Light Field Overview

The Light Field allows you to create a propagation result of a sub-optical system to be reused in a more complex optical system to gain time when computing simulation.

Note: The Light Field feature is in BETA mode for the current release.

Optical systems can be composed of sub-optical systems. When you focus on the main optical system, recalculating every time the propagation inside those sub optical systems can be time-consuming. This time can be optimized: the goal is to speed up the simulation by pre-computing the propagation of the sub-optical systems.

To proceed to the pre-calculation of those sub-optical systems, the Light Field feature generates a *.olf (Optical Light Field) file format thanks to a Light Field sensor, that is then used as a Light Field source in the main optical system. Thus, the simulation does not have to compute the propagation of the sub-optical system, reducing the simulation time.

LED including chips with a lens on top

Original Radiance Simulation of the LED

Reference time = T

Radiance Simulation of the Light Field representing the LED

Simulation time = 0.43 * T

General Workflow

  1. Create a Local Meshing of the surface to be integrated in the Optical Light Field file.

    -Or-

    At Step 3, use the Meshing Options of the Direct Simulation to generate the meshing.

    Note: As no optical properties are defined on a Light Field meshing, the Light Field is fully absorbing.
  2. Create a Light Field Sensor to define how the *.olf file will be generated.
  3. Create a Direct Simulation, and if no Local Meshing is applied on the Light Field surface, define the Meshing Options.
  4. Run the Direct Simulation to generate the *.olf file.
  5. Create a Light Field Source that uses the generated *.olf file as input.
  6. Create and run an Interactive, Direct or Inverse Simulation of the main optical system, using the Light Field Source as input.