Lighscape Oldie but goldie ...

[Karsten Feldmann]

Hi there ... 
i know that it's quite long ago. But in my new job i will work again with LIGHTSCAPE 3.2. (No Joke !)
I used it for about 12 Years and this will be fun. 

It will not be used for Architecture Visualization, but as a calculation link between our Optics developer and the product engineering and PM. LS has the ability to show photometric distributions in 3D and also to EDIT them directly. And this is what is really important for me.

I am also experimenting with lots of batch programming and using the batch exe programs of LS in conjunction with other automated routines. 
At the moment i try to batch generate panoramic (spherical) views for output in oculus rift systems.

But the  "lsrayf.exe" and its parameters are not documented well.

From the Users Guide: lsrayf.exe -rf filename ....

"Custom ray file. Instead of ray tracing the specified view, trace the rays specified in the ray file. This is useful for making panoramic images. The format of the ray file is that the first line has width and height dimensions. The following width x height lines have beginning and end coordinates of each ray (six numbers per line). If this option is specified, the -x, -y, -af, -vf, and -svf options are ignored." 

Has someone ever tried this and is experienced with this batch program ?
What is the structure and format of this RAYFILE ?

There are no hints in the WWW for this.

Br, Karsten

[Bobby Parker]

No way! I went from Accurender to Lightscape, and that had to have been 25 years ago.

[Karsten Feldmann]

On 6/22/2023 at 6:11 AM, Bobby Parker said:

No way! I went from Accurender to Lightscape, and that had to have been 25 years ago.

Hi Bobby, I am in contact with a lightscape developer from 28 years ago. And I reported this to him.

He is quite surprised that someone uses this program still. But I know some of the most experienced lighting design bureaus worldwide (I know that) they still use it in the "precicision stage" of their design stage. 

Autodesk didn't recognize the abilities of the program after 30 years! The only goal was to take it from the market to support their own Programm "3DSMax VIZ". SO STUPID! 

It's the absolute "Swiss knife"  In lighting Design. Capable of of many THINGS. 

 

[Bobby Parker]

I enjoyed using it, but was a short-lived. There was another AD software, Stingray, that I had high hopes for, but it too vanished.

[Karsten Feldmann]

Now ... about one year later here is a small update for this "Dinosaur".

During the last 12 months i made a lot of Lighting designs for projects with Lightscape. 

https://kuula.co/post/5YvLt  
https://kuula.co/post/n1/collection/7X8sF
https://kuula.co/post/n1/collection/7XnX8
https://kuula.co/post/n1/collection/7JzSw
https://kuula.co/post/n1/collection/7XvCt

And about 20 more ... which i can't show because they are still unfinished or works for clients.

On a fast machine, it is still a very usable tool. I run it on an AMD Threadripper / 128 GB Ram with multiple XP Installations running in parallel when rendering long film sequences with thousands of frames on a network drive. If work is organized well, it is still unbeaten in terms of precision and speed. In all my work, i need to use "Real Life IES Files" and provide correct lighting calculations. So for me, there is no alternative when it comes to "professional lighting calculations" and presentation.
       
I found out how the Ray files for panoramic images work and with a little help from Chat GPT and a local programmer i developed some Python tools for command line. Lighscape is able to dump its calculations into files with floating numbers. These can be reformatted with python scripts for further investigation and visualization. 
At the moment, i am working on HR-VR Scenes for the use with Apples Vision Pro and the MQ3 headset. And still there is much possible with LS I can't calculate with other tools. It also produces VRML 2.0 Geometry Files with nodes. These can be used to build complex interactive VR Scenes to explore with VR headsets. 

There are some articles on the web showing how to install and run LS on 64 Bit (W-7 / XP 64 / Vista) . At the end all this doesn't work. There are always some things that do not work. And the most important thing ... the 4GB limit still remains.