Indigo Renderer Forum

I've used Radiance and other radiosity simulations before to assess light quality, and I'm wondering how difficult it would be to have indigo output illuminance contours, to be able to set a unit, a range, and divisions (kind of like levels of posterization). I think it's not as simple as manipulating the final image in photoshop. Illuminance is defined as light incident on a surface, so I can see how this might better fit the radiosity models. I think this would be a great improvement to the functionality of indigo.

Edit: I'm not sure if this is unclear, but what I am suggesting is the ability to use the program to assess real world light levels in an unbuilt (or built) architectural (or other) design (or not?) project from Indigo's simulation.

Do you mean something like this... The old Lightscape 3.2 Classrom

Or like this:
http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/papers/sg94.1/fig9c.gif

As a training architect, this would be awesome. It would reduce the need for Ecotect's lighting analysis...

Indigo capable of calculating illuminance plus BDRF materials plus IES lights...

A complete new market...



[EDIT]

P.S. Here you will find more BRDF Materials and the CPP source code to read them...

Or you can use the Disney's BRDF Explorer, see my Post here...

delle wrote: A complete new market...

yeah...

I actually digged similar stuff in Arnold, but to be honest I never really ended up using it. Somehow the 3D experience by itself is going to tell you that that crazy volumetric shader, some super duper refractive caustics or a glossy reflection with tons of bumps is going to fuck up your render times real bad.

Hi dmn,
A lighting analysis pass is a good idea, and hopefully shouldn't be too hard to implement.
I think we'll try and add it soon, although there are some other features we want to get done first.

Cheers,
nick

Wow! Ok, that's good to know it's a possibility, at least. I wasn't expecting that. Indigo is superb as is.