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"Light Makes Right"
November 4, 1988
Volume 1, Number 11
Compiled by
All contents are copyright (c) 1988, all rights reserved by the individual authors
Archive locations: anonymous FTP at
ftp://ftp-graphics.stanford.edu/pub/Graphics/RTNews/,
wuarchive.wustl.edu:/graphics/graphics/RTNews, and many others.
You may also want to check out the Ray Tracing News issue guide and the ray tracing FAQ.
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# Kelvin Thompson - hierarchy schemes, procedural objects, animation
# The University of Texas at Austin
# 4412 Ave A. #208
# Austin, TX 78751-3622
alias kelvin_thompson kelvin@cs.utexas.edu
I'm a PhD student in graphics at the University of Texas. I received a BSEE from Rice University in 1983, and a Master's in EE from UT in 1984. My doctoral project is on hierarchical, multi-scale databases for computer graphics, and I'm building a ray-tracer as part of my work on that project. I'm also interested in motion and animation. I never plan on becoming President of the United States of America.
-- Kelvin Thompson, Lone Rider of the Apocalypse
kelvin@cs.utexas.edu {...,uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!kelvin
# A. T. Campbell, III - shading models, animation
# Department of Computer Sciences
# University of Texas
# Austin, Texas 78712
# (512) 471-9708
alias at_campbell atc@cs.utexas.EDU
I am in the PhD program in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas. My research area is developing a more sophisticated illumination model than those currently in widespread use. A modified form of distributed ray tracing is one of the methods I am considering to evaluate my model.
Animation is another of my interests. I am putting myself through school by producing computer graphics animations for a small engineering company. Sometimes I am called upon to create special effects such as motion blur and atmospheric effects. Based on what I heard at this year's ray tracing round table at SIGGRAPH, it looks as if ray tracing can solve most of my problems.
# Tim O'Connor
# Staff, Cornell Program of Computer Graphics
# 120 Rand Hall
# Ithaca, NY 14853
alias tim_oconnor toc@wisdom.tn.cornell.edu
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A while back, there was a posting concerning ray/triangle intersection. The goal was to determine if a ray intersects a triangle, and if so, what are the barycentric coordinates. For the uninitiated, barycentric coordinates are three values (r,s,t) all in the range zero to one. Also, the sum of the values is one. These values can be used as interpolation parameters for data which is known at the triangle vertices (i.e. normals, colors, uv).
The algorithm presented previously involved a matrix inversion. The math went something like this: Since (r,s,t) are interpolation values, then the intersection point (P) must be a combination of the triangle vertices scaled by (r,s,t).
[ x1 y1 z1 ] [ r ] [ Px ] [ r ] [ Px ]
[ x2 y2 z2 ] [ s ] = [ Py ] [ s ] = [ Py ] ~V
[ x3 y3 z3 ] [ t ] [ Pz ] [ t ] [ Pz ]
So, by inverting the vertex matrix (V -> ~V), and given any point in the plane of the triangle, we can determine (r,s,t). If they are in the range zero to one, the point is in the triangle.
The only problem with this method is numerical instability. If one vertex is the origin, the matrix won't invert. If the triangle lies in a coordinate plane, the matrix won't invert. In fact, for any triangle which lies in a plane through the origin, the matrix won't invert. (The vertex vectors don't span R3.) The reason this method is so unstable is because it tries to solve a 2D problem in 3D. Once the ray/plane intersection point is known, the barycentric coordinates solution is a 2D issue.
Another way to think of barycentric coordinates is by the relative areas of the subtriangles defined by the intersection point and the triangle vertices.
1 If the area of triangle 123 is A, then the area of
/|\ P23 is rA. Area 12P is sA and area 1P3 is tA.
/ | \ With this image, it is obvious that r+s+t must equal
/ | \ one. If r, s, or t go outside the range zero to one,
/ t | s \ P will be outside the triangle.
/ _-P-_ \
/ _- -_ \
/_- r -_\
3---------------2
By using the above are relationships, the following equations define r, s and t.
N = triangle normal = (vec(1 2) cross vec(1 3)) (vec(1 P) cross vec(1 3)) dot N s = ------------------------------- length N (vec(1 2) cross vec(1 P)) dot N t = ------------------------------- length N r = 1 - (s + t)
In actual code, it is better to avoid the divide and the square root. So, you can set s equal to the numerator, and then test if s is less than zero or greater than sqr(length N). For added efficiency, preprocess the data and store sqr( length N) in the triangle data structure. Even for extremely long thin triangles, this method is accurate and numerically stable.
RGB Living life in the fast lane, eight items or less. ({ihnp4,decvax}!utah-cs!bogart, bogart@cs.utah.edu)
________
From: arenberg@trwrb.UUCP (Jeff Arenberg)
Subject: Re: Ray/Triangle Intersection with Barycentric Coordinates
[from USENET]
Ok, here is how I handle this calculation in my ray tracing program. I think it is quite efficient.
Let a triangle be represented in the following manner :
|\
| \
p1 | \
| \
O ------------> |________\
p0 p2
where p0 is the vector from the origin to one vertex and p1, p2 are the vectors from the first vertex to the other two vertices.
Let N = p1 X p2 be the normal to the triangle. ------- | p1 X p2 |
Construct the matrices
b = | p1 | , bb = inv(b) = | bb[0] |
| p2 | | bb[1] |
| N | | bb[2] |
and store away bb.
Let the intersecting ray be parameterizes as
r = t * D + P
Now you can quickly intersect the ray with the triangle using the following pseudo code. ( . means vector dot product)
Den = D . bb[2]
if (Den == 0) then ray parallel to triangle plane, so return
Num = (p0 - P) . bb[2]
t = Num / Den
if (t <= 0) then on or behind triangle, so return
p = t * D + P - p0
a = p . bb[0]
b = p . bb[1]
if (a < 0.0 || b < 0.0 || a + b > 1.0) then not in triangle and return
b1 = 1 - a - b /* barycentric coordinates */
b2 = a
b3 = b
The idea here is that the matrix bb transforms to a coordinate frame where the sides of the triangle form the X,Y axes and the normal the Z axis of the frame and the sides have been scaled to unit length. The variable Den represents the dZ component of the ray in this frame. If dZ is zero, then the ray must be parallel to the X,Y plane. Num is the Z location of the ray origin in the new frame and t is simply the parameter in both frames required to intersect the ray with the triangle's plane. Once t is known, the intersection point is found in the original frame, saved for latter use, and the X,Y coordinates of this point are found in the triangle's frame. A simple comparison is then made to determine if the point is inside the triangle. The barycenter coordinates are also easily found.
I haven't seen this algorithm in any of the literature, but then I haven't really looked either. If anyone knows if this approach has been published before, I'd really like to know about it.
Jeff Arenberg -------------------------------- UUCP : ( ucbvax, ihnp4, uscvax ) !trwrb!csed-pyramid!arenberg GEnie: shifty --------------------------------
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Was skimming the back issues of the RT News and your memo on transforming normals caught my eye. Another way of looking at the problem is to recall that a polygonal volume is made up of planes that divide space into two parts. The columns of the volume matrix are formed from the coefficients of the plane equations. Transforming a volume matrix requires that you premultiply by the inverse of the manipulation matrix. The components of a normal are the first three coefficients of the plane equation. Hence the same idea should apply. (see PECG Sec. 4-3 on Robert's algorithm pp 211-213). Surprising what you can learn from Roberts' algorithm yet most people discount it.
Dave Rogers
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An answer to the question of Jack Ritter, RT-News October 3, 1988, by Jack van Wijk
Jack Ritter proposes a method to improve the efficiency by testing the ray-point against a 2-D box. This method has been published before:
Bronsvoort, W.F., J.J. van Wijk, and F.W. Jansen, "Two methods for Improving the Efficiency of Ray Casting in Solid Modelling", Computer-Aided Design, 16(1), January 1984, pp. 51-55.
The method is used hierarchically here for CSG-defined models, in the spirit of Roth. The gain of the method is significant, but not dramatically. Probably in our system the cost of the floating point intersection calculations was much bigger than the box-test.
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I hate to say it, but I use my own (less, I feel, but still ugly) text format that does have a binary format as well as an ascii numerical format. You are welcome to it if you want, but I would doubt it. It's different in that algebraic expressions are possible in place of any constant, plus it includes flow control, tests, some computer algebra-type primitives and macros. Plus, a historyer, command line editing, etc. It looks a lot like an interactive F77 interpreter with massive numbers of bizarre graphics commands.
Perhaps you can instigate an effort to create a sensible object description language and (maybe) supply an interpreter and some compiled formats. It would be worthwhile. Perhaps just setting up an effort to spec one out would be good enough. Whatever.
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Reply From: Eric Haines
I guess I didn't make it clear - NFF has been in use about a year now. It's the format that the SPD benchmarking package uses. I should have written a better preface, obviously: I wanted to get the point across that this is supposed to be absolutely minimal, and that no one should be using it for modeling, but only for transferring the final database to a renderer. There could indeed be an NFF++ language which would not be user hostile, like NFF is. Essentially, I see NFF as incredibly stupid and brain damaged. This makes it accessible to almost anyone who simply wants to read in a scene database without too much hassle (even now, though, I'm getting questions like "what's hither?" from people on USENET).
Anyway, I like your ideas for algebraic expressions - I could use it right now in my other language, which is a tad more user friendly and is what I use when I want to munge around by hand.
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Reply From: Jeff Goldsmith
Hmmm. If you are trying to find an interface that can be used by professionals, then it is probably not the same interface that might be used by USENET-types. Both problems might be worth addressing, but I'd say (from gross personal bias) that the high-end problem is worth doing more. Simply so that I can trade databases more easily. Simply so that code can be shared more easily. I'm really not all that concerned about getting computer graphics capabilities out to high schoolers and other randoms quite yet. In fact, I doubt that graphics will have that sort of distribution in its current "modeler-renderer" form. I suspect that Mac interface and high-quality user-interfaces will be the medium for that type of technology dissemination. Eventually, we'll have programs that are called "Graphics Processors" or some other nonsense and will be transmitting reasonably complex graphics capabilities to anyone who wants to do it. Artists will be the primary users, though managers and engineers will use them in both technical and non- technical efforts. Joe six-pack just doesn't have that much use/interest/capacity for generating pictures out of thin air.
It would be really nice if there were a standardish graphics language kernel. Since just about everybody has their own interpreter that does just about the same set of very basic things, plus, of course, their set of enhancements, why not create a spec that would still allow all the enhancements, but cover the basics thoroughly. It might stifle creativity a bit, but I doubt it.
For transmission between modelers and renders, why not use the same language as input to modelers? Remove some options (or don't) and keep the files the same. If you are worried about speed, then a binary complied version is necessary in any event. (Case in point: my current project is Hubble Space Telescope. The uncompiled model takes 17! minutes to read in. The compiled one takes about 35 seconds.) It might also be worth considering that some people out there do use Fortran and that some things are hard to parse (NFF, for example) in Fortran. In fact, it's hard to parse anything that isn't fixed field formatted in Fortran. (I've got an ugly version like that, too. Really ugly. .7 Fixmans maybe even.)
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> On the RT news: I would like to see practical applications of ray tracing
> described here. What applications really require mirror reflections,
> refraction etc. Haven't seen applications where ray tracing was the way
> to go.
Applications for ray tracing (besides "realistic" image synthesis):
MCAD (3D solids modeling)
Material property calculations (mass, center of gravity,
moments of inertia, etc.)
Lens design (geometric optics)
Toolpath planning for numerical-controlled milling
Weapons research (ballistics analysis)
Vulnerability assessments (collision detection between a
projectile and an object)
Nuclear reactors (determination of neutron distributions
in reactor cores)
Astrophysics (eg., diffusion of light through stellar
atmospheres; penetration of light through planetary
atmospheres)
IN SUMMARY: Just about anything that requires solving a linear (and non-linear w/restrictions) particle transport problem is a candidate application for ray-tracing/ray-casting algorithms.
Cary Scofield - Apollo Computer Inc. - Graphics Software R&D UUCP: [decwrl!decvax,mit-eddie,attunix]!apollo!scofield ARPA: scofield@apollo.com USMAIL: 270 Billerica Rd., Chelmsford, MA 01824 PHONE: (508)256-6600 x7744
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Somewhere in the RT news you mentioned that the hierarchy is optimized only for primary rays from the eye?
In their paper, they mention that the probability of hitting a bounding volume is proportional to the solid angle of the bounding volume presented at the eye and if the eye is sufficiently far away, then this can be approximated by the surface area of the bounding volume of the object(s).
Is this the reason that the hierarchy is not the best for secondary rays? If that is so, what if the eye is somewhere within the scene? In this case, the assumption is again violated.
K.R.Subramanian
Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Tx-78712.
subramn@cs.utexas.edu
{uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!subramn
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Reply From: Eric Haines
Jeff Goldsmith and I were discussing in the latest RT News whether the eye location might be used to help out the hierarchy made by the Goldsmith/ Salmon algorithm. Essentially, Jeff finds that since so many of his rays are eye rays, he might want to try to test intersection of the objects closer to the eye first. In other words, after the G-S hierarchy is created, go through and sort the sons of each bounding volume by the additional criterion of distance to the eye. This is an added fillip to the G-S algorithm: normally (i.e. in the original article) they do not pay attention to the order of the sons of a bounding volume. The idea is that if you test the closer object first and hit it, you can often quickly reject the further object when it is tested (since you now have a maximum bound on the distance the ray is shot). For example, say you have a list: polygon, sphere. The closest approach (or the center, or whatever criterion you decide to use) of the sphere is closer than that of the polygon, so you reorder the son list: sphere, polygon. If you now test a ray against this list you get four possibilities:
1) Sphere missed, polygon missed - no savings is accrued by sorting. 2) Sphere missed, polygon hit - no savings is accrued by sorting. 3) Sphere hit, polygon missed - by hitting the sphere, we now have a maximum bound on the ray's (really the line segment's) length. Now when the polygon is tested it might be quickly rejected. Say we hit the polygon plane beyond the maximum distance. In this case, we can stop testing the polygon without doing the inside- outside testing. If we had intersected in the order "polygon, sphere", we would have had to do this inside-outside test, then gone on to test the sphere - extra work we could have avoided. 4) Sphere hit, polygon hit - Pretty much the same as case (3), except even more so: in this case time is saved by (a) not having to to do the inside-outside test, (b) not having to store information about the intersected polygon, and (c) it is all the more likely that a polygon beyond the sphere which is actually hit has the intersection distance beyond the sphere's intersection distance (vs. a missed polygon, where the intersection distance is somewhere on an infinite plane which could easily be in front of the sphere).
My idea for ordering the son lists was simply object size: within a son list, sort from largest to smallest area, on the theory that larger objects will tend to get hit more often and so get you an intersection point quickly. The savings are based more on probability of hits, but the idea makes for G-S hierarchy trees that are not eye-dependent (I use item buffering, so eye rays are minimized). Another idea is to order the lists by difficulty of calculation: test spheres before splines, test triangles before 100-sided polygons, etc.
The idea of ordering lists by either size or difficulty is valid for other efficiency schemes, too. Octree lists and SEADS might benefit from ordering the lists in a sensible fashion. Has anyone else out there tried such schemes?
________
Reply From: subramn@cs.utexas.edu (K.R.Subramanian.)
Yes, I understood these discussions and they are all valid. Somehow just trying to optimize the eye rays doesn't impress me very much because you yourself have mentioned the item buffer for eye rays and the light buffer for doing shadow rays from the first level intersections. It is not very clear to me if the above schemes you mention will bear a great improvement. Anyhow, I am really interested in secondary rays since that's what ray tracing is all about. In very complex scenes like the Cornell rings or Cornell mountain databases (SPD data bases) its the secondary rays that are dominant.
My real question was trying to figure out if Jeff's approximation in using the surface area of the bounding volumes to figure out the conditional probabilities was valid for all rays, primary and secondary. There he said something like 'if you are far away, you can approximate ........'. Does this refer to the ray length ?
K.R.Subramanian
Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Tx-78712.
subramn@cs.utexas.edu
{uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!subramn
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Reply From: Eric Haines
Indeed, Jeff's optimization for eye rays doesn't thrill me. But how do you feel about optimizing on size or on intersection complexity (or both)? Seems like this has a good chance of validity for secondary rays, too.
I will pass on your comments to Jeff and see how he responds. You might just want to write him directly at:
alias jeff_goldsmith jeff@hamlet.caltech.edu
I should clear up an important point: the SPD databases are in no way connected with Cornell. I designed them in August 1987, more than a year and a half after leaving Cornell. I hope that nowhere in the document I imply that Cornell is associated with these. Why the fuss? Partly because Don Greenberg, my president (at 3D/Eye Inc) is very firm about separating work done at 3D/Eye and work done at the Cornell graphics lab (which he also runs). Another reason is that Cornell doesn't "endorse" these databases - Don would be pretty bugged at me if it was said that they did. So, please just refer to the SPD databases, or the 3D/Eye SPD databases. 'Nuff said, and thanks.
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Reply From: KR Subramanian
> Indeed, Jeff's optimization for eye rays doesn't thrill me. But
> how do you feel about optimizing on size or on intersection complexity
> (or both)? Seems like this has a good chance of validity for
> secondary rays, too.
You are right. Using size or intersection cost in ordering your intersections will do good, especially in shadow ray computation. As far as the pixel or reflection rays are concerned, this depends on the method used. I have a modified version of the BSP tree where the search goes very close to the path of the ray and only on collection of unordered objects can we take advantage of the above 2 facts.
Also, this is basically a hack (well, I wouldn't go quite that far). But size as presented to a ray depends on the direction of the ray, since projected area on to a ray varies. A polygon could present its entire area to a ray orthogonal to it or almost nothing if its parallel to it.
For shadow rays, if you have a mix of complex objects (patches, splines etc) and simple objects like polygons, spheres you better do this in the order of their complexity. That will definitely save a lot of work especially when there are multiple light sources and lots of spawned rays.
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Reply From: Jeff Goldsmith
Ok. Optimizations.
1) The only reason that I suggest ordering from the eye is that there are eye rays in all scenes. Not true for secondary. Besides, most secondary rays get other kludges. More importantly, they are somewhat random, so it's tough to optimize for them.
2) What he is confusing with the above is the heuristic for "probability" determination. That is not based on eye rays, but assumes a uniform distribution of ray directions throughout the scene. This is not the case, but we haven't dealt with more complicated heuristics other than to decide that they are a bit more tricky than they might seem.
3) There is a factor in the tree combination heuristic (the one that adds up the node costs into a tree cost) that is biased for primary rays. I call the tree cost the sum of the node costs. This isn't strictly true for secondary rays, because they emanate from a leaf node, thereby adding some additional cost to the big nodes. We tried accounting for this by using a formulation that takes internal emanation costs into account. Yes, it was more accurate. Not by enough to bother with. I think the difference was on the order of a few percent. It was definitely well under the noise level. We don't use it anymore for no particular reason. Don't bother to code it, except as an intellectual exercise. (Not a bad one at that.)
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RGB
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I am currently working on a simple raytracer (VERY simple--so far it only models triangles) and have a major problem. For shadow calculations I need to know if there are any light sources which could shine on a point. The problem? With mirrors in the scene, it's possible to have reflected light illuminate some section that would normally be in shadow, e. g.:
Light-> O | O' \------ | ------/ \------ | ------/ \------ | ------/ \------ | M ------/ +-----+ \-\| i | | /-/| r |object /------ | r | | /------ | o | | SSSS | r ----------------------------------------|
Then the area covered by the S's would not be in shadow, even though it isn't directly illuminated by the light O. I know how to solve the problem using "virtual" lights; that is, a light that you would obtain if you reflected the Light at O in the mirror above; it would appear at O'. Multiple reflections can be handled by re-reflecting virtual lights, etc. So what's my problem? Simple: if you have M mirrors and reflections can go up to depth K, you need O(M^K) virtual lights for each "real" light. Is there any way I might be able to eliminate, for a given point, some combinations of reflections without having to do much testing?
Steven Stadnicki stadnism@clutx.clarkson.edu
P.S. The "virtual lights" idea came from a wonderful book: "A Companion to Concrete Analysis", by Melzak.
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If anyone is looking for the analysis of a regular subdivision ray tracing method, see:
journal: Visual Computer July 1988 title: Analysis of an Algorithm for Fast Ray Tracing Using Uniform Space Subdivision authors: Cleary, J and Wyvill, G
What the paper does is to describe the voxel traversal algorithm that Cleary developed and that I use in my ray tracer, and then a theoretical analysis is presented. It is a convincing argument for using regular voxel subdivision (although my method - submitted to CGI '89 in UK - works better for scenes where polygons are not evenly distributed throughout a scene).
Visual Computer is published by Springer Verlag. Unfortunately it doesn't enjoy the circulation of CG&A or TOG so it is pretty (outrageously?) expensive (like $160 US for 6 issues!).
The design of our Mesh Machine is in: journal: Proc CIPS Graphics Interface '83, 33-34, Edmonton, Alberta, May title: Design and Analysis of a Parallel Ray Tracing Computer authors: John Cleary and Brian Wyvill and Graham Birtwistle and Reddy Vatti
--------(second article appended)
In article (4589@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU), sjankows@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Mr Booga (detonate)) writes:
> I have a request similar to Randy Ray's (Raytracing introduction). I am
> starting a project in parallel raytracing using a Sequent Balance 8000 and
> a couple of color Sun 3's running X. I have virtually exhausted the
> local resources on raytracing and am in need of basic ray tracing algorithms
> and simple optimization algorithms.
Our university (the U. of Calgary) has significant experience in parallel ray tracing. Professors Cleary and Wyvill developed a mesh machine for raytracing several years ago. Graduate student (now working at Alias) Andrew Pearce implemented a parallel raytracer for the mesh machine that also ran on a network of Corvus'.
I implemented a parallel ray tracing algorithm for polygons and implicit surfaces earlier in the year on a BBN Butterfly. I used regular spatial subdivision combined with adaptive (octree) subdivision to converge on the surfaces. Up to 10 nodes I got almost linear speedup, and on a 70 node system I was still getting 50% from each new node added.
If anyone else is interested in references on parallel raytracing (the mesh machine articles, Pearces Masters thesis, or others such as Dippe in Siggraph 86 etc) you can send me mail and I can send a list or copies of some of t
"behind these eyes that say I still exist..."
David Jevans, U of Calgary Computer Science, Calgary AB T2N 1N4 Canada uucp: ...{ubc-cs,utai,alberta}!calgary!jevans
________
From: sdg@helios.cs.duke.edu (Subrata Dasgupta) Subject: Re: Basics of raytracing [from USENET]
In article (77@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP) jevans@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (David Jevans) writes:
>
>Our university (the U. of Calgary) has significant experience in parallel
>ray tracing. Professors Cleary and Wyvill developed a mesh machine for
>raytracing several years ago. Graduate student (now working at Alias)
>Andrew Pearce implemented a parallel raytracer for the mesh machine
>that also ran on a network of Corvus'.
This all sounds very interesting! A few articles back a person inquired about a paper on an algorithm analysis by Profs. Wyvill and Cleary. I am trying to track that paper down but the reason for sending you this letter is to request some info. on the mesh machine for ray- tracing developed at your univ. If you can refer me to a recent paper on this machine it will be great. At Duke we are developing what has come to be known as the Raycasting machine which computes intersection of an array of parallel rays with primitives and then uses constructive solid geometry to compute the shape, volume and other parameters of an arbitrary object. Thus I would be very much interested in any work in this area.
>If anyone else is interested in references on parallel raytracing
>(the mesh machine articles, Pearces Masters thesis, or others
>such as Dippe in Siggraph 86 etc) you can send me mail and I can send
>a list or copies of some of t
Any other info. in this area would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
Subrata Dasgupta
Department of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706 ARPA: sdg@cs.duke.edu CSNET: sdg@duke UUCP: decvax!duke!sdg
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Organization: Pixar -- Marin County, California [from USENET]
I'm writing the RenderMan book, so I guess I'm qualified to clear up a couple of things from this posting:
In article (25225@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu) fish@shape.cis.ohio-state.edu (Keith Fish) writes:
>
>I'm sure PIXAR is more than willing to send you a spec of Renderman ...
>just ask them. Also, there may be something available through the
>Siggraph 88 proceedings.
There's nothing in the SIGGRAPH 88 proceedings about RenderMan. You can get a copy of the spec by sending $15 (yes, I know it's a pain, but we've sent out ~1000 specs so far, and it got kind of expensive; this is the real cost) to Pixar 3240 Kerner Blvd. San Rafael, Ca. 94901
>
>((( The following is MY understanding of Renderman )))
>
>Renderman is an attempt by PIXAR to force a de facto standard interface in the
>Graphics Rendering/Imaging arena. My understanding is that this interface
>is based on tools/routines that they have developed throughout the years for
>use on their hardware. Because it was not designed for general/varying
>graphics architectures, many companies wonder if it will only work well on
>their systems -- hence, making their hardware also the de facto standard.
RenderMan is based on about six years' research at Pixar and Lucasfilm on how to get quasi-photographic realism into computer graphics. The effort has encompassed algorithms, software and hardware, and much of what is in the standard has been proven to work by actually implementing it; so in some sense the above is a correct statement. However, there is an implication here that RenderMan is some in-house methodology that Pixar is trying to foist off on the rest of the industry. That is definitely untrue. Pat Hanrahan and Tom Porter spent about six months talking to other companies in the industry, trying to establish a consensus and ensure that the standard is technically sound. The best evidence I have of how much it changed as a result is the amount of work I had to put into changing my book between Versions 2 and 3 of the spec.
As for the standard being specific to some particular hardware or software configuration, you just have to look at the standard itself. From the geometric standpoint, it is a simple protocol for describing scenes, as generic as can be, and deliberately so. It is essentially a superset of PHIGS+, with two differences: there is no provision for changing model descriptions once defined (you have to respecify scenes from one frame to another), and there are extensions for realism like the shading language, motion blur and depth-of-field. The hardware- specificity is a canard, pure and simple. The current (incomplete) version of our software runs on Sun, Silicon Graphics and '386-based Compaq machines, as well as on Transputer-based hardware accelerators in all three.
More specifically, I can tell you that Pat went to a lot of trouble to make the interface standard independent of even the basic rendering algorithm. That is, RenderMan is consistent with scanline-based methods as well as ray tracing; standard shading models as well as radiosity techniques. That wasn't easy.
>More importantly, PIXAR already has the software written for this "standard"
>so if this becomes a standard, any competitor of PIXAR would have to make the
>$$$ investment to write this software -- a good way to limit your competition.
Sorry. I'm working closely with the software group in trying to generate pictures and example programs for my book, and I can testify that the software, while quite far along, is not "already written", largely because of extensions to the standard that came out of discussions with other companies. True enough, we probably have a head start on others, but the standard has been out there for five months now, and will probably have been around for close to a year before Pixar has its stuff on the market.
Besides, the standard specifies nine capabilities which are optional for any particular implementation. No renderer should have any trouble meeting the RenderMan standard if it supports PHIGS primitives and performs such quality calculations as anti-aliasing and gamma correction.
>PIXAR made a big push for Renderman at Siggraph 88. Although a few companies
>agreed to endorse this package (SUN, of course ... they'd endorse anything to
>get their name in lights ;-), many took a more intelligent approach and said
>that they would evaluate it. PIXAR basically used a lot of marketing hype
>to get support initially and even listed supporters who, when you would
>walk up to their booth at Siggraph and ask them, said they did not support it.
This comment is borderline offensive to me, partly because it is admittedly based on speculation and partly because I was around during the process I mentioned above, and I know what a painful and elaborate job Pat had to get the proposal into shape to win the support of the companies he did. There is a difference between endorsement and support. Endorsement means "we have evaluated this; it is sound and we believe this is the way the industry should go". Support means "we have hardware and/or software which implements this standard". You would expect the latter to be a subset of the former.
Nineteen companies endorsed the RenderMan standard at rollout. The main holdouts at this point are Silicon Graphics and Wavefront. My personal suspicion (not to be taken as the views of Pixar) is that Wavefront perceives RenderMan as a threat to their rendering market because it supports features which would be difficult or impossible to implement using their rendering algorithm. And Wavefront software runs on SGI machines.
>Many (most ?) of the companies who looked at Renderman have decided that it
>still needs a lot of work before it can be considered as even a base to start
>the development of a standard in the rendering/imaging arena.
Who are these "many companies"?? What is this "lot of work"?? We would love to hear about. There is a RenderMan Advisory Council made up of industry representatives whose job it is to hear complaints like that.
I don't expect to hear too many of them, however. As I said before, RenderMan is basically a simple-minded extension of PHIGS (read: EXTENSION. Meaning "If PHIGS is good enough for you, so should be RenderMan") adding constructs for supporting realistic graphics. It has gone through the mill of two major rewrites as a result of consultations with "many companies".
>There are
>several problems in the area of getting Renderman to mesh with other current
>standard graphics environments (eg. phigs, cgi, ...) so that it becomes a
>natural extension to the less-interesting/fancy graphics people do today.
What are these problems?? Can you be more specific??
>Even for the niche market of image-rendering, Renderman does not include
>many (any ?) ideas from the companies that have been in this business for
>years ... Wavefront, Alias Research, Neo-Visuals, Disney, etc.
What are these ideas?? Come to think of it, what ideas has Disney contributed to image rendering?
>Keith Fish
>
>PS. I'm not cutting down PIXAR -- I think that the work they do is
> fantastic (literally)! I just don't like marketing ploys to degrade
> what should be good technology, and this is what the Renderman-hype
> seems to be.
I appreciate your appreciation, but I wish I knew where these impressions of yours came from.
> I think that the industry can develop a good imaging
> interface standard if everyone (animation software companies,
> universities, graphics hardware companies, etc.) gets to contribute.
Again, I thought that's exactly what we did.
If anyone on the net is interested in more information on RenderMan without investing $15 in a spec, the current issue of Unix Review includes an article I wrote discussing the major aspects of the standard. Also, the November issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal has a cover story on the shading language, which is RenderMan's doorway for extensibility.
Steve Upstill
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From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Subject: A little announcement (part 1 of 3) Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif. [from USENET]
For a long time now, a lot of people have been asking simple information queries in places like comp.graphics. This resulted in the inevitable repeating of topics, flood of inane news messages (many of which are wrong), and a repeating cycle which bring disillusionment.
Computer graphics, unlike a lot of disciplines, has an overseer of the literature. If you open up an ACM/SIGGRAPH proceedings you will notice a reference to "References" to Baldev Singh (currently at MCC). Baldev has has published significant references in the Computer Graphics Quarterly for a couple of years (and is preparing for another shortly). These bibliographies:
%A Baldev Singh %T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1986: A Bibliography %J Computer Graphics %V 21 %N 3 %D June 1987 %P 189-208
and
%A Baldev Singh %A Gunther Schrack %T Computer Grap[hics Literature for 1985: A Bibliography %J Computer Graphics %V 20 %N 3 %D July 1986 %P 85-145
Coverage in the field (for graphics) is quite good. I know, I am trying to maintain a comprehensive study of another field (see postings in comp.arch or comp.parallel). The problem is searching for literature on a paper database is difficult (I won't get into details, take my word). Frequently entries are also wrong (not as bad as the net however).
A machine readable form however, solves many of these problems. You can update a machine readable form. The problem becomes then of distribution and search, surprise! something computers are good for! It is with this back ground that we in the Bay Area Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics announce the availability of Singh's ACM/SIGGRAPH bibliography in a machine readable form.
While Baldev will oversee the collection and quality of entries, we with a generous donation of cycles and disk space from the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) will help oversee the redistribution of the computer graphics bibliography.
This first article will describe how hosts on the Internet can retrieve the computer graphics bibliography. Two other optional means for those not on the Internet will be presented over the next two days (but clearly Internet is the superior way to do this).
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent in all of these means. The bibliography is kind of big. It's not a megabyte, but it's getting there. IF YOU ARE at an Internet site with lots of users, it's kind of dumb if you ALL made personal copies (n megabytes ;-). So before you copy, agree who at your site will oversee obtaining it. One copy per site please.
The second danger is everybody copying at the same time. The information which follows will illustrate the problem. The DEC host which you be copying from is DEC's gateway to the Internet. It will be a tragedy to abuse this gateway if every site tried to copy at once. I know, we provide the 9600 baud IMP port to DEC. So let's not abuse this, let's be patient and take our turns. 1) copy the computer graphics bibliography only during the weekends or evenings Pacific Daylight or Standard time. 2) copy on a randomly determined evening of the week. How? Flip a coin 3 times (say HTH, make Head == 0, Tails == 1, this translates to 010 binary or 2 base 10). Using Sunday as 1, make Monday 2, copy Monday evening P[SD]T. (HHH or 000, retry). If this is confusing, wait for the weekend. AGAIN copy only in the evenings.
Now the questions you have all been patiently waiting for and I have been rambling: where do I get, and how do I get it. The Internet host is the machine gatekeeper.dec.com [128.45.9.52]. Please respect this machine (hacker ethic) for the assistance DEC is providing. We don't wish to yank the bibliography from this machine. Don't try to break in, please.
Old time ARPAnet hackers will know where to go from here. The "how" is a process called anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol or Program, hasn't changed since 1973 ;-)] Don't all do this at once. Below is a sample session with annotation as to how this works. Catch the names of the subdirectories and files below. A lot of people aren't familiar with distributed systems other than Email, so we've made the language oversimplistic, if you have problems consult your local network guru.
Note the bibliographies exist in a data compressed binary form. Use the Unix uncompress(1) command to decode them. Not on a Unix system? Tough for the time being. Try to find one. The further format of individual entries is Unix refer format (a sample, see the two references above). This is how Singh has them, and also how my bibliography is stored. Refer has lots of advantages over other systems: free-format, widely available on Unix systems, uses a minimum of space, ASCII, fully machine and human readable (it separates the binary data from the text), fairly easy to learn, easily converted to other formats (like [bib]TeX, Scribe, etc.)
Start script
eos % ftp gatekeeper.dec.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ issue this command, after some time you get:
Connected to gatekeeper.dec.com.
220 gatekeeper.dec.com FTP server (Version 4.28
Name (gatekeeper.dec.com:######): anonymous
^^^^^^^^^ use this name
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
^^^^^^^^ does not echo, I typed "guest," doesn't matter
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/graf-bib
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ change directory to pub/graf-bib
200 CWD command okay.
ftp> binary
^^^^^^ very important, you are getting compressed binary files
200 Type set to I.
ftp> ls
^^ optional just to should you what you are getting ('dir' is okay, too)
200 PORT command okay.
150 Opening data connection for /bin/ls (128.102.21.2,1118) (0 bytes).
bib85.Z
bib86.Z
226 Transfer complete.
^^^^^^^ those two filenames are what you want!
18 bytes received in 0.2 seconds (0.09 Kbytes/s)
ftp> mget *
^^^^^^ asks for all (star) files
mget bib85.Z?
mget bib86.Z?
^ you type "y " or "n " if you want them.
NOTE: THIS WILL TAKE SOME TIME.
ftp> quit
^^^^ done
221 Goodbye.
eos % # Now you can uncompress bib85.Z, etc.
end script
If you don't have a network guru, send mail to siggraph, not the poster of this note below. (Illiterates will type "reply" or "follow-up" to news. Sorry, I'm very tired of this. That's why I'm doing this.) Big thanks are due to Brian Reid and Jamie Painter (at DEC for this work). Rick Beach okay'ed ACM copyrights. This is not for profit. Please ACK the above people and organizations (in particular, Baldev) when citing. As I hope you can tell, we are really trying to advance the state of the art in computer graphics. This should benefit experts as well as students alike. It also shows the use of technologies other than graphics to our (graphics) benefit.
________
Subject: A little announcement (part 2 of 3)
I described the advantages of searching and reformatting. I described anonymous FTP. This is the way to go if you are a major Internet site like most universities. The problem is: what about more casual users, poor people with small disks? Well, the files reside of DEC's disk. Just LEAVE THEM THERE. Let Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH and Singh maintain them. Then how do you access it? By electronic mail.
A similar system exists at the Argonne National Labs (and AT&T Bell Labs): netlib numerical software distribution [CACM ref. if you need it]. A similar set up for benchmarks exists at the NBS (See latest IEEE Computer). Why not do this for graphics references?
With a generous donation of cycles and disk space from the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and some software from CSIL at Stanford we have done just this.
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS inherent: The bibliography is kind of big. The second danger is everybody copying at the same time.
The DEC host which you be copying from is DEC's gateway to the Internet. It will be a tragedy to abuse this gateway if every site tried to copy at once. So let's not abuse this, let's be patient and take our turns.
1) retrieve references only during the weekends or evenings Pacific Daylight or Standard time.
2) copy on a randomly determined evening of the week. How? Flip a coin 3 times (say THT make Head == 0, Tails == 1, this translates to 101 binary or 5 base 10). Using Sunday as 1, make Thursday 5, copy Thursday evening P[SD]T. (HHH or 000, retry). If this is confusing, wait for the weekend. AGAIN copy only in the evenings.
Where, okay here goes the dangerous information:
send mail to:
graf-bib-server@decwrl.dec.com
This can also be
{your favorite UUCP path}!decwrl!graf-bib-server
or if you work for DEC and have ENET access:
DECWRL::graf-bib-server
Your mailer should ask for a "Subject:" field. This is important. If your mailer doesn't (and lots don't) ask your system folk about mailrc file or mh_profiles or how to invoke this field. Because you should place the keywords in that subject field. One special keyword is "help." You get a short little description. Make the first alphanumeric (don't give "years"). Additional keywords are conjective (and's) causing a smaller and smaller search. The contents aren't perfect, but give us time.
Your mail is answered by the server daemon. It searches and tries to find relevant cited keywords (up to 6 significant first characters. Choose carefully. Don't ask for all references with "computer graphics." Hope you understand why. Just try "help" as your first keyword unless you know what you are looking for. The information comes back in the aforementioned (yesterday) refer format.
If you don't have a network guru, send mail to siggraph, not the poster of this note below. (Illiterates will type "reply" or "follow-up" to news. Sorry, I'm very tired of this. That's why I'm doing this.) Big thanks are due to Brian Reid and Jamie Painter (at DEC for this work). Rick Beach okay'ed ACM copyrights. This is not for profit. Please ACK the above people and organizations (in particular, Baldev) when citing. As I hope you can tell, we are really trying to advance the state of the art in computer graphics. This should benefit experts as well as students alike. It also shows the use of technologies other than graphics to our (graphics) benefit.
Our last note will concern one more way of getting references: just asking for a floppy (low tech). We in the Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH local group will be adding to these. Reference contributions and corrections are welcome. It's only possible if we work together to see this through.
________
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Subject: Re: bib notation question
In article (3384@pt.cs.cmu.edu) pkh@vap.vi.ri.cmu.edu (Ping Kang Hsiung) writes:
>I got Eugene Miya's bib files over the weekend. There are some
>notations used in the files that I don't understand:
>
>1. Some \(em or (em in the %J field. What these mean?
>(and why they don't have the closing ")".)
>
>2. In the key field, there are some numbers:
> %K I3m educational computing
> %K I3m mechanical engineering computing
> %K I35 modeling systems
>How do I interpret/use these I3m, I35 numbers?
>
>3. Some acronyms: CGF, CAMP, ISATA. They are not defined in the files.
Oops! Sorry. I got other mail on this. I forgot all about them. The BACKSLASH macros are troff-isms. There are tools like deroff to take them out or r2bib to convert things into bibTeX. These macros are 4 characters in size \(em is a slightly longer dash. They aren't a significant problem, write sed filter.
The I fields are ACM Classification codes. You can either get them from ACM Computing Reviews (blue and white things, that most don't get) or you can get the hardcopy versions of these bibliographies (they have the CR classification scheme for graphics).
The acronyms are unfortunately a long term problems. We can get a table to use use U. AZ's bib program to fill them out.
I hope you are all finding some use of this stuff. We NEED people around the country to help us update this. There are earlier years. Also new papers are being written all the time. They have to get entered (even finding them is hard). I don't deserve the credit, I'm only pissed off that I have to read queries over and over. The credit belongs to the crew of Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH working on this project. (other volunteers are welcome: especially key entry help)
Another gross generalization from
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov ex-Lame-duck Prez. Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
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