Next: The Data Stream, Previous: Copying, Up: Top
The MST ray trace software suite is based upon a large number of individual programs which operate on a stream of photons. The programs are orchestrated into a production “pipeline” by passing the output of one program to the input of the next. This document describes the format of the data stream and a library of functions to access the data.
There are a few unique properties required of the data streams:
The bpipe
data format and library provide this functionality.
1 The data
stream is organized into a single header packet and multiple data
packets, each of which has the same format. The header
packet both describes the format of the data packets and contains
annotation data. Both the header and the data
packets are extensible; the user can add or delete data from either.
The bpipe
library provides tools that allow the program to
manipulate the data stream. It provides for addition and deletion of
data, for splitting the data stream, and for extracting appropriate data
from the stream. It insulates applications from the exact layout of the
data, and filters out unnecessary information about the contents.