The RADIANCE Lighting Simulation and Rendering System

ABSTRACT

1. Introduction

2. System Design Goals

2.1 Ensure Accurate Calculation of Luminance

2.2 Model Both Electric Light and Daylight

2.3 Support a Variety of Reflectance Models

2.4 Support Complicated Geometry

2.5 Take Unmodified Input from CAD Systems

3. Approach

3.1 Hybrid Deterministic/Stochastic Ray Tracing

3.2 Cached Indirect Irradiances for Diffuse Interreflection

3.3 Adaptive Sampling of Light Sources

3.4 Automatic Preprocessing of "Virtual" Light Sources

3.5 User-directed Preprocessing of "Secondary" Sources

3.6 Hierarchical Octrees for Spatial Subdivision

3.7 Patterns and Textures

3.8 Parallel Processing

3.9 Animation

3.10 Implementation Issues

4. Applications and Results

The real proof of a physically-based rendering system is the problems it solves. Here we see how well we have met the challenges and goals we set out. Radiance has been used by hundreds of people to solve thousands of problems over the years. In the color pages we have included some of the more recent work of some of the more skilled users. The results have been grouped into two application areas, electric lighting problems and daylighting problems.

4.1 Electric Lighting

4.2 Daylighting

5. Conclusion

6. Acknowledgements

7. Software Availability

8. Appendix