Scientific Visualization for Interrogation of Results in Lighting Simulation System

Abstract

Lighting modeling software packages often include a tool for processing and investigation of two-dimensional images that are the results of modeling. Functionality of these tools is usually minimal one and often consists of mapping of resultant images into monitor screen only. There are general image viewers and image processing programs. But in practice they either do not contain required functionality, or are so superfluous that result postprocessing becomes inconvenient with them. Therefore we had to implement own viewer that processes high dynamic range images generated by the lighting simulation and realistic computer graphics system as well as visualizes supplementary simulation information needed for engineer analysis. Lighting simulation module transfers to our viewer the generated image in physical values together with supplementary data. These data has per pixel nature and form additional layers of images. Our image processing module provides brightness high dynamic range compression for rendering of images generated with lighting modeling methods including stochastic ones, analysis of the image generation algorithms using additional data layers, applying additional visual effects for improving images appearance, and export of processed images to commonly used formats.