Radiance is a suite of tools for performing lighting simulation.
The Radiance suite includes over 50 tools, including software to manipulate scene data, generators, geometry converters, rendering, image manipulation and analysis, and integration. It uses ray tracing to perform all lighting calculations, accelerated by the use of an octree data structure.
The software is widely used for lighting analysis and can generate accurate values for radiance/luminance (W/sr.m²,cd/m²) and irradiance/illuminance (W/m,Lux).
It allows very detailed definition of materials’ and light sources’ properties through the use of advanced techniques like brdf and ies files, as well as a powerful mathematical scripting language, resulting in accurate renderings of scenes which are usually imported from CAD and 3D modelers.
It uses the hybrid approach of Monte Carlo and deterministic ray tracing to achieve a reasonably accurate result in a reasonable time.
Features include:
- Programs for modeling and translating scene geometry, luminaire data and material properties.
- Lighting simulation itself uses ray tracing techniques to compute radiance values (ie. the quantity of light passing through a specific point in a specific direction), which are typically arranged to form a photographic quality image.
- Images can be analyzed, displayed and manipulated within the package.
- Conversion to other popular image file formats for export to other packages.
Website: www.radiance-online.org
Support: Rendering with Radiance
Developer: Voluntary contributions made by many individuals on behalf of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
License: Radiance Software License
Return to Graphics | Return to HDR Imaging | Return to Renderers
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