6.837 - Athena Graphics Tools

Package Location Documentation/Notes
Conversion Utilities /mit/imagery5/arch/sgi_53/bin We have made the following conversion utilities available:
DxfToIv
AliasToIv
SoftimageToIv
ObjToIv
SlaToIv
IvToRib
AliasToRenderman
To use them, add the directory to the left in your path. To see their manpages, add

/mit/imagery5/arch/sgi_53

to your MANPATH environment variable, or if it is not already set, do

setenv MANPATH /usr/share/catman:/mit/imagery5/arch/sgi_53

which should give you the standard irix pages, and those for the new tools.

RenderMan /mit/renderman RenderMan is available on all of the SGI Indys on Athena. In addition to the program, there are also all of the examples from The RenderMan Companion that give an excellent introduction to how you can use the software. Because of the particularities of Athena, you will need to do a few extra steps for RenderMan to run correctly.

Each time you log in, before using the software, you will need to attach the RenderMan locker and modify the path.

add renderman
set_renderman

Each time you use a new machine, you will have to set up a symbolic link that adjusts for the installation location. Eventually, you may wish to change the makefile to correspond to the Athena location, but for now, the symbolic link is the easiest fix. You will need to be root to do this; you can get the root password by typing tellme root on any public Athena machine.

ln -fs /mit/renderman/sgi /usr/local/prman

To run the demos example and tutorials, you run a script that copies the file tree to the /tmp partition on the machine. You can then make the examples. Be aware that unless you copy these files to another location once you are finished, they will be lost.

add renderman
set_demos

AC3D /mit/imagery5 Fast, easy to use 3D modeler for the SGI platform. Exports to Renderman, POV, VRML, etc. Quite powerful for freeware. Manual is here.
Radiance /mit/radiance Radiance is a powerful physically-based hybrid rendering system developed by Greg Ward at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. Full documentation is available at the Radiance web site. Full source code and papers describing the rendering algorithms are available.
Lightscape /mit/lightscape_v2.0 Lightscape is a commercial radiosity (and raytracing) rendering system. It is available on the Athena SGI Indy's in 4-035 and Rotch library. To start lightscape:

add lightscape_v2.0
lscape

Alias /mit/imagery5 Alias is a powerful commercial modeling, animation and rendering system. It is available on the Athena SGI Indy's in 4-035 and Rotch library. There is full documentation on-line. To start the software:

add imagery5
run-alias

Columbia/Utrecht
Reflectance
Databases
www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/curet Researchers at Columbia University and Utrecht University have collaborated in an extensive investigation of the visual appearance of real-world surfaces. Three databases of material reflectance properties are available.

1. BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) database with reflectance measurements for over 60 different samples.

2. BRDF parameter database with fitting parameters from two recent BRDF models: the Oren-Nayar model and the Koenderink et al. representation.

3. BTF (bidirectional texture function) database with image textures from over 60 different samples, each observed with over 200 different combinations of viewing and illumination directions.


Last Modified 09/02/2003