Hello everyone!

I am trying to introduce photometric data files of luminaires (i.e. IESNA .ies
or EULUMDAT .ldt) in Povray to get "correct" lighting distributions. This
currently works by combining

(1) a point light source
(2) a sphere with radius 0.01 and spherical mapping of an image map (.png with
the alpha channel used for transparency) which represents the lighting
distribution for different angles.

However, for large coordinates (e.g. 1e+6), I get unwanted black spots in a
regular pattern (see attached image on the left).

Jasper

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Attachments:
Download 'lum.jpg' (93 KB)

Preview of image 'lum.jpg'

"Jasper" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Hello everyone!
>
> I am trying to introduce photometric data files of luminaires (i.e. IESNA .ies
> or EULUMDAT .ldt) in Povray to get "correct" lighting distributions. This
> currently works by combining
>
> (1) a point light source
> (2) a sphere with radius 0.01 and spherical mapping of an image map (.png with
> the alpha channel used for transparency) which represents the lighting
> distribution for different angles.
>
> However, for large coordinates (e.g. 1e+6), I get unwanted black spots in a
> regular pattern (see attached image on the left).
>
> Jasper


OK, this doesn't have anything to do with radiosity - so I agree on floating
point precision issues as cause...

Norbert

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Le 19-05-13 à 07:29, Jasper a écrit :
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I am trying to introduce photometric data files of luminaires (i.e. IESNA .ies
> or EULUMDAT .ldt) in Povray to get "correct" lighting distributions. This
> currently works by combining
> 
> (1) a point light source
> (2) a sphere with radius 0.01 and spherical mapping of an image map (.png with
> the alpha channel used for transparency) which represents the lighting
> distribution for different angles.
> 
> However, for large coordinates (e.g. 1e+6), I get unwanted black spots in a
> regular pattern (see attached image on the left).
> 
> Jasper
> 

You may try using a larger sphere when the scale of the scene get larger 
than about 1e+4. It may reduce the rounding errors to some extent.

The best thing to do is to limit the size of the scene to be less than 
1e+5 if at all possible.

Build your scene around the origin. Don't be afraid of negative numbers.

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On 5/13/19 7:29 AM, Jasper wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I am trying to introduce photometric data files of luminaires (i.e. IESNA .ies
> or EULUMDAT .ldt) in Povray to get "correct" lighting distributions. This
> currently works by combining
> 
> (1) a point light source
> (2) a sphere with radius 0.01 and spherical mapping of an image map (.png with
> the alpha channel used for transparency) which represents the lighting
> distribution for different angles.
> 
> However, for large coordinates (e.g. 1e+6), I get unwanted black spots in a
> regular pattern (see attached image on the left).
> 
> Jasper
> 

Hmm, I have to say I'm curious about the regularity of those black 
spots. The numerical issues I've hit are usually noisier - or completely 
black/invisible/something when a hard numerical limit is hit.

Any chance I could get a smallish test case posted to one of the scene 
file groups? I'll stick it in my POVRay_Issues directory and at least 
take a quick look if not now a deep one.

Bill P.

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On 5/13/19 1:56 PM, Norbert Kern wrote:
> "Jasper" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
...
> 
> OK, this doesn't have anything to do with radiosity - so I agree on floating
> point precision issues as cause...
> 
> Norbert
> 

Is this still true for you with recent v38 releases?

I'd captured the case(s) you posted a couple years back - my notes say 
in 2016. I wasn't able to run what you posted directly on my little 
machine, but a cut down scene was fixed when I tested a v3.71 branch 
March 17, of 2017.

Bill P.

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Le 19-05-15 à 10:11, William F Pokorny a écrit :
> On 5/13/19 1:56 PM, Norbert Kern wrote:
>> "Jasper" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> ...
>>
>> OK, this doesn't have anything to do with radiosity - so I agree on 
>> floating
>> point precision issues as cause...
>>
>> Norbert
>>
> 
> Is this still true for you with recent v38 releases?
> 
> I'd captured the case(s) you posted a couple years back - my notes say 
> in 2016. I wasn't able to run what you posted directly on my little 
> machine, but a cut down scene was fixed when I tested a v3.71 branch 
> March 17, of 2017.
> 
> Bill P.

The version don't matter when you hit the FPU's limits.
Don't forget that in computing the illumination, there are a few 
squaring and square roots involved. This typically demand twice the 
number of bits of the input value if you want to avoid loss of precision.
When you square a 64 bits floating point value, you need 128 bits to 
accurately represent the result.

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On 5/15/19 3:36 PM, Alain wrote:
> Le 19-05-15 à 10:11, William F Pokorny a écrit :
>> On 5/13/19 1:56 PM, Norbert Kern wrote:
>>> "Jasper" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>> ...
>>>
>>> OK, this doesn't have anything to do with radiosity - so I agree on 
>>> floating
>>> point precision issues as cause...
>>>
>>> Norbert
>>>
>>
>> Is this still true for you with recent v38 releases?
>>
>> I'd captured the case(s) you posted a couple years back - my notes say 
>> in 2016. I wasn't able to run what you posted directly on my little 
>> machine, but a cut down scene was fixed when I tested a v3.71 branch 
>> March 17, of 2017.
>>
>> Bill P.
> 
> The version don't matter when you hit the FPU's limits.
...

True. However, the reason I was digging into Norbert's particular 
radiosity normals issue is that I intended to open up a github issue for 
it so we didn't lose track of it.

My view is that unlike other places in POV-Ray where we hit numerical 
issues, really tiny normals should just be treated as zero normals / no 
normals - or perhaps be normalized somehow so they don't cause issues.

Probably good too if 'bad' normal scalings can be detected and the user 
warned before they get ignored - but that's probably hard to the point 
of being practically impossible.

In any case I didn't think his situation should be causing artifacts 
like we were seeing in the output image.

The scaled very tiny normals were causing issues with Norbert's original 
renders in 2016. When I looked at the issue in 2017 to create a github 
issue, it looked like the issue had been fixed. The complication was the 
original scenes as posted - I think even one smaller one posted later - 
were too costly for my little machine. So, I evaluated behavior on 
something I thought similar hoping to use it as the scene for the issue. 
I might have gotten something wrong. I might have done something which 
caused the issue to be there in (v??? don't remember) and gone in the 
3.71 version I was testing against.

If Norbert still sees black spots with his original scenes using a 
current v3.8, the issue still exists and I think we should open a github 
issue for it. It's on my list again to try and run one of his originally 
posted scenes again with v38 - but I'm in the middle of several other 
projects and that won't happen for some time.

Suppose I'm hoping for a quick - "Oh, it works OK now" - answer/status 
from Norbert to save some time! :-)

Bill P.

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On 5/17/19 5:29 AM, William F Pokorny wrote:
...
> 
> If Norbert still sees black spots with his original scenes using a 
> current v3.8, the issue still exists and I think we should open a github 
> issue for it. It's on my list again to try and run one of his originally 
> posted scenes again with v38 - but I'm in the middle of several other 
> projects and that won't happen for some time.
> 
> Suppose I'm hoping for a quick - "Oh, it works OK now" - answer/status 
> from Norbert to save some time! :-)
> 
> Bill P.

I ran Norbert's cut down scene last night - it wasn't mine as I 
remembered. It looks to me this morning, as my notes indicate it did to 
me back in 2017, as if this particular radiosity normals issue is fixed. 
If others see a radiosity issue I don't, please speak up.

Image is attached. Using heavy AA as the black speckles show worse in 
v37 that way. Top is the current v37 result. The bottom the v38 result 
at commit 74b3ebe.

Bill P.

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Attachments:
Download '02feb2016radiositynrmlsissue37to38.png' (1248 KB)

Preview of image '02feb2016radiositynrmlsissue37to38.png'

William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>
> I ran Norbert's cut down scene last night - it wasn't mine as I
> remembered. It looks to me this morning, as my notes indicate it did to
> me back in 2017, as if this particular radiosity normals issue is fixed.
> If others see a radiosity issue I don't, please speak up.
>
> Image is attached. Using heavy AA as the black speckles show worse in
> v37 that way. Top is the current v37 result. The bottom the v38 result
> at commit 74b3ebe.
>
> Bill P.


Since you are asking directly - my problems were solved after this special IRTC
round by deleting small normals at the normal section - what else....
No, it wasn't that easy, but anyway...

Since then I deleted small normals, when black spots occured. Of course I'm
curious of the root cause, but my focus is more on the result...
But here I'm curious...


Norbert

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On 5/23/19 2:30 PM, Norbert Kern wrote:
> William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>>
...
> 
> Since you are asking directly - my problems were solved after this special IRTC
> round by deleting small normals at the normal section - what else....
> No, it wasn't that easy, but anyway...
> 
> Since then I deleted small normals, when black spots occured. Of course I'm
> curious of the root cause, but my focus is more on the result...
> But here I'm curious...
> 

If the normals are so small at the scene scale they cannot be seen, it 
makes sense compute resource wise to remove them no matter. In a strange 
way, seeing the black artifacts was an indication texture normals too 
small existed and we no longer have this in v38.

Still, I think POV-Ray should handle/filter such normals as people 
sometimes are using a texture/material others coded and it shouldn't 
completely break when used at a different scale(1).

I don't myself know what changed in the code post v37. Maybe something 
got fixed with the static code analysis Christoph runs and reviews now 
and again. I don't remember a specific commit for such an issue, but my 
memory is less good these days. I too might have been busy with real 
life when the change happened.

It is possible to do a binary search of commit versions to localized the 
commit(s) which fixed the issue for your scene. I've done this sort of 
work especially for performance issues. However, it's a very time 
consuming process always. A process worse on *nix systems like mine 
where we must work around sequences of commits in the history which 
don't compile. I have no plans to look for what got fixed - given it 
looks to be fixed.

That said, if you see black spot artifacts due normals in a recent v38 
release, a sample scene would be appreciated.

Bill P.

(1) Drifting... With published materials/textures I think it would be 
helpful to later users to know the original scale where the texture was 
developed and applied. "M_RustyIron12. Applied at 1x scale to objects in 
a 100x,100y,100z range centered at the origin. Camera distance to object 
with texture was roughly 350." Other stuff? Suppose most of us assume 
development in a -1,1 box at the origin and normal-ish camera set up 
after which we fish around for what looks good.

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