[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
--
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
School of Engineering and Architecture
Institute of Civil Engineering
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Dr. Roland Schregle
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