A 3-D radiosity-based point-by-point and imaging program, AGI calculates both electric light and daylight in most environments. The most recent version of the well-known lighting calculation software AGI32, version 2.0, was released by software company Lighting Analysts in February 2008. Following is an overview of the four leading calculation software packages commonly used in lighting design offices across the United States: AGI32, Lumen Designer, DIALux, and Radiance. Additionally, raytracing can be a slow process, especially if the model contains a large quantity of surfaces.Īll lighting software uses one or both of these two options to calculate the illuminance (the amount of luminous flux per unit area) and luminance (the intensity of light emitted from a surface per unit area in a given direction) of surfaces, and provisions to export lighting calculation data. Unlike radiosity, raytracing is view dependent, meaning renderings must be recalculated from each new angle. Raytracing creates beautiful renderings and presentation-quality images by visually representing light on all surfaces, including the sparkle and highlights on specular materials. This method works for all object types including transparent, translucent, and specular surfaces. Calculation rays are sent outward from a particular viewpoint and the program follows each ray as it hits and reflects off different surfaces and divides into more rays. Raytracing, on the other hand, is a point-specific lighting calculation process. A disadvantage to the radiosity method is that it applies to matte and diffuse surfaces only, so contributions from translucent, transparent, and specular (shiny) surfaces are not included in the calculation. Because of the surface dependency of the calculation, the radiosity method can calculate a model once and produce any desired view. Lambertian reflectance refers to surfaces that have reflected light scattered in such a way that the apparent brightness of the surface is the same regardless of the observer’s angle of view. This method works well for all matte model surfaces since radiosity is based on Lambertian reflectance calculations. The program then solves the system of equations in the model by determining the quantity of light on each patch as a result of the total sum of all the patches. Each patch is calculated individually for the amount of light that enters or leaves that surface. Radiosity is a calculation method that divides each surface into small pieces, called patches.
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