Experimental system for visualisation of the light load

Abstract

This paper presents our work on an experimental system for visualisation of the light load. The light load is defined as the total amount of light radiation received by all areas of a 3D scene. The emphasis of the presented system lays on outdoor architectural scenes, but indoor scenes are handled as well. The aim of the system is to visualise the light load either in a single moment or integrated during a longer time period. We have selected a hierarchical Monte Carlo radiosity method to solve the specified problem. This method was extended to handle parallel light sources and specular reflections. New “lighting” iteration was added to computation phase to consider natural light sources such as Sun and sky. The system was implemented in Java programming language using the Java3D API. Thanks to this implementation environment, our system is flexible, easy to modify and extend and it is suitable for experimental and educational purposes.