Element List

Here are the scenefile elements with brief descriptions:

absorbent	Ideal, cool, black-body absorbent BSDF (absorbs all incoming light)
aggregate	Linear combination of different BSDF implementations, where the coefficients are determined either a priori (inherent property described in scenefile) or via a texture map lookup
ball	Spherical metaobject which radiates influence uniformly in all directions outwards from its centerpoint
bidirectionalPathTracer	Unbiased bidirectional path tracer with support for efficient direct illumination
blob	Blobby shape comopsed of a set of metaobject elements
box	2D symmetric box filter (unweighted area filtering)
bsdf	Constant reflectivity model for a material, whose model-specific inputs are allowed to vary across the surface of the material
camera	Virtual camera to be used to render the scene specified in this scenefile
clampedSpectrum	N-length Vector of real scalars values corresponding to unitless coefficients sampled at n distinct frequencies
cone	Creates a unit cone, centered at the origin (ranging from [ -0.5, -0.5, -0.5 ] to [ 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 ]), with its tip at [ 0, 0.5, 0 ], and its base in the y=-.5 plane
cube	Creates a unit cube, centered at the origin (ranging from [ -0.5, -0.5, -0.5 ] to [ 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 ])
cylinder	Creates a unit cylinder, centered at the origin (ranging from [ -0.5, -0.5, -0.5 ] to [ 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 ]), with the caps in the y=.5 and y=-.5 planes
dielectric	Wavelength-dependent, thin dielectric BSDF. The opacity input controls the transmittance versus reflectance of different wavelengths. A pure specular mirror may be obtained by creating a dielectric BSDF with zero opacity. Conversely, a purely transparent surface may be obtained by creating a dielectric with full opacity. Note that a completely transparent surface will still reflect some light (in proportion to Fresnel's Laws) because refraction is undefined past a critical angle when light is traveling between a lighter and denser medium. When this happens, some light is reflected regardless of the opacity parameter, and this is typically known as total internal reflection
diffuse	Ideal diffuse BSDF (aka lambertian), with variable albedo
dynamic	External plugin loaded dynamically at run-time
emitter	Constant emittance model / distribution for a material, whose model-specific inputs are allowed to vary across the surface of the material
environment	An environment map roughly models distant illumination surrounding a scene by conceptually surrounding the scene with a spherical emitter that emits light inwards according to a distribution defined by a 2D 'environment' texture map that is projected onto the surface of the sphere. Note the term HDR environment map is thrown around a lot; the only difference is that the underlying environment texture is stored in some type of high dynamic range format, such as OpenEXR or HDR
filter	2D discrete, symmetric filter which can be compactly / efficiently stored / applied using a 2D kernel (array)
gaussian	2D discrete, symmetric gaussian filter, centered at the origin
generator	Generates point samples over the 2D unit interval [0,1]^2
homogenous	Constant medium throughout volume
jittered	Jittered point sample generation over the 2D unit interval, where M*N samples are generated randomly within M*N uniformly-spaced subdomains
lanzcosSinc	2D symmetric Lanzcos filter whose aim is to approximate a truncated sinc (the ideal rerconstruction filter) while minimizing the amount of visible ringing resulting from the truncation
material	Abstract representation of a surface Material, defined without respect to the underlying surface
medium	Medium describing the properties of a volume
mesh	Loads a mesh from an external file
metaobject	Blobby shapes are composed of one or more metaobjects, which each exert a positive or negative 'charge' over a scalar field, whose isocontours (level sets) define blobby surfaces with different threshold values corresponding to the contour level
mitchell	2D symmetric Mitchell filter which is parameterized to tradeoff between 'ringing' and 'blurring' that other filters tend towards in difficult reconstruction cases
naive	Records point samples from a renderer and naively reconstructs the underlying image by storing samples into the bin/pixel which they fall into, overwriting previous samples, and not using any reconstruction filter
null	Null emitter which doesn't emit any light
omni	Point emitter / light which emits light uniformly in every direction (omnidirectional)
oriented	Area emitter / light which emits light uniformly across a 2D domain, restricted to the local positive hemisphere (oriented along hemisphere about local surface normal)
output	Records point samples as output from a renderer which may be used to conelement an output image on a local or distributed machine
pathTracer	Unbiased path tracer with support for efficient direct illumination
phong	Physically-correct modified Phong model for glossy/specular surfaces
photonMapper	Implementation of Henrik Wann Jensen's photon mapping algorithm
pinhole	Basic pinhole camera using perspective projection (aka Camera Obscura)
plane	Creates a finite plane (quad) shape
point	Creates a point shape at the origin
preview	OpenGL scene preview renderer which can also be specified via the commandline flag --preview
rayCaster	Simple, non-recursive raycaster
rayTracer	Classic Whitted-style recursive raytracer
reconstruction	Records point samples from a renderer and attempts to reconelement the underlying image by filtering samples with a reconstruction filter
renderer	Specifies a renderer to use for rendering or previewing a scene
scene	Contains all shape and material data representing the virtual scene
shape	Declares a shape node
shapeSet	Groups a set of related shapes together within a common spatial acceleration data structure
spectrum	N-length Vector of radiance values sampled at n distinct frequencies
specular	Perfect specular (mirror) reflector
sphere	Creates a sphere
stochastic	Stochastic point sample generation over the 2D unit interval, where samples are generated completely randomly over the domain
super	Brute force super sampling over the 2D unit interval, where sub-bin (sub-pixel) sampling is done via an auxillary generator
thinlens	Thin lens camera approximation supporting common camera inputs and allowing for depth of field
transform	Declares a transformation block which affects all subnodes
transmissive	Perfect transmissive (transparent) material
triangle	2D symmetric triangle filter (aka linear / tent filter)
uniform	Uniform point sample generation over the 2D unit interval, where samples are generated uniformly in a grid over the domain