The sun’s vast size creates two distinct shadow phenomena on Earth: solar penumbras and pinhole projections. These sunlight effects are particularly important in daylight perception research and exacting daylighting design. As such, a method to generate accurate and efficient lighting simulations of these sunlight effects is needed to facilitate research and design applications. I investigated the accuracy and applicability of three Radiance-based methods for generating solar penumbras and pinhole projections against real-world measurements using various semi-controlled scenarios. The results show that employing a subdivided sun offers an accurate and efficient method for simulating scenes with solar penumbras and pinhole projections using Radiance. More information about this study is available here.
This project was part of IntelLight+, an Eindhoven Engine project (partners: Signify, Eindhoven University of Technology). The Genmanysuns program is part of RADYNVR and is freely available for research and education uses.
