[Radiance-general] non-technical

[Tom Young]

hi

I have enjoyed fiddling w Radiance, playing w models successfully  
exported from SketchUp.

I will go on doing this because it's enjoyable. It is time consuming  
but I recognise, from past experience, that sometimes you have to  
accept that time properly spent on work, should, in fact, be spent  
playing.

 From this, good things will come.

I am completely non-technical. I approach Radiance in the hope of  
making images that tell me something useful about the fall of light  
in rooms.

To tell whether or not an image does that is both technical and non- 
technical. Certainly, one can tell from experience if an image has  
any plausibility.

Plus, changing settings such as the gensky settings informs one about  
difference, even if inexactly.

Exactitude may be a red-herring. Difference is what matters in the  
rough and ready world of a practising small-scale architect.

One possibility is setting up a model of light and ground source  
settings, with a basic materials file, to review light in spaces one  
is working on.

Let's see: materials aren't that variable in the ordinary world of  
the domestic architect. Glass - yes. Decorated plaster - yes. Gloss  
painted timber trim and structural elements - yes. Marble, various  
stones primarily Yorkstone, Limestone - yes. Concrete - yes. A range  
of timbers - larch, walnut, oak, western red cedar. Brick of course -  
new and old, red thru yellow to blue.

The impression is that Radiance is used by consultants who have the  
skill to create the palettes of material which they need from scratch  
based on a technical grasp of reflectance, specularity, perturbation  
etc. A practising architect is unlikely to share this facility.

So a materials file such as the one alluded to would be very helpful.

I am aware that I am bleating somewhat, and pleading for something  
that takes years of skill to produce, but the lighting and rendering  
consultants out there are never going experience competition from the  
likes of me. So why not release a set of sky files for London and a  
materials file which are credible.

I have scoured the Net for Radiance materials and I haven't found  
anything which deals with the world that I inhabit. The stuff out  
there is useful for basic self-tutoring only.

None of the Radiance generated imagery wh I have seen relates to the  
kind of projects which I am talking about as the meat-n-drink of the  
ordinary London architect.



tom