Alpha Channel - Z-Buffer Images

Hi folks - I apologize if this is covered in the Rendering with Radiance text, I am awaiting the Book Surge printing of it as we speak. Does Radiance store and/or recover the alpha channel or z-buffer information for a scene and, if so, can either be output to an image for compositing and Depth of Field effects in another app like Photoshop?

Thanks,

Kirk

Hi Kirk,

The -z option of rpict, or the "ZFILE" variable in rad input (use RAWFILE also) will store the z-buffer for later depth-of-field processing. If you want to use Radiance for that, the pdfblur script should come in handy. Usage is described in the manual pages, which are not repeated in the book:

  http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/man_html/whatis.html

-Greg

···

From: Kirk Thibault <[email protected]>
Date: November 10, 2004 1:47:40 PM PST

Hi folks - I apologize if this is covered in the Rendering with Radiance text, I am awaiting the Book Surge printing of it as we speak. Does Radiance store and/or recover the alpha channel or z-buffer information for a scene and, if so, can either be output to an image for compositing and Depth of Field effects in another app like Photoshop?

Thanks,

Kirk