Rayfront User Manual

Configure Simulation

When you start a simulation, you will be presented a dialog with exact information on what commands Rayfront is about to execute. You can specify some more options here, depending on the type of simulation.

Setup Preview

Previews can be run in one of several modes. The display of the commands to be executed will immediately reflect the changes after you select a different option.

Quick preview with default settings
This will just create a basic octree and start a rview(1) process without specifying any simulation parameters. The image will appear on screen very quickly, but you may need to change some of the settings interactively. Especially in daylight simulations, it may be necessary to set a non-zero value for ambient bounces (-ab), in order to see more than black walls.

Preview with actual settings
This option is similar to the above, except that the rview(1) process is given all simulation parameters as specified in the Simulation Parameters dialog earlier. The resulting image will be a lot more realistic, especially in a scene with electrical lighting. On the other hand, it may take significantly longer to run, especially if there are many light sources in the scene.

Full preview with actual settings and precomputing
This option is only available when there are objects in the scene that are set up for precomputation with mkillum(1) or some plug-in module (eg. mktis for daylight redirection). The percomputing processes and the building of all necessary octrees can take a long time. Chosing this option is therefore most useful if some other simulation has already created those octrees for the current variation. The resulting image will be exactly as accurate as a background rendering.

Buttonbar

Start Job - close the dialog and start the configured preview.

• Preview a Simulation on Unix
• Preview a Simulation on Windows

If a simulation of the same variation and view or measuring field is already running, then the system offers to terminate the existing process before starting or scheduling the new one.

Cancel - discard the edited configuration and close the dialog.

Help... - display this information.

Setup Simulation

There is no difference in the configuration of background image renderings and numerical simulations.

If there is any other simulation currently precomputing the octrees for the current variation, then the top of the dialog will show a message as in the snapshot below. In addition, the "Start Job" button changes its label text to "Schedule Job".

Run Simulation on Host:
(This feature is not available with demo versions.)
You can select the host on which the simulation will be executed. The list of hosts to chose from is determined by the entries in the host configuration file of your Rayfront intstallation. If Rayfront can't connect to a Rayserver process on that host, then pressing the "Start Job" or "Schedule Job" button will result in an error message.

The selection of "localhost" will run the job on the local system without the help of a Rayserver process, unless it needs to be scheduled for delayed execution. Scheduled jobs need to be handled by a Rayserver process in any case. If you selected "localhost", then Rayfront will try to connect to a Rayserver process on the local system, even if the host configuration file doesn't have it listed.

Note that due to their interactive nature, previews must always be executed by the local Rayfront front end process. For this reason it is not possible to run a preview, as long as another process is precomputing the current variation. If you try to start a preview in such a situation, you will see a message that informs you about this limitation.

Buttonbar

Start Job - start the configured job and close the dialog.

If a simulation of the same variation and view or measuring field is already running, then the system offers to terminate the existing process before starting or scheduling the new one.

Schedule Job - schedule the configured job and close the dialog.

Cancel - discard the edited configuration and close the dialog.

Help... - display this information.

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