rshow

rshow - an interactive previewer for the Radiance system

description:

rshow is an interactive previewer for the Radiance synthetic image system, written by Peter Apian-Bennewitz.
It had been first started by the author at Fraunhofer ISE in 1993 and in Summer 1999 work on it has moved to pab-opto. As of 2004, it is been brought up to the current Radiance standard. As always, it is publicly available software, distributed as binary code free of charge, copyrighted by the author and usuable by anyone for non-commercial and commercial work.

mechanical part
screen dump of SGI Onyx workstation Freiburg downtown
illumination levels on horizontal surface, displayed as falsecolor along vertically cutting planes

Radiance primitive and modifier support:
- glass, trans, mist, BRDF materials and antimatter are displayed as white, stippled primitives
- mixfunc support: follows first modifier
- texture support (see below)
- supports multiple windows
rendering interface:
- popup-menue with subset of Radiance core parameters
- 'rview' style rendering to rshow window
- point-n-clic popup with material/primitive parameters
- generation of rtrace grid for polygonal surfaces
- irradiance calculations above/below polygonal surfaces
- generation of colorpict coordinate mapping for polygonal surfaces
- NOTE: internal irradiance calculations are not trustworthy. Please use external calls to rtrace for reliable data. Internal calcs don't clear the internal ambient values when ambient parameters are changed.

free beta versions:

Please read the disclaimer below before downloading. Downloading the software indicates your acceptance of the disclaimer.
Beta-versions of rshow are publicly available free of charge:

To install rshow on your machine follow these steps:

select a distribution file for downloading from the table below. For Netscape/Mozilla, press right mouse button over rshow.XXX.tar.gz file and choose 'save to file'
unpack the distribution files with
tar xfv rshow.XXX.tar.gz
Depending on our system, you may need to install other libraries, as mentioned below.
The executable rshow is located in bin, auxilary files are in the lib subdirectory.
Set the environment variable RSHOW_PATH to point to the absolute path of the lib subdirectory, like:
RSHOW_PATH=/usr/local/rshow/lib; export RSHOW_PATH
You may have to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to your tcl/tk library if it's not installed in a standard place
You're all set and ready to go. Choose an octree and start rshow xyz.oct
Notes: Beta releases are no longer fitted with a best-before-date.
list of commandline options, technical notes, small FAQ

**supported hardware configurations:**
vendor	operating system release info	rshow version	distribution file	other software needed (see table below)	supported input devices
Linux	Linux 2.6.x	0.72 +	rshow.Linux.V0.72e.tar.gz	Tcl/Tk 8.4	joystick
Silicon Graphics	IRIX5.3 on MIPS machines (VGX & Co) -development closed-	0.70f	rshow.IRIX_5.3.tar.gz	Tcl/Tk 8.0	Spaceball, SpaceMouse

**software packages needed:**
package	what for	where to find it
Tcl/Tk	graphical user interface	Sriptics
MESA or Open-GL	Mesa: Open-GL look-like on top of X11 (mostly not needed with newer Linux distributions and XFree-4.x)	Mesa 3d

revisions:

known nasties

Open-GL's display list memory usage is high
still doesn't handle meshes
many parameters have no command line equivalent, there's no .rshow.rc config file
See my postings to the Radiance dev list about X resource handling.
instances with non-plastic/metal material are not drawn in glow/light/mist mode
only the first modifier is displayed in tcl pop-up (see long discussion in Radiance mailing list about alias)
back-for movement in non-fix-point-mode has wrong X orientation after leaving fix-point-mode. Workaround: click again with middle mouse
... various smaller things (around 40 on my todo list)

history

0.72e - 19.12.07, new compile

minor fixes

0.72d - 12.4.05, bug fixes

LZW compression for TIFF screen dumps is put back in, since the patent by Unisys had expired
now supports writing of PNG format for screen dumps, - conclusively a shared lib for PNG is now required at runtime
PNG is much smaller than an LZW compressed TIFF file, so it seemed worth adding PNG
tar file name doesn't include kernel version any more, since that is fairly unrelated to our Open-GL and X11 stuff
reversed back-fore mouse movement again

0.72c - 5.2.05, bug fixes

fixed bug in sharing of Open-GL display lists, so multiple managed windows work again
fixed minor bug in cmdline parsing that could lead to a segfault
unmanaged windows now show other viewer positions as default

0.72b - 9.1.05, bug fixes

fixed bug in instance display ('ghost' instances were displayed without the transformation)
this was a side effect of the shadow cache introduced with Radiance R6
added backface cull in tcl popup, cleaned up backface culling Open-Gl code
back-fore movement with ctrl-middle-button now scales with distance to fix point
added proper handling of cmdline window size at Tk/togl startup
setting Open-GL front/back clipping from Radiance view file is removed until fixed properly
dielectric, interface and mirror materials are now displayed with stipple pattern like glass

0.72a - 29.11.04, updated libs

initial port to Radiance R3.6a, Togl 1.6, Tcl/Tk 8.4 and gcc 3.3.1
hierarchical alias, mesh and texture handling still missing
reversed back-fore movement with ctrl-middle-button (to be compatible with others)

0.71b, 15.2.2003

polygon storage and handling got more efficient
raytracing is now triggered by F9
added manual culling (cmdline -qc)
added wireframe display of Radiance's bounding cube of instances (shortcut F4, so fast display of many instances is F2, F4)
filenames in tgz package got a rshow/ prefix
changed and new tiff tags for TIFF screen dump: TIFFTAG_DOCUMENTNAME is now the filename, TIFFTAG_IMAGEDESCRIPTION contains view specs, TIFFTAG_HOSTCOMPUTER is set to hostname

0.71a, 13.1.2003

new navigation: middle mouse button moves left/right-up/down, ctrl-middle-button moves back-fore . In fix-point mode (click on 'fix'), middle button rotates camera around fixpoint
fixed long standing bug in scene redrawing after window resizing. Fixes missing redraw after window exposure too: So it refreshes on X11 servers without backing store, if an obscured part of the window gets exposed. To avoid long redrawing times for complex scenery, enable backing store (e.g. for users of XFree 4.x : xinit -- +bs).
removed LZW support in TIFF dump, due to patent issues regarding LZW. This should avoid core- instead of TIFF-dumps on some Linux distributions. TIFF screen dump is now written uncompressed, please check other graphic packages (e.g. netppmplus) for conversion.
fixed missing reading of PLASTIC2/METAL2 surfaces
streamlined internal routines

0.70h, 27.10.2002

reduced Open-GL parameters to run on N-Vidia accelerated X-servers (which have no stencil bitplanes)

0.70g, 30.6.2002

fixed long standing bug with 'disc' display
use fore/aft clipping planes given in view file. resetting views (view all button) resets clipping planes,
currently w/x GUI

0.70f, 11.12.2001

recompiled on Slackware 8.0

0.70e, 18.6.2001

compiled on SUSE7.2 (X11,GLX,GL,TCL/TK as on the 7.2 CDs)

0.70e, 19.5.2001

recompiled on IRIX 5.3, added minimal shared lib version for Linux

0.70e, 5.3.2001

recompiled Linux2.2 and IRIX64 with new best-before date (end of 2005) and current tcl/tk libs for Linux
re-added -oc option (due to display lists, the Xserver may become quite large)

0.70e, 2.3.2000

raytracing (picking and rview-style rendering) now honors the same front clipping plane as the hardware rendering
names for tar files now include operating system version (whow! - )

0.70d, 15.2.2000

now honors vs, vl commandline options (currently w/x GUI)
writing of view parameters now includes: vs, vl, vo options
Note1: vo is now set to the front clipping plane used in rshow
Note2: reading vo is not yet supported and writing va is deemed not as useful as vo.
name changed from rshow.new to rshow
dump of coordinate cross position to stdout
fixed bug in orientation for view direction parallel to z
more intelligent resizing in file selection pop-up
screen dump enhancements:
- dump file now includes octree name, rshow version and view
- pop-up is now triggered by 'Print' button
- writes out Radiance or TIFF (thanks to Sam Leffler) formats
best-before-date set to 31.12.2000

0.70c, 22.11.99

fixed bug leading to too bright lighting in scaled instances
default light sources position changed

0.70b, 22.9.99

fixed bugs in cone orientation and display brightness

0.70, 1.9.99 - first release after moving to pab-opto -

fixed various memory bugs
tested MESA Version 3 and Tcl/Tk 8.2.0

papers:

"An integrated 3D approach for handling geometry and simulation data in planning process"
PDF file, published at "Second European Conference on product and Process Modelling", BRE Watford UK, 19-21.10.98
"INTEGRAL VISUALIZATION OF BUILDINGS AND SIMULATION DATA IN rshow"
PDF file published at Building Simulation '99, Kyoto, Japan, 13-15.9.99
"Studie zur Anwendung und Grenzen derzeitiger Programmtypen zur photo-realistischen Darstellung von Licht und Beleuchtung in der Architektur"
published at Light+Building 2000, Frankfurt, Germany, 20-22.3.2000

For feedback, please contact rshow@pab-opto.de

DISCLAIMER

PETER APIAN-BENNEWITZ, PAB-OPTO DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.


mechanical part screen dump of SGI Onyx workstation	Freiburg downtown illumination levels on horizontal surface, displayed as falsecolor along vertically cutting planes