[Radiance-general] Stadium light

[Lars O. Grobe]

Am Donnerstag, den 03.02.2011, 14:16 -0500 schrieb Tim Metcalfe:
> I have the ies file for an electric lightsource how do I put it into ecotect to use it or convert it to rad file?

You can convert IES files into Radiance using ies2rad. The output will
typically be a .rad-file, containing a light material, with its angular
distribution modified by a brightfunc modifier, plus a surface that this
light material will be applied to. The second file written by ies2rad
will have a .dat-extension, and it contains the candela distribution a
the input file.

It is somehow easy to introduce errors when working with ies files. Be
especially  careful about:

- units(!!)
- about wether your ies file contains absolute values or relative to a
given luminous flux of the source,
- in most cases you want to go with white sources, unless e.g. you
combine different lamps with different color temperatures,
- the coordinate systems in the ies specifications are not all that
obvious, and it is always a good idea to put the source into a simple
scene and look at the illuminance on a plane below and besides for
plausibility checks...

Cheers, Lars.