Chapter 26. Light
26.1. Introduction
We now turn to a more formal discussion of light, expanding considerably on the simple ideas from Section 1.13.1. We start with the physical properties of light, one of which is that it has many characteristics of waves, including a frequency. Our eyes perceive lights of different frequencies as having different colors, but since color is a perceptual phenomenon rather than a physical one, we treat it separately in Chapter 28.
The second part of this chapter is about the measurement of light and the various physical units we use to describe light. Since almost all of these can be described as integrals of one basic quantity (radiance), we also briefly discuss a few special integrals that arise often in rendering. ...
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