tachyon - Man Page

Parallel/Multiprocessor Ray Tracer

Synopsis

tachyon modelfile [options]

Description

Tachyon is designed to be a very fast renderer, based on ray tracing, and employing parallel processing to achieve high performance. NOTE: ** denotes default behaviour below.

Options

Model file formats supported

filename.dat -- The model files originated with this package.

filaname.ac  -- AC3D model files.

filename.nff -- The NFF scene format used by Eric Haines' SPD.

Message Options

+V verbose messages on

-V verbose messages off **

Speed Tuning Options

-raydepth xxx

(maximum ray recursion depth

-numthreads xxx

(** default is auto-determined)

-nobounding

-boundthresh xxx

(** default threshold is 16)

Shading Options

-fullshade

best quality rendering (and slowest) **

-mediumshade

good quality rendering, but no shadows

-lowshade

low quality rendering, preview (and fast)

-lowestshade

worst quality rendering, preview (and fastest)

Lighting Options

-rescale_lights xxx rescale light intensity values by

specified factor (performed before other lighting overrides take effect)

-auto_skylight xxx

force use of ambient occlusion lighting, auto-rescaling direct light sources to compensate for ambient occlusion factor. (use value 0.7 as a good starting point)

-add_skylight xxx

force use of ambient occlusion lighting, manually-rescaling direct light sources to compensate for ambient occlusion factor.

-skylight_maxdist xxx AO maximum occlusion distance cutoff.

-skylight_samples xxx number of sample rays to shoot.

Specular Highlight Shading Options

-shade_phong

Phong specular highlights

-shade_blinn

Blinn's specular highlights**

-shade_blinn_fast

fast approximation to Blinn's highlights

-shade_nullphong

disable specular highlights

Transparency Shading Options

-trans_max_surfaces xxx

Limit the number of transparent surfaces shown to the number specified

-trans_orig

Original implementation**

-trans_raster3d

Raster3D angle-based opacity modulation

-trans_vmd

Opacity post-multiply used by VMD

Transparent Surface Shadowing Options

-shadow_filter_on

Transparent objects cast shadows **

-shadow_filter_off Transparent objects do not cast shadows

Fog Shading Options

-fog_radial

Radial fog implementation **

-fog_vmd

Planar OpenGL-like fog used by VMD

Surface Normal/Winding Order Fixup Mode

-normalfixup [off | flip | guess]

(**off is default)

Antialiasing Options

-aasamples xxx

(maximum supersamples taken per pixel) (** default is 0, or scene file determined)

Output Options

-res Xres Yres

override scene-defined output image size

-o outfile.tga

set output file name

-clamp

clamp pixel values to [0 to 1) (** default)

-normalize

normalize pixel values to [0 to 1)

-gamma val

normalize apply gamma correction

-format BMP

24-bit Windows BMP  (uncompressed)

-format JPEG

24-bit JPEG         (compressed, but lossy)

-format PNG

24-bit PNG          (compressed, lossless)

-format PPM

24-bit PPM          (uncompressed)

-format PPM48

48-bit PPM          (uncompressed)

-format PSD48

48-bit PSD          (uncompressed)

-format RGB

24-bit SGI RGB      (uncompressed)

-format TARGA

24-bit Targa        (uncompressed) **

Interactive Spaceball/SpaceNavigator Control

-spaceball

Enable Spaceball/SpaceNavigator camera flight

-spaceballport serialportdevicename (only for serial devices)

Referenced By

The man page tachyon-ogl(1) is an alias of tachyon(1).

April 2022 0.99.5 Parallel/Multiprocessor Ray Tracer