[Radiance-general] Alpha channel/object matte

[Kirk Thibault]

Rob-

I'm a biomechanical engineer who, for my job and as a hobby, has been 
into 3d graphics, modeling, etc. for a while.  I primarily use Light 
Wave and started getting into global illumination techniques in Light 
Wave and the use of HDR images about 6 months ago.  I found Paul 
Debevec's site and learned a lot about image-based lighting techniques 
- on his site and in his work he frequently cites and uses Radiance.  
Once I realized the limitations of Light Wave wrt image-based lighting, 
i started looking into Radiance.  Wow.  The differences are obvious, 
even to a new user like me.  Learning Radiance has made me very acutely 
aware of the fact that I wasn't really thinking about the physics and 
quantitative aspects of my modeling and rendering when using LightWave, 
more just concentrating on the rendered output.  With Radiance, 
considering the physical aspects of light and its interaction with 
objects, etc. gives me a while new appreciation for composing a scene, 
rendering it and compositing it.  The fact that the Radiance 
environment is a collection of tools in the Unix setting is a new way 
of problem solving for me, having been used to a single package that 
does it all.  Understanding the tools and the way they interact is 
presenting me with the steepest part of the learning curve currently, 
as I imagine you can appreciate.  However, as I am beginning to find 
out, this system leads to extremely robust and flexible solution 
techniques.  I'm a Mac user, so I really appreciate the fact that now I 
have an excuse to dust off and expand my Unix abilities.

I really am interested in photo-real combinations of synthetic objects 
and "real" photographic environments.  I have been making my own "Light 
Probe" images and rending Radiance scenes with them - mostly just test 
scenes.  Now I am using the context of compositing synthetic objects 
into "real" photographic plates as the basis for expanding my knowledge 
of Radiance.  So, in short, it's more art-related than quantitative 
analysis of lighting, but i am realizing that appreciating the 
quantitative physical aspects of the lighting will give my scenes much 
more realism and robustness.  The first time I emailed Greg he 
suggested that I join the forum - there you have it.

Besides that, I can't think of any other software I've used where I can 
email the author and get answers at all, let alone in a friendly and 
nurturing manner.  That attitude is also evident in this forum's 
community and i really appreciate it.  Thanks to all the folks on the 
list who have helped me already and thanks in advance to those who will 
answer my future questions - believe me, there will be more.  :-)

kirk


On Nov 19, 2004, at 1:16 PM, Rob Guglielmetti wrote:

> Kirk Thibault wrote:
>> again - Radiance has its own freakin functional language - nice!  
>> What a ton I have to learn!
>
> Yup, yup.
>
> Radiance is an amazing collection of tools, and its depth is only 
> rivaled by the astonishing scope of generosity, knowledge, creativity 
> and intellect of this Radiance user community, led by Radiance's 
> author.
>
> By participating on this list and attending a couple of the Workshops, 
> I have achieved a general understanding of how to use this most 
> wondorous tool, Radiance.  As an added bonus -- and more importantly 
> -- I have also gained some very good friends.
>
> Welcome, have fun, share, etcetera and so forth.
>
> Just out of interest, what brings you to the Radiance world?  
> Research, lighting design, sustainability?  Art?  This list attracts 
> all kinds. How did you find us, and what are you doing with Radiance?
>
> -------------------
>    Rob Guglielmetti
> www.rumblestrip.org
>
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