Provided by: radiance_4R1+20120125-1.1_amd64 
NAME
rtrace - trace rays in RADIANCE scene
SYNOPSIS
rtrace [ options ] [ $EVAR ] [ @file ] octree
rtrace [ options ] -defaults
DESCRIPTION
Rtrace traces rays from the standard input through the RADIANCE scene given by octree and sends the
results to the standard output. (The octree may be given as the output of a command enclosed in quotes
and preceded by a `!'.) Input for each ray is:
xorg yorg zorg xdir ydir zdir
If the direction vector is (0,0,0), a bogus record is printed and the output is flushed if the -x value
is unset or zero. (See the notes on this option below.) This may be useful for programs that run rtrace
as a separate process. In the second form, the default values for the options (modified by those options
present) are printed with a brief explanation.
Options may be given on the command line and/or read from the environment and/or read from a file. A
command argument beginning with a dollar sign ('$') is immediately replaced by the contents of the given
environment variable. A command argument beginning with an at sign ('@') is immediately replaced by the
contents of the given file. Most options are followed by one or more arguments, which must be separated
from the option and each other by white space. The exceptions to this rule are the boolean options.
Normally, the appearance of a boolean option causes a feature to be "toggled", that is switched from off
to on or on to off depending on its previous state. Boolean options may also be set explicitly by
following them immediately with a '+' or '-', meaning on or off, respectively. Synonyms for '+' are any
of the characters "yYtT1", and synonyms for '-' are any of the characters "nNfF0". All other characters
will generate an error.
-fio Format input according to the character i and output according to the character o. Rtrace
understands the following input and output formats: 'a' for ascii, 'f' for single-precision
floating point, and 'd' for double-precision floating point. In addition to these three
choices, the character 'c' may be used to denote 4-byte floating point (Radiance) color format
for the output of values only (-ov option, below). If the output character is missing, the
input format is used.
Note that there is no space between this option and its argument.
-ospec Produce output fields according to spec. Characters are interpreted as follows:
o origin (input)
d direction (normalized)
v value (radiance)
V contribution (radiance)
w weight
W color coefficient
l effective length of ray
L first intersection distance
c local (u,v) coordinates
p point of intersection
n normal at intersection (perturbed)
N normal at intersection (unperturbed)
s surface name
m modifier name
M material name
~ tilde (end of trace marker)
If the letter 't' appears in spec, then the fields following will be printed for every ray
traced, not just the final result. If the capital letter 'T' is given instead of 't', then all
rays will be reported, including shadow testing rays to light sources. Spawned rays are
indented one tab for each level. The tilde marker ('~') is a handy way of differentiating the
final ray value from daughter values in a traced ray tree, and usually appears right before the
't' or 'T' output flags. E.g., -ov~TmW will emit a tilde followed by a tab at the end of each
trace, which can be easily distinguished even in binary output.
Note that there is no space between this option and its argument.
-te mod Append mod to the trace exclude list, so that it will not be reported by the trace option
(-o*t*). Any ray striking an object having mod as its modifier will not be reported to the
standard output with the rest of the rays being traced. This option has no effect unless
either the 't' or 'T' option has been given as part of the output specifier. Any number of
excluded modifiers may be given, but each must appear in a separate option.
-ti mod Add mod to the trace include list, so that it will be reported by the trace option. The
program can use either an include list or an exclude list, but not both.
-tE file Same as -te, except read modifiers to be excluded from file. The RAYPATH environment variable
determines which directories are searched for this file. The modifier names are separated by
white space in the file.
-tI file Same as -ti, except read modifiers to be included from file.
-i Boolean switch to compute irradiance rather than radiance values. This only affects the final
result, substituting a Lambertian surface and multiplying the radiance by pi. Glass and other
transparent surfaces are ignored during this stage. Light sources still appear with their
original radiance values, though the -dv option (below) may be used to override this. This
option is especially useful in conjunction with ximage(1) for computing illuminance at scene
points.
-u Boolean switch to control uncorrelated random sampling. When "off", a low-discrepancy sequence
is used, which reduces variance but can result in a brushed appearance in specular highlights.
When "on", pure Monte Carlo sampling is used in all calculations.
-I Boolean switch to compute irradiance rather than radiance, with the input origin and direction
interpreted instead as measurement point and orientation.
-h Boolean switch for information header on output.
-x res Set the x resolution to res. The output will be flushed after every res input rays if -y is
set to zero. A value of one means that every ray will be flushed, whatever the setting of -y.
A value of zero means that no output flushing will take place.
-y res Set the y resolution to res. The program will exit after res scanlines have been processed,
where a scanline is the number of rays given by the -x option, or 1 if -x is zero. A value of
zero means the program will not halt until the end of file is reached.
If both -x and -y options are given, a resolution string is printed at the beginning of the
output. This is mostly useful for recovering image dimensions with pvalue(1), and for creating
valid Radiance picture files using the color output format. (See the -f option, above.)
-n nproc Execute in parallel on nproc local processes. This option is incompatible with the -P and -PP,
options. Multiple processes also do not work properly with ray tree output using any of the
-o*t* options. There is no benefit from specifying more processes than there are cores
available on the system or the -x setting, which forces a wait at each flush.
-dj frac Set the direct jittering to frac. A value of zero samples each source at specific sample
points (see the -ds option below), giving a smoother but somewhat less accurate rendering. A
positive value causes rays to be distributed over each source sample according to its size,
resulting in more accurate penumbras. This option should never be greater than 1, and may even
cause problems (such as speckle) when the value is smaller. A warning about aiming failure
will issued if frac is too large.
-ds frac Set the direct sampling ratio to frac. A light source will be subdivided until the width of
each sample area divided by the distance to the illuminated point is below this ratio. This
assures accuracy in regions close to large area sources at a slight computational expense. A
value of zero turns source subdivision off, sending at most one shadow ray to each light
source.
-dt frac Set the direct threshold to frac. Shadow testing will stop when the potential contribution of
at least the next and at most all remaining light sources is less than this fraction of the
accumulated value. (See the -dc option below.) The remaining light source contributions are
approximated statistically. A value of zero means that all light sources will be tested for
shadow.
-dc frac Set the direct certainty to frac. A value of one guarantees that the absolute accuracy of the
direct calculation will be equal to or better than that given in the -dt specification. A
value of zero only insures that all shadow lines resulting in a contrast change greater than
the -dt specification will be calculated.
-dr N Set the number of relays for secondary sources to N. A value of 0 means that secondary sources
will be ignored. A value of 1 means that sources will be made into first generation secondary
sources; a value of 2 means that first generation secondary sources will also be made into
second generation secondary sources, and so on.
-dp D Set the secondary source presampling density to D. This is the number of samples per steradian
that will be used to determine ahead of time whether or not it is worth following shadow rays
through all the reflections and/or transmissions associated with a secondary source path. A
value of 0 means that the full secondary source path will always be tested for shadows if it is
tested at all.
-dv Boolean switch for light source visibility. With this switch off, sources will be black when
viewed directly although they will still participate in the direct calculation. This option is
mostly for the program mkillum(1) to avoid inappropriate counting of light sources, but it may
also be desirable in conjunction with the -i option.
-ss samp Set the specular sampling to samp. For values less than 1, this is the degree to which the
highlights are sampled for rough specular materials. A value greater than one causes multiple
ray samples to be sent to reduce noise at a commmesurate cost. A value of zero means that no
jittering will take place, and all reflections will appear sharp even when they should be
diffuse.
-st frac Set the specular sampling threshold to frac. This is the minimum fraction of reflection or
transmission, under which no specular sampling is performed. A value of zero means that
highlights will always be sampled by tracing reflected or transmitted rays. A value of one
means that specular sampling is never used. Highlights from light sources will always be
correct, but reflections from other surfaces will be approximated using an ambient value. A
sampling threshold between zero and one offers a compromise between image accuracy and
rendering time.
-bv Boolean switch for back face visibility. With this switch off, back faces of opaque objects
will be invisible to all rays. This is dangerous unless the model was constructed such that
all surface normals on opaque objects face outward. Although turning off back face visibility
does not save much computation time under most circumstances, it may be useful as a tool for
scene debugging, or for seeing through one-sided walls from the outside. This option has no
effect on transparent or translucent materials.
-av red grn blu
Set the ambient value to a radiance of red grn blu . This is the final value used in place of
an indirect light calculation. If the number of ambient bounces is one or greater and the
ambient value weight is non-zero (see -aw and -ab below), this value may be modified by the
computed indirect values to improve overall accuracy.
-aw N Set the relative weight of the ambient value given with the -av option to N. As new indirect
irradiances are computed, they will modify the default ambient value in a moving average, with
the specified weight assigned to the initial value given on the command and all other weights
set to 1. If a value of 0 is given with this option, then the initial ambient value is never
modified. This is the safest value for scenes with large differences in indirect
contributions, such as when both indoor and outdoor (daylight) areas are visible.
-ab N Set the number of ambient bounces to N. This is the maximum number of diffuse bounces computed
by the indirect calculation. A value of zero implies no indirect calculation.
-ar res Set the ambient resolution to res. This number will determine the maximum density of ambient
values used in interpolation. Error will start to increase on surfaces spaced closer than the
scene size divided by the ambient resolution. The maximum ambient value density is the scene
size times the ambient accuracy (see the -aa option below) divided by the ambient resolution.
The scene size can be determined using getinfo(1) with the -d option on the input octree.
-aa acc Set the ambient accuracy to acc. This value will approximately equal the error from indirect
illuminance interpolation. A value of zero implies no interpolation.
-ad N Set the number of ambient divisions to N. The error in the Monte Carlo calculation of indirect
illuminance will be inversely proportional to the square root of this number. A value of zero
implies no indirect calculation.
-as N Set the number of ambient super-samples to N. Super-samples are applied only to the ambient
divisions which show a significant change.
-af fname Set the ambient file to fname. This is where indirect illuminance will be stored and
retrieved. Normally, indirect illuminance values are kept in memory and lost when the program
finishes or dies. By using a file, different invocations can share illuminance values, saving
time in the computation. The ambient file is in a machine-independent binary format which can
be examined with lookamb(1).
The ambient file may also be used as a means of communication and data sharing between
simultaneously executing processes. The same file may be used by multiple processes, possibly
running on different machines and accessing the file via the network (ie. nfs(4)). The
network lock manager lockd(8) is used to insure that this information is used consistently.
If any calculation parameters are changed or the scene is modified, the old ambient file should
be removed so that the calculation can start over from scratch. For convenience, the original
ambient parameters are listed in the header of the ambient file. Getinfo(1) may be used to
print out this information.
-ae mod Append mod to the ambient exclude list, so that it will not be considered during the indirect
calculation. This is a hack for speeding the indirect computation by ignoring certain objects.
Any object having mod as its modifier will get the default ambient level rather than a
calculated value. Any number of excluded modifiers may be given, but each must appear in a
separate option.
-ai mod Add mod to the ambient include list, so that it will be considered during the indirect
calculation. The program can use either an include list or an exclude list, but not both.
-aE file Same as -ae, except read modifiers to be excluded from file. The RAYPATH environment variable
determines which directories are searched for this file. The modifier names are separated by
white space in the file.
-aI file Same as -ai, except read modifiers to be included from file.
-me rext gext bext
Set the global medium extinction coefficient to the indicated color, in units of 1/distance
(distance in world coordinates). Light will be scattered or absorbed over distance according
to this value. The ratio of scattering to total scattering plus absorption is set by the
albedo parameter, described below.
-ma ralb galb balb
Set the global medium albedo to the given value between 0 0 0 and 1 1 1. A zero value means
that all light not transmitted by the medium is absorbed. A unitary value means that all light
not transmitted by the medium is scattered in some new direction. The isotropy of scattering
is determined by the Heyney-Greenstein parameter, described below.
-mg gecc Set the medium Heyney-Greenstein eccentricity parameter to gecc. This parameter determines how
strongly scattering favors the forward direction. A value of 0 indicates perfectly isotropic
scattering. As this parameter approaches 1, scattering tends to prefer the forward direction.
-ms sampdist
Set the medium sampling distance to sampdist, in world coordinate units. During source
scattering, this will be the average distance between adjacent samples. A value of 0 means
that only one sample will be taken per light source within a given scattering volume.
-lr N Limit reflections to a maximum of N, if N is a positive integer. If N is zero or negative,
then Russian roulette is used for ray termination, and the -lw setting (below) must be
positive. If N is a negative integer, then this sets the upper limit of reflections past which
Russian roulette will be used. In scenes with dielectrics and total internal reflection, a
setting of 0 (no limit) may cause a stack overflow.
-lw frac Limit the weight of each ray to a minimum of frac. During ray-tracing, a record is kept of the
estimated contribution (weight) a ray would have in the image. If this weight is less than the
specified minimum and the -lr setting (above) is positive, the ray is not traced. Otherwise,
Russian roulette is used to continue rays with a probability equal to the ray weight divided by
the given frac.
-ld Boolean switch to limit ray distance. If this option is set, then rays will only be traced as
far as the magnitude of each direction vector. Otherwise, vector magnitude is ignored and rays
are traced to infinity.
-e efile Send error messages and progress reports to efile instead of the standard error.
-w Boolean switch to suppress warning messages.
-P pfile Execute in a persistent mode, using pfile as the control file. Persistent execution means that
after reaching end-of-file on its input, rtrace will fork a child process that will wait for
another rtrace command with the same -P option to attach to it. (Note that since the rest of
the command line options will be those of the original invocation, it is not necessary to give
any arguments besides -P for subsequent calls.) Killing the process is achieved with the
kill(1) command. (The process ID in the first line of pfile may be used to identify the
waiting rtrace process.) This option may be used with the -fr option of pinterp(1) to avoid
the cost of starting up rtrace many times.
-PP pfile Execute in continuous-forking persistent mode, using pfile as the control file. The difference
between this option and the -P option described above is the creation of multiple duplicate
processes to handle any number of attaches. This provides a simple and reliable mechanism of
memory sharing on most multiprocessing platforms, since the fork(2) system call will share
memory on a copy-on-write basis.
EXAMPLES
To compute radiance values for the rays listed in samples.inp:
rtrace -ov scene.oct < samples.inp > radiance.out
To compute illuminance values at locations selected with the 't' command of ximage(1):
ximage scene.hdr | rtrace -h -x 1 -i scene.oct | rcalc -e '$1=47.4*$1+120*$2+11.6*$3'
To record the object identifier corresponding to each pixel in an image:
vwrays -fd scene.hdr | rtrace -fda `vwrays -d scene.hdr` -os scene.oct
To compute an image with an unusual view mapping:
cnt 480 640 | rcalc -e 'xr:640;yr:480' -f unusual_view.cal | rtrace -x 640 -y 480 -fac scene.oct >
unusual.hdr
ENVIRONMENT
RAYPATH the directories to check for auxiliary files.
FILES
/tmp/rtXXXXXX common header information for picture sequence
DIAGNOSTICS
If the program terminates from an input related error, the exit status will be 1. A system related error
results in an exit status of 2. If the program receives a signal that is caught, it will exit with a
status of 3. In each case, an error message will be printed to the standard error, or to the file
designated by the -e option.
AUTHOR
Greg Ward
SEE ALSO
getinfo(1), lookamb(1), oconv(1), pfilt(1), pinterp(1), pvalue(1), rpict(1), rtcontrib(1), rvu(1), vwrays(1), ximage(1)