Rayfront Update

Rayfront 1.0.4 Update

Changes from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4:

• A support file for the skymap functionality was installed in the wrong location, which resulted in selected maps being lost on save.
• Imported scene files containing command expansion lines (starting with an !) that are continued to the next line with a backslash caused the import to fail.
• Preprocessing options weren't copied with cloned variations.
• The penumbra selection in the simulation settings had the reversed effect than they should.
• The pixel threshold for medium quality settings was wrong.
• The image conversion dialog could cause errors in some situations when no image was loaded yet.
• The image conversion dialog would show wrong luminances in pictures that had several EXPOSURE lines in the header, which are added by pfilt in certain cases.
• The image converter dialog was unable to open unfinished pictures on user request (files with the *.unf extension).
• Importing IES files with multiple entries for the same key caused an error.
• The replmarks executables contained a subtle bug that was triggered by some particular parameters on Windows.
• Luminaires with direct/indirect distribution but no light output in the horizontal direction could produce incorrect results.
• Rayfront 1.0.3 was confused about when to rebuild octrees and to remove ambient files for new simulations, which could result in unnecessary computations.
• The "Other Settings" section in the simulation parameters dialog now has a drop-down for "Image Oversampling". In the "Automatic" position, the size of the raw picture will be determined by the quality settings as before. The other positions allow to override this for 1x to 3x oversampling. This feature is especially helpful for Raydirect users, who may want to get better interpolation when using high -ds and -dj settings, but don't need the time consuming high quality setting when running simulations of daylight redirection systems installed in a simple space.
• The option to simulate radiance or irradiance values is now ignored for numerical simulations, as it doesn't make any sense there. The images rendered with this option set to irradiance also give highly unintuitive results, but can be a useful analysis tool for those who understand their meaning.
• The rpict.exe program in Radiance for Windows wrongly treated the maximum resolution values as "minimum" resolution values, causing one dimension of the picture to exceed its desired bounding box.
• Saving a material/modifier to the library, when one or several of its components were references to the system library, would confront the user with misleading information ("not found").
• Importing geometry from Autocad could cause invalid data with certain types of circles.
Installation and startup scripts for unix systems have been converted from ksh syntax to the bourne shell. This will help those who are running non-posix compliant systems. Some Linux distributions were found not to install the ksh in their default setup, which unnecessarily restricts the versatility of the system, besides violating the posix standards.

Download

• Rayfront 1.0.4 Update for unix Systems (3048119 bytes).
• Rayfront 1.0.4 Update for Windows Systems (3572985 bytes).

Installation on Windows

Double click on the installer "rf104update.exe", and select the installation directory of your existing Rayfront installation. The installer will then determine wich platforms your installation supports, and update all required components. The installer will refuse to proceed if no existing Rayfront installation is found.

Installation on Unix Systems

You will need the GNU gunzip program to decompress the archive, and tar to extract the files from it:

 $> gunzip rf104update.tgz
 $> tar xf rf104update.tar

This will create a directory "rf104update". Cd into this directory, and run the "install.ksh" shell script. You can make this script executable with chmod(1) and run it directly, or run a ksh with the file name as argument:

 $> ksh install.ksh
 Please enter the directory of your existing
 Rayfront installation:
   [/usr/local/rayfront] :

The script will ask you for the location of your existing Rayfront installation. It will then determine wich platforms your installation supports, and update all required components after a final confirmation. The installer will refuse to proceed if no existing Rayfront installation is found.