RCSid "$Id: README.txt,v 1.7 2020/09/03 15:46:32 greg Exp $"

Hello and welcome to the Radiance synthetic imaging system. This is the twenty-fifth release, Version 5.4, and it includes all source files for local compilation with a standard C compiler. To find out what's new in this release, check the text file "doc/notes/ReleaseNotes".

Radiance is OpenSource software copyrighted and distributed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. By downloading and installing this software, you are implicitly agreeing to the OpenSource license appended to this README file. Please read it carefully before proceeding -- this is very different from previous licenses, and contains fewer restrictions on commercialization.

Please read this entire file before sending e-mail asking how to install this software or what to do with it. Some frequently asked questions are answered here and also on our website at:

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

The CVS source tree is available, including post-release bug-fixes and mailing lists access at:

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

The websites above should also have some precompiled Radiance binaries and add-ons for common Unix platforms.

We have attempted to make it easy for you (and for us) to install the software on differently configured systems using a global make script. To install the software, just type:

./makeall install

You can clean up the .o files and so forth with:

./makeall clean

Or, if you are confident you can do both at the same time with:

./makeall install clean

You can give other make options at the end of the command as well. For example, the -n option will tell you what makeall is going to do without actually doing it.

If you downloaded the binaries, so compilation is not necessary, run the following command to install the library files only:

./makeall library

The makeall may script ask you questions about your system and where you want to install the executables and library files. The pathnames you give should be relative to root for the programs to work properly. You may also use the tilde ('~') character to give paths starting with someone's home directory.

If you do NOT have X11 support, please read the note "noX11.help" in this directory. It explains what to change to make things work.

Although it is set automatically by makeall, individuals may want to set the RAYPATH environment variable manually. This variable tells Radiance where to look for auxiliary files, and usually includes the current directory as well as the system library (ray/lib in this distribution). As you develop auxiliary files yourself, it is often useful to add in your own library directory before the system directory. An example setting such as this would go in a user's .login file:

setenv RAYPATH .:${HOME}/mylib:/usr/local/lib/ray

After installing the software, you may want to start by scanning the troff input documentation contained in "doc/ray.1", which is also formatted for web browsers in "doc/ray.html". A PDF version of this manual may be found in "doc/pdf/ray.pdf", along with an older tutorial by Cindy Larson, "doc/pdf/raduser1_6.pdf".

For complete documentation on the system as of release 3.1, refer to "Rendering with Radiance" by Larson and Shakespeare, which used to be available from Morgan Kauffman Publishing. Recently, the authors have taken over printing of the book, which is now available from booksurge.com. You may find it linked to the Radiance website page:

http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/book/

The first chapter of this book, which includes a basic tutorial and serves as a good introduction for new users, may be found in "doc/pdf/RwR01.pdf".

Important additions since version 3.1 include the holodeck programs (rholo, etc., built in src/hd), glrad, ranimove, the new "mesh" primitive, and rtcontrib. Again, check doc/notes/ReleaseNotes for details.

Individual manual pages may be found in the subdirectory "doc/man". You may want to copy these to the system manual directory, or add this directory to your MANPATH environment variable in your shell initialization file. A good starting place is to print the text file ray/doc/man/whatis, which gives a one line description of each program in the Radiance package. To print out the manual pages, use the "-man" macro package.

The most important program to learn about if you are a new user of Radiance (or have not used this program before) is "rad". It controls Radiance lighting parameters, and automates much of the rendering process. To get started, change directory to obj/misc and try running:

% rad -o x11 daf.rif

This works if you are running X11. If you are not, you can still generate an image with:

% rad daf.rif &

When the picture is done, you can convert it to another format for display with any of the ra_* programs listed in the doc/whatis database.

There is a user interface built on top of this using Tcl/Tk, called trad. If you do not have Tcl/Tk installed on your system, you must do so prior to building this distribution if you want trad to install. (Try a google search on "Tcl/Tk" or go to "http://www.scriptics.com/software/tcltk/".)