A practical method for realistic simulation of non-point light sources in commonly used computer graphics softwares

Simulation of light sources using photometric data can result in realistic scenes which is necessary in many applications such as planning autonomous visual inspection. However, most computer graphics softwares like Blender are not capable of doing simulations for luminaires that are non-point sources, like bar or ring lights. Since a wide variety of non-point lights are being used in the real world, filling the existing gap, and simulating them is a valuable step. In the present paper, a method is presented to model the light texture of a bar light using multiple point lights. The proposed method is evaluated in DIALux which is a lighting software with accurate light calculations. By utilizing multiple sets of point lights in the simulations, the proper number of point lights for the luminaire based on the application requirements is studied. After showing the feasibility, the method is implemented in Blender software and the simulation results are compared with DIALux software to confirm the applicability of the method in Blender. Moreover, a rough light calculation method based on exposure values and false color representation is studied for Blender software and evaluated with results of DIALux which can result in a useful index for some applications.