[Radiance-general] General Questions: Math for Radiance; Estimated time to proficiency

Roland Schregle roland.schregle at hslu.ch
Mon Aug 28 06:52:15 PDT 2017


On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 05:10:19 +0200, Randolph M. Fritz <rmfritz3 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Glassner’s *Principles of Digital Image Synthesis*. (2 vols. San
> Francisco, CA: Morgann Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1995) is the
> reference I used, back when; anyone know if there has been a
> subsequent book which covers the same ground? The physics, I would
> say, is basically simple, *but* presents computational problems which
> remain difficult, even with modern computing hardware.

I second the recommendation for Glassner's comprehensive 2-volume  
reference, and I consider most of it still relevant, though it of course  
doesn't cover the newer sampling algorithms like Vertex Connection &  
Merging and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (Metropolis and derivatives), but  
these are absent in RADIANCE anyway.

I'd also like to point out Philip Dutré's excellent Global Illumination  
Compendium (https://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~philip.dutre/GI/). This is a  
highly condensed formulaic summary of a lot of what goes in RADIANCE (and  
other GI software). It does assume a strong background in mathematics,  
however. It's an absolute must-have for developers, and was always on my  
desk when I developed the initial photon mapping release. If you ever  
wondered how radiance handles hemispherical geometry in its sampling  
routines, for instance, this document will explain it in probably more  
detail than you care to know. ;^)

The "Advanced Global Illumination" book referred to in the above link is  
worth a look too; it's a more general overview of GI techniques and more  
recent than Glassner's reference, though I personally find it lacking in  
detail compared to the latter. As an overview, it does the job, tho.

"Physically Based Rendering" by Pharr, Jakob, and Humphreys  
(http://www.pbrt.org/) is the most up-to-date of these references, and  
describes advanced raytracing algorithms as implemented in PBRT, an  
open-source raytracer with functionality similar to RADIANCE, albeit for  
more general rendering using newer algorithms. This is a hands-on book  
that places less emphasis on the maths and more on the implementation.

Hope this helps; best regards,

--Roland


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