Radiance is a software package developed by the Lighting Systems Research group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, USA.
Radiance was developed as a research tool for predicting the distribution of visible radiation in illuminated spaces. A three-dimensional geometric model of the physical environment is used, together with a material or .map file detailing the spectral radiance values, to create a rendered photo-realistic colour image. Radiance can be used to perform illuminance and luminance simulations, to calculate lighting levels, Daylight Factors or Glare for daylight and/or artificial lighting.
Radiance is internationally recognised as one of the leading lighting simulation tools available. IES have integrated Radiance into the Virtual Environment. This integration is known as RadianceIES and provides users with even greater ease of use through its interface with the Virtual Environment, especially ModelIT and the Apache Constructions Database (ApCDB).
As well as creating images, RadianceIES also allows the placement of light sensors in zones to facilitate daylight-linked dimming of lights when thermal dynamic thermal simulations are performed using ApacheSim.
RadianceIES can also be used to perform Climate Based Daylight modelling (CBDM) simulations and Vertical Sky Component (VSC) analyses.
Everything you want to know about Radiance can be found in the book Rendering with Radiance by Greg Ward Larson & Rob Shakespeare, published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. More introductory information can be found in the Appendix.
Once the model geometry has been created in a VE project using ModelIT, RadianceIES is accessed by clicking the RadianceIES button from the Lighting group of applications.
The RadianceIES view consists of the usual Model Browser and Viewport with a series of tabs at the bottom of the page. These tabs have been categorised as follows -
· Simulate
· View Images
· Sky/Eye
· Surface Properties
· Component Settings
· Luminaire Settings
· Sensor Settings
· Dynamic results
· WP Grid
· AOI
· VSC
The function and data requirements for these tabs are described in the sections below.
