R4 and materials

radiance-general
1

Hi All,

I finally got R4 running (on Ubuntu 10.04) thanks to Bernd's posting two days ago - thanks Bernd!

Now I'm running a couple tests to put it through its paces. The first thing I noticed - and this is a problem I encountered a couple weeks ago when first attempting R4 - is that it seems to scan my entire materials.rad file, even for materials not used in the current octree. It was crashing at missing cal files referenced in my materials.rad file (the material defs for which I deleted, now it runs fine). Does this sound right? Does R4 check all the materials, even if they aren't being used?

Thanks,
Cramer

···

--
*Cramer Silkworth
212 219 2255 | [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Transsolar Inc. | 134 Spring Street Suite 601 | New York, NY 10012

Transsolar Climate Engineering
Technical consulting for energy efficiency and environmental quality in buildings.
New York - Stuttgart - Munich*

2

Hi Cramer,

Radiance should parse materials.rad (only) if you include it into your scene. I guess you are referring to the file materials.rad from the distribution. If you include it, you should also have the required cal-files on your syste
. So just make sure that your RAYPATH is set correctly for your installation!

Besides that, including default material files can be tricky. Radiance does not complain about defining a modifier using the same name twice... you may end up with unexpected results if some default material definition overwrites what you wanted to use. Just take care!

Cheers, Lars.

···

--
Dipl.-Ing. Architect Lars O. Grobe

seems to scan my entire materials.rad file, even for materials not used in the current octree. It was crashing at missing cal files referenced in my materials.rad file (the material defs for which I deleted, now it runs fine). Does this sound right? Does R4 check all the materials, even if they aren't being used?

3

Lars,

In this case materials.rad was explicitly in the call to oconv. I
didn’t know materials.rad was included in the distribution, we use a
customized version. I was confused because R3.9 never reported these
missing .cal files (or, if it did, it wouldnt stop). Strange. So I
assume that when materials.rad is specified in the oconv call, it
ignores the distribution version of materials.rad?

-Cramer

Subject:

Re: [Radiance-general] R4 and materials
From:

“Lars O. Grobe”
Date:

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:56:30 +0200
To:

Radiance general discussion Hi Cramer,
Radiance should parse materials.rad (only) if you include it into
your scene. I guess you are referring to the file materials.rad from
the distribution. If you include it, you should also have the required
cal-files on your syste
. So just make sure that your RAYPATH is set correctly for your
installation!
Besides that, including default material files can be tricky.
Radiance does not complain about defining a modifier using the same
name twice… you may end up with unexpected results if some default
material definition overwrites what you wanted to use. Just take care!
Cheers, Lars.

···

[email protected][email protected]

–
**Cramer Silkworth

212 219 2255 | [email protected]

Transsolar Inc. | 134 Spring Street Suite 601 | New York, NY 10012

Transsolar Climate Engineering

Technical consulting for energy efficiency and environmental quality in
buildings.

New York - Stuttgart - Munich**