Radiance visual and falsecolour rendering of Blender’s classroom scene

The VI-Suite can simulate artificial as well as natural lighting. Three main methods are available:

• Specifying a Radiance light material to mesh elements.
• Associating an IES file with a Blender lamp.
• Associating an IES file with a Blender mesh plane to create an array of lights.

IES files, which are text files describing the brightness of a lamp or luminaire from different viewing angles, are released by manufacturers for their specific lighting products and can usually be downloaded from their websites. This gives the opportunity to see how real world products will illuminate a scene visually and with the VI-Suite numerically.

As ever, the video below describes these three methods.