PIXHIST3D(1)

📦
version 7.44.0 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

✨ pixhist3d(1) — NAME ✨

okay bestie, welcome to pixhist3d(1) from the BRL-CAD manual 💖 — it’s the little tool whose whole job is display RGB color space utilization. No cap, that’s the vibe check. 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pixhist3d [file.pix]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here’s the tea: pixhist3d reads a pix(5) RGB image from file.pix — or straight from standard input if no file is given, bestie — and it builds a count of color frequencies in the RGB color space. Then it displays three orthographic views of that space on a framebuffer. Iconic. 💅

The red, green, and blue values from 0 to 255 form a right-handed coordinate system. Each displayed face shows the frequencies integrated through the color cube perpendicular to that face. The counts are scaled so that the maximum value is full white, and any non-zero scaled count less than 20 is displayed at intensity 20 so as to remain visible. Lowkey thoughtful. 🫶

The three faces shown on the 512x512 framebuffer are:

  • Lower left: red vertical, green horizontal
  • Upper left: blue vertical, green horizontal
  • Lower right: red vertical, blue horizontal

The environment variable FB_FILE is used to select the display device (see brlcad(1)). If this variable is not set, the default device for your system will be used. periodt. 🌈

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • -h, -? — print a usage message and exit. short, sweet, slays. 🎀

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

🍓 Example 1. Inspect the color distribution of a rendered image 🍓

rt -o scene.pix -s 512 scene.g all.g
pixhist3d scene.pix

Render a scene with rt(1) to a pix(5) file, then display the three orthographic projections of its RGB color-space usage on the framebuffer. Bright regions reveal which colors dominate the image and how the red, green, and blue channels are correlated. it’s giving “data but make it visual” ✨

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

💜 AUTHOR 💜

BRL-CAD Team — the collective main characters behind this page 👑

This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

💀 BUG REPORTS 💀

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org. don’t be shy, bestie — bug reports are a love language 💌

💖 that’s the whole page — source/version: BRL-CAD, manual page: PIXHIST3D(1), and the footer didn’t give us a date, so I’m not inventing one. mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from