more efficient memory use
1517 > during parallel rendering -- this was a serious oversight.
1518 >
1519 > Created ran2tiff program to automate exposure setting of animation
1520 > sequences using a moving histogram in combination with pcond, and
1521 > converting frames to TIFF.
1522 >
1523 > Eliminated SPEED macro from makeall and source tree.

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