[Radiance-general] Basic ray-tracing

[Thomas Bleicher]

Hi again

Radiance is probably not the best tool to start rendering or to explore
ray-tracing theory. It has since the beginnings a lot of optimisations to
be physically accurate but still reasonable fast. Because physical lighting
and daylighting applications were the main purpose other features like
shaders or caustics or particles are not well supported or not there at all.

On the other hand, Greg Ward has been supporting Radiance for a lifetime
and has provided very detailed documentation and comments via this mailing
list (or those that came before). There is also a very good documentation
on the concepts and algorithms used in Radiance included in the "Rendering
for Radiance" book. I don't know of any other renderer that has something
like that.

So, in terms of studying and understanding raytracing you can do worse than
Radiance. If you just want to create nice pictures you are probably better
of with other renderers.


Regards,
Thomas




On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Philippe de Rochambeau <phiroc at free.fr>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Is Radiance a good environment to learn basic ray-tracing?
>
> I have looked at some of the tutorials online, but they seem to take it
> for granted that the reader is a lighting specialist or already has a
> ray-tracing background.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Philippe
> _______________________________________________
> Radiance-general mailing list
> Radiance-general at radiance-online.org
> http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general
>
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