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.
Key Features
- 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
Related Software
| HDR Imaging Software | |
|---|---|
| RawTherapee | The Experimental Raw Photo Editor |
| OpenEXR | HDR image file format and HDR utilities |
| Hugin | Panorama photo stitching program |
| pfstools | Command line HDR manipulation programs |
| tev | High dynamic range image comparison tool |
| HyperHDR | Ambient lighting implementation for television and music sets |
| HDRView | Depth-map and high-dynamic range image viewer |
| Luminance HDR | Provides a workflow for HDR imaging |
| Radiance | Lighting simulation and rendering system |
| HDRMerge | Combine two or more raw images into a single raw |
| CinePaint | Works with 16-bit and floating point pixels for HDR imaging |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Renderers | |
|---|---|
| Blender | 3D computer graphics software toolset that excels in many areas |
| Cycles | Physically based production renderer developed by the Blender project |
| Mitsuba | Extensible rendering framework written in portable C++ |
| LuxCoreRender | Physically based and unbiased rendering engine |
| Malt | Fully customizable real-time rendering framework |
| Art of Illusion | 3D-modeler, renderer and raytracer |
| appleseed | Physically-based renderer targeted at production rendering |
| Renderer | Interactive 3D visualization of triangle meshes |
| Radiance | Suite of tools for performing lighting simulation |
| MiniLight | Minimal global illumination renderer |
| MantaRay | Advanced renderer which uses modern rendering techniques |
| Aqsis | 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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