Rtrace output analysis

1

Hi, I’m trying to study Radiance and need some clarifications regarding rtrace outputs.

Examining the outputs I get with -oTvV, I figured out that if I sum the “contribution” V of the “leaves” in the ray tree (sources), I get the final “value”.

However that only seems to work with aa=0, which is probably why I’m getting a warning if it’s not. So, when aa>0, where does the extra contribution go?

Thanks

2

With -aa > 0, irradiance caching “shares” the calculated values with neighboring rays, which makes it impossible to track contributions correctly, since we don’t keep track of where the energy came from. Doing so would require an impossible amount of storage.