Help:Setting up a radiance system

I am a new comer to radiance simulations. I have installed radiance on a linux OS in tandem with a modeler(blender3d) to prepare my models. Testing the setup gave me the following console output:

<<$ rad test.rif
        oconv test.rad > test.oct
        rm -f test.amb
        rpict -vf test.vf -x 1280 -y 960 -ps 8 -pt .16 -dp 128 -ar 8 -ds .4 -dt .2 -dc .25 -dr 0 -sj 0 -st .5 -af test.amb -aa .4 -ad 64 -as 0 -av 10 10 10 -lr 3 -lw .02 -ps 2 -x 1280 -y 960 -ab 0 -aa 0.20000000298 -ar 32 -ad 32 -as 32 -av 0.5 0.5 0.5 test.oct > testraw_vw1.unf
rpict: fatal - cannot find function file "rayinit.cal"
rpict: 270616 rays, 67.52% after 0.001u 0.000s 0.002r hours on ubuntu
rad: error rendering view vw1>>

I verified that radiance files are present in /usr/lib/share/radiance and rayinit.cal is present. I did edit my .bashrc file with: export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}

any help on this matter would be appreciated.

···

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Hi Steve,

Welcome to the world of Radiance! You're almost there. You need to also add a RAYPATH environment variable to your setup, just like you have a PATH variable. I put these lines in my .bash_profile:

RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
export RAYPATH

THis will allow Radiance to find rayinit.cal (and anything in your current directory that may be of interest to Radiance). Good luck!

- Rob

···

On Apr 4, 2007, at 5:33 PM, steve michel wrote:

I verified that radiance files are present in /usr/lib/share/radiance and rayinit.cal is present. I did edit my .bashrc file with: export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}

Thanks for the solution. I checked the location of the radiance system files:
the *.cal procedurals were in /usr/share/radiance/lib

the rad executable was in /usr/lib/radiance/bin

therefore editing my .bashrc script with
export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}
export PATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib:${PATH}
RAYPATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib/
export RAYPATH

solved it. (I think one of the lines might be redundant)

thanks again

···

From: Rob Guglielmetti <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Help:Setting up a radiance system
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 21:54:05 -0600

On Apr 4, 2007, at 5:33 PM, steve michel wrote:

I verified that radiance files are present in /usr/lib/share/ radiance and rayinit.cal is present. I did edit my .bashrc file with: export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the world of Radiance! You're almost there. You need to also add a RAYPATH environment variable to your setup, just like you have a PATH variable. I put these lines in my .bash_profile:

RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
export RAYPATH

THis will allow Radiance to find rayinit.cal (and anything in your current directory that may be of interest to Radiance). Good luck!

- Rob

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Yep, my email listed the default location for the cal files; glad yu sorted i out with the alternate location you have there. The third line above is not only redundant, but also is including your enire search path in the RAYPATH variable. THis is not necessarily bad, but bear in mind that Radiance will be searching a lot of additional locations for cal files, which may not be what you want. SInce the CWD and then the main lib directory come first on the RAYPATH the way you have it set up, you should be ok, but II just thought I'd point it out.

- Rob

···

On Apr 5, 2007, at 5:24 AM, steve michel wrote:

therefore editing my .bashrc script with
export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}
export PATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib:${PATH}
RAYPATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib/
export RAYPATH

solved it. (I think one of the lines might be redundant)

Hi...

> the *.cal procedurals were in /usr/share/radiance/lib
leads to:
export RAYPATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/lib:$RAYPATH

> the rad executable was in /usr/lib/radiance/bin
leads to:
export PATH=/usr/lib/radiance/bin:$PATH

Use these for your .bashrc! I always append the existing RAYPATH when setting a new one, just not to break anything I might have done before. If there is nothing that has been defined before in this variable, there will be no negative impact as the existing (appended) RAYPATH will just be empty.

Now some comments on your settings:
> export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}
Possible, but not recommended. Including '.' into your path is dangerous as it opens the possibility of executing programs that you do not want. E.g. someone might have somehow managed to put a executeable named "ls" into a directory of yours, containing some malicious code and a call to ls. If you happen to type "ls" in that directory, not the system tool you expected, but the malicious code would run (with your user rights), and as there was a call to the original "ls" in it, you get the output you expect and will not even realize what happened. So I never have '.' in my PATH. And it is never necessary!

> export PATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib:${PATH}
There are no executeable in /usr/share/radiance/lib, this is not reasonable.

> RAYPATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib/
> export RAYPATH

Ok, but before you used tanother convention for the variable, so use the same here. Just one line, not two.

Ah, and thanks to Jelle I just found that I forgot the '.' in the RAYPATH setting that I describe on my webpage :wink:

CU Lars.

Lars

I installed radiance through synaptic package manager. However if you are implying that a user defined configs could allow root access, that's an exploit I've never heard of. I will revise my .bashrc to side with caution.

In the meantime searching the installed radiance files I noticed what may be examples I would like to test to make sure everything works as expected. One such is 'office' and 'cabin' located in the "/usr/share/radiance/obj" folder. Before all that is feasible, some clarifications to files types are needed. Ideally, I would like to locate the example files into a user project directory rather than system folders. And make sure any procedurales, lighting, and materials files are in the share folder.

The http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/refer/ray.html#Auxiliary flowchart doesn't show the file types in use.

*.lum
*.vf
*.norm
*.vp etc..

any link to a consise descriptions of these files would be of help because running the *.rif I found in the lib folder generate errors from missing files or includes.

···

From: "Lars O. Grobe" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Help:Setting up a radiance system
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:14:45 +0300

Hi...

> the *.cal procedurals were in /usr/share/radiance/lib
leads to:
export RAYPATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/lib:$RAYPATH

> the rad executable was in /usr/lib/radiance/bin
leads to:
export PATH=/usr/lib/radiance/bin:$PATH

Use these for your .bashrc! I always append the existing RAYPATH when setting a new one, just not to break anything I might have done before. If there is nothing that has been defined before in this variable, there will be no negative impact as the existing (appended) RAYPATH will just be empty.

Now some comments on your settings:
> export PATH=.:/usr/lib/radiance/bin:${PATH}
Possible, but not recommended. Including '.' into your path is dangerous as it opens the possibility of executing programs that you do not want. E.g. someone might have somehow managed to put a executeable named "ls" into a directory of yours, containing some malicious code and a call to ls. If you happen to type "ls" in that directory, not the system tool you expected, but the malicious code would run (with your user rights), and as there was a call to the original "ls" in it, you get the output you expect and will not even realize what happened. So I never have '.' in my PATH. And it is never necessary!

> export PATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib:${PATH}
There are no executeable in /usr/share/radiance/lib, this is not reasonable.

> RAYPATH=.:/usr/share/radiance/lib/
> export RAYPATH

Ok, but before you used tanother convention for the variable, so use the same here. Just one line, not two.

Ah, and thanks to Jelle I just found that I forgot the '.' in the RAYPATH setting that I describe on my webpage :wink:

CU Lars.

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Hi!

I installed radiance through synaptic package manager. However if you
are implying that a user defined configs could allow root access,
that's an exploit I've never heard of. I will revise my .bashrc to
side with caution.

No, it is not about root access. I tried to describe how such a configuration can be used to get code executed with your user rights. This can still cause trouble. And as it is not necessary at all to have ./ in a PATH, I added this comment to you posted setting.

*.lum *.vf *.norm *.vp etc..

I have to guess as I do not have te possibility to check this right now. lum should be luminaires (in in whatever format, open with a text editor, might be IES pr radiance), vf is a viewfile, norm is something I do not know now, and vp should be viewpoints, most probably for an animation.

any link to a consise descriptions of these files would be of help
because running the *.rif I found in the lib folder generate errors
from missing files or includes.

This sound much more like you are still having a problem with the environment variables. Can you post te errors you get?

Good luck :wink: Lars.

I'm getting renders from radiance now. The issues are with the way my modeller (blender+brad) handles the radiance export and lighting: basicaly the output rad files don't include photometric lights. I want to know how to substitute lamp data.

thus far the lamp data is

void spotlight Lamp
0
7 1000.0 1000.0 1000.0 45.0 0.867412388325 0.497589915991 4.37113882867e-08
Lamp ring spotlamp
0
8 -3.01123523712 -4.18423938751 3.92846775055 0.867412388325 0.497589915991 4.37113882867e-08 0 0.125

I want to edit that with a native radiance lamp but need to know the radiance lighting syntax.

···

From: "Lars O. Grobe" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
To: Radiance general discussion <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Help:Setting up a radiance system
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:58:21 +0300

Hi!

I installed radiance through synaptic package manager. However if you
are implying that a user defined configs could allow root access,
that's an exploit I've never heard of. I will revise my .bashrc to
side with caution.

No, it is not about root access. I tried to describe how such a configuration can be used to get code executed with your user rights. This can still cause trouble. And as it is not necessary at all to have ./ in a PATH, I added this comment to you posted setting.

*.lum *.vf *.norm *.vp etc..

I have to guess as I do not have te possibility to check this right now. lum should be luminaires (in in whatever format, open with a text editor, might be IES pr radiance), vf is a viewfile, norm is something I do not know now, and vp should be viewpoints, most probably for an animation.

any link to a consise descriptions of these files would be of help
because running the *.rif I found in the lib folder generate errors
from missing files or includes.

This sound much more like you are still having a problem with the environment variables. Can you post te errors you get?

Good luck :wink: Lars.

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[email protected]
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Hi Steve,

congratulations, you passed the gate into the wonderful world of our
favourite time- and cpu-cycle consuming application...

The spotlight is a native light, but I guess you want to use a
photometric representation of a real-world light source.

1) Choose a source, and get the distribution from the manufacturer. You
should get a IES-formatted file.

2) Generate a radiance description from that file using ies2rad:

http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/man_html/ies2rad.1.html

3) Include that description instead of the spotlights (keep orientation
and position, and use !xform to include the source.

The procedure is described in detail in the tutorial that came with your
Radiance installation. And a great help are the tutorial from
http://luminance.londonmet.ac.uk/learnix/docs.shtml !

Good luck, CU Lars.

Hi Steve

I'm getting renders from radiance now. The issues are with the way my
modeller (blender+brad) handles the radiance export and lighting: basicaly
the output rad files don't include photometric lights. I want to know how
to substitute lamp data.

If you're using blender+brad, you can attach photometries to spotlights
in blender following this procedure:

1) go to the brad/radiance/lum folder
2) create a new directory for your ies file with the same name
   of your ies file (for instance myies, if your file is named
   myies.ies)
3) create your radiance photometric description of the ies file:
   ies2rad -t default -m .8 -o myies myies.ies
4) start blender and brad again; this time in the libraries/luminaires
   menu you should find a myies entry
5) hit the "+" button to add the lamp datablock to your blender file
6) add a spotlight, and change its datablock to myies

When you will export your model, you'll notice that a .lum file will
be exported. It will contain a list of !xform commands with the
locations of luminaires.

You can post your next questions relating to brad to the
brad mailing list:

http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/brad

http://www.bozzograo.net/radiance/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ciao,

Francesco