The RADIANCE lighting simulation and rendering system

@article{Ward1994TheRL,
  title={The RADIANCE lighting simulation and rendering system},
  author={Gregory J. Ward},
  journal={Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques},
  year={1994}
}
  • G. Ward
  • Published 24 July 1994
  • Computer Science
  • Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques
This paper describes a physically-based rendering system tailored to the demands of lighting design and architecture. [...] Key Method The simulation blends deterministic and stochastic ray-tracing techniques to achieve the best balance between speed and accuracy in its local and global illumination methods. Some of the more interesting techniques are outlined, with references to more detailed descriptions elsewhere. Finally, examples are given of successful applications of this free software by others.Expand
View on ACM
radsite.lbl.gov
1,082 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
125
Background Citations
140
Methods Citations
376
Results Citations
5

1,082 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

The iray light transport simulation and rendering system
TLDR
This work discusses the challenges and implementation choices that follow from the primary design decisions, demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable, and efficient real-world application that is in use by many industry professionals today.
Validation proposal for global illumination and rendering techniques
Abstract The goal of this study is to develop a complete set of data characterizing geometry, luminaires, and surfaces of a non-trivial existing environment for testing global illumination and…
A Two-Pass Solution to the Rendering Equation with a Source Visibility Process
TLDR
This work presents an approach which combines and improves upon ideas from recent research on geometric simplification and shadow ray optimization techniques for efficient handling of large numbers of luminaires.
Composite lighting simulations with lighting networks
TLDR
Lighting Networks provides a way to best use existing algorithms for a specific environment and provides an ideal environment for developing new lighting simulation algorithms and explicitly showing the similarities and differences between lighting simulation approaches.
Interactive Rendering of Globally Illuminated Glossy Scenes
TLDR
Global illumination simulates all transfers of light in a scene and generates photo-realistic images using methods based on ray tracing and radiosity, which do not achieve interactive frame rates.
Canned Lightsources
TLDR
This paper separates the global illumination simulation of the interior lamp geometry from the actual scene rendering, and describes how this data can be efficiently utilized to illuminate a given scene using a number of different rendering algorithms, such as ray-tracing and hardware-based rendering.
Mathematical Models and Monte Carlo Algorithms for Physically Based Rendering
Algorithms for image synthesis render photo-realistic imagery, given the description of a scene. Physically based rendering specifically stresses the physical correctness of the algorithms and their…
Sequential monte carlo methods for physically based rendering
TLDR
A novel statistical framework for physicallybased rendering in computer graphics is presented based on sequential Monte Carlo methods that can substantially improve the efficiency of physically based rendering by adapting and reusing the light path samples without introducing bias.
Monte Carlo Rendering with Natural Illumination
TLDR
A new sampling technique for using environment maps for illumination in a Monte Carlo ray tracer is presented, based on directly importance sampling the continuous two-dimensional distribution of illumination as a function of direction, which achieves equivalent or lower error in rendered images.
Parallel and Distributed Photo-Realistic Rendering
TLDR
This paper will focus on load and data management strategies that effect the amount of data coherence in ray tracing, and on methods to improve ray and object coherence.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 53 REFERENCES
A two-pass solution to the rendering equation: A synthesis of ray tracing and radiosity methods
TLDR
View-independent and view-dependent image synthesis techniques, represented by radiosity and ray tracing, respectively, are discussed and a methodology is presented for simulating global illumination within complex environments using a two-pass approach.
A language for shading and lighting calculations
TLDR
The design of a new shading language based on previous work of Cook and Perlin is discussed, which has various types of shaders for light sources and surface reflectances, point and color data types, control flow constructs that support the casting of outgoing and the integration of incident light, and a clearly specified interface to the rendering system using global state variables.
An improved illumination model for shaded display
TLDR
Consideration of all of these factors allows the shader to accurately simulate true reflection, shadows, and refraction, as well as the effects simulated by conventional shaders.
An experimental evaluation of computer graphics imagery
TLDR
A physical experiment verifies the simulation of reflected light intensities for diffuse environments was conducted and indicates that, when the physical model and the simulation were viewed through a view camera, subjects could not distinguish between them.
Modeling the interaction of light between diffuse surfaces
TLDR
A method is described which models the interaction of light between diffusely reflecting surfaces, which includes the effects of diffuse light sources of finite area, as well as the “color-bleeding” effects which are caused by the diffuse reflections.
A global illumination solution for general reflectance distributions
TLDR
A general light transfer simulation algorithm for environments composed of materials with arbitrary reflectance functions is presented, and an implementation is described based on a spherical harmonic decomposition for encoding both bidirectional reflectance distribution functions for materials, and directional intensity distributions for illuminated surfaces.
Distributed ray tracing
TLDR
Motion blur and depth of field calculations can be integrated with the visible surface calculations, avoiding the problems found in previous methods.
Design and simulation of opera lighting and projection effects
TLDR
New computer graphics techniques, which provide the set and lighting designer the opportunity to evaluate, test, and control opera designs prior to the construction of full scale systems are presented, show the potential for the use of computer graphics in theater design.
Tone reproduction for realistic images
TLDR
Sensation-preserving conversions for display, already known in photography, printing, and television as tone reproduction methods, are discussed and ways of constructing a sensation-preservative display converter, or tone reproduction operator, for monochrome images are demonstrated.
Importance and Discrete Three Point Transport
TLDR
The preliminary results of application of this adjoint to the original transport formulation are described, and indicate that an importance and radiance driven hierarchical technique possesses great promise for the development of efficient global illumination algorithms for general reflection.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...