Overview

The irradiance map viewer can be used to view, merge and save irradiance map files created by V-Ray. Note that the viewer is a separate program and does not require 3ds Max in order to run.

Installation

By default, the installation of V-Ray for 3ds Max installs the irradiance map viewer in the folder [Program Files]\Chaos Group\V-Ray\3dsmax Rx for yyy\tools. A shortcut to the irradiance map viewer is also installed in the Start Menu: click Start Menu > Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3dsmax > Tools > Irradiance map viewer.

Usage

There are several methods of running the irradiance map viewer, which are outlined below.

• The simplest way is to double-click the imapviewer.exe file. This will bring up an Open File dialog box that lets you browse for an irradiance map to open. This is the same as starting the irradiance map viewer from the Start Menu. The menus of the program allow you to do various things with the irradiance map (merging and saving etc).

• You can also run the irradiance map viewer from the command line. In this case there are several possible choices:

• If you type just

on the command line, this is the same as double-clicking the file. It will bring up the File Open dialog for selecting an irradiance map file.

• You can also type

where <filename> is the name of an irradiance map file. This file will be opened automatically.

• A third way is to use the viewer to merge several maps into one:

This will load the specified maps and combine them into one irradiance map. If the -save option is specified, the result will be written to the given file. If the -nodisplay option is specified, the resulting map will not be displayed (otherwise the viewer will display the final result).

Notes

• Use the -help option on the command line to see a short description of the usage of the irradiance map viewer;