Official Radiance 3.9 Release

radiance-general
1

Dear Radiance Users:

I have just put together a long overdue release of Radiance, vers. 3.9. I only heard one "nay" vote about including the CSAIL library objects, but all the same I made a smaller distribution available for like-minded disk curmudgeons. The download from the original LBNL site:

  http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/download.html

by default is missing the CSAIL objects. These can easily be added via the "objects" link lower on the same page. On the other site, radiance-online includes the CSAIL objects in its distribution files:

  http://www.radiance-online.org/software/

Both sites link to compiled binaries for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and MINGW (thanks to Francesco Anselmo and James Lee). I need to work with Peter Apian-Bennewitz to update the scripts so the patches being provided are relative to the new release, since he's the mastermind for those.

Please inform me of any broken links, compile problems, or masspillings.

Cheers,
-Greg

2

I neglected to mention in my announcement the significant changes since the last 3.8 release (Oct. 2004):

Added -spec option to falsecolor to restore original spectral color scale.
Also added "-s auto" option to automatically set the maximum value.

Re-fixed bug in octree code that caused it to allocate 8 times as
much memory as it actually used(!) -- this was pointed out way back
in 1999 by Erik Reinhard and Erik Jansen, but the fix they gave me
got lost in the slightly broken release process at the time. This
should make a big difference in memory usage, especially for the
new mesh primitive. (I measured 30% less memory usage.)

Fixed bug in shadow cache where it was adding surfaces with antimatter
holes cut in them to the obstructor list. Thanks to John Mardaljevic
for discovering and reporting the problem.

Adding ability in mkillum to incorporate BSDF data in calculation.
Internal interface (raypcalls) now used in place of rtrace process(es).

Added -c option to rtcontrib to facilitate cumulative calculations.

****** COMPATIBILITY CHANGE ********
Fixed long-standing bug in source.cal, which caused it to produce
reversed anisotropic photometric distributions due to the
misorientation of the y-axis. Thanks to Zack Rogers for discovering
and helping debug this problem.

Added rsensor program to compute sensor signal for daylighting controls.
Funding for this component was provided by the Architectural Energy
Corporation in Boulder, CO, and directed by Zack Rogers.

Added "planisphere" (stereographic) fisheye view type for traditional
daylighting analysis. Feature requested & explained by Axel Jacobs.

···

--------------------

Of these, the addition of the rsensor program for SPOT and the new BSDF input for mkillum are probably the most important. Thanks is due to AEC and LBL for sponsoring these developments.

The complete list of changes for all releases is available at:

  http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/refer/Notes/ReleaseNotes.html

Cheers,
-Greg

P.S. With help from Peter A-B, I've finished updating radiance-online so the HEAD patches are relative to the new 3.9 release.

3

On behalf of all friends of Radiance, I want to really thank you Greg, not only for shaping another robust and responsive release*, but particularly for your commitment to each one of us as we continue to engage, explore, stumble(!), and possibly push this brilliant resource.
    I just realized that Radiance must be a few decades old.. I am not sure of its first shared release date, but I recall exploring it's potential, with a gaping smile, in either 1989 0r 1990. Have we missed its 21st birthday?

-Rob Shakespeare

* assumed, based on past releases!

4

Hi Rob,

I guess we are right around the 21st birthday, since Radiance saw it's first release sometime in 1987. It was distributed by tape back in those days, as you'll surely recall. Yup -- it predates the web by a comfortable margin.

Someone should take 3.9 out for a drink!

-Greg

···

From: "Shakespeare, Robert A." <[email protected]>
Date: May 1, 2008 4:02:14 PM PDT

   On behalf of all friends of Radiance, I want to really thank you Greg, not only for shaping another robust and responsive release*, but particularly for your commitment to each one of us as we continue to engage, explore, stumble(!), and possibly push this brilliant resource.
    I just realized that Radiance must be a few decades old.. I am not sure of its first shared release date, but I recall exploring it's potential, with a gaping smile, in either 1989 0r 1990. Have we missed its 21st birthday?

-Rob Shakespeare

* assumed, based on past releases!

5

I guess we are right around the 21st birthday, since Radiance saw it's first release sometime in 1987. It was distributed by tape back in those days, as you'll surely recall. Yup -- it predates the web by a comfortable margin.

I still remember talking to you on the phone Greg, circa 1993, a neophyte lighting designer looking for a copy of Radiance, and had no idea what the hell an Exabyte cartridge was. We've all come a long way.

Speaking of which, just to slot me in to the age continuum of Radiance users, I graduated from high school a year before the first Radiance release (and started mucking around with Radiance about ten years later).

Someone should take 3.9 out for a drink!

Right on, Greg; your baby deserves a little more than root beer. :wink:

_ Rob Guglielmetti

P.S.
I hope like hell to make the Workshop this year in Fribourg. Sort-of a closing of the loop that started there in 2002...

P.P.S.
Damn, I'm like, old and shit.

···

On May 1, 2008, at 5:46 PM, Greg Ward wrote:

6

Again, Thank you to the developers, and especially to Greg, for continuing to care enough about Radiance and the Radiance community, and for putting forth the effort to keep this beautiful thing going. You are giants to me.

more...

...
Re-fixed bug in octree code that caused it to allocate 8 times as
much memory as it actually used(!) -- this was pointed out way back
in 1999 by Erik Reinhard and Erik Jansen, but the fix they gave me
got lost in the slightly broken release process at the time. This
should make a big difference in memory usage, especially for the
new mesh primitive. (I measured 30% less memory usage.)

Octree memory requirements have been the primary limiter of the complexity of the models that I use in my art. So much so that I wrote a special program to take my 25-million-triangle meshes and break them up smoothly into 1-million-tri chunks before feeding them to obj2mesh! I'm going to need to go back and try some things anew.

As a side note, I was just notified today that one of my video works (rendered by Radiance) was accepted to SIGGRAPH this year:

Low quality, bad aspect ratio, on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/v/YEyND_MPRwo

Higher-quality, 175 MB, but might not play everywhere:
http://mark.technolope.org/transfer/out8_169.m2v

Mark

···

On Thu, 1 May 2008, Greg Ward wrote: