Radiance (software) - Scene Description Format

Scene Description Format

A radiance scene is made from one or more object files. The .rad format is a simple text file. It can specify individual geometric objects, as well as call programs by starting a line with an exclamation point '!'.

When specifying geometry the first line is

modifier type name

The following three lines contain parameters starting with an integer specifying the number of parameters. The parameters need not be on the same line, they can be continued on multiple lines to aid in readability.

Modifiers create materials and can be chained together, one modifying the next.

For example:

myball.rad

chrome sphere ball 0 0 4 0 0 10 10

This can then be arrayed in another file using the xform program (described later):

scene.rad

void metal chrome 0 0 5 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.9 0.0 !xform -a 5 -t 20 0 0 myball.rad

This creates a chrome material and five chrome spheres spaced 20 units apart along the X-axis.

Before a scene can be used, it must be compiled into an octree file ('.oct') using the oconv tool. Most of the rendering tools (see below) use an octree file as input.