ABSTRACT
Predictive lighting techniques have been used with great success to simulate illumination in architectural renderings, forensic reconstructions and increasingly in cultural heritage visualizations with the aim of depicting the scene as it would have looked if observed directly. This method uses information about the geometry of an environment, the material properties of the surfaces in that environment and the spectral properties of the light sources to generate a mathematical simulation that one can, to some degree, consider accurate. Predictive lighting is a way of using 3D computer modelling to visualize the light levels and appearance of a space given the properties of that space and the properties of the light source. Predictive lighting has as its basis a technique known as ray tracing. This is a method in which a ray of light is traced backwards through the scene, starting from what the camera sees.
