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RAD

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Radiance Scene Description Preview.

At a glance
Purpose Three unrelated formats share this extension: the Radiance scene description, a Radiance picture saved as .rad, and the SANKOM Audytor radiator catalogue.
Extensions .rad
Poka parser poka-rad
Viewer poka-metadata-card-viewer
Depth tier Metadata card (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier B3 Core (see Breadth tiers)

How much Poka reads

B3 Core. Only the main content type or types are decoded (for example geometry but not materials, layers or annotations, or only one version family). The list of gaps is substantial.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-16: poka-rad lib.rs (identify, picture header, scene census, SANKOM header), geometry.rs (3D), tests/samples.rs and tests/geometry.rs; corpus has 2 Cornell-box scenes, 2 pictures (input.rad, input-2.rad) and 1 SANKOM catalogue (Grzejniki.rad). The tier covers the Radiance scene description, the main use of .rad. The RGBE picture flavour is B4-B5 (header facts only) and the SANKOM flavour is B5 (data kind and version only).

What Poka does not read

  • Scene: instance and mesh primitives (named files beside the scene) are not drawn
  • Scene: source (distant light) is not drawn
  • Scene: ! commands (xform, genbox and similar) are not run, so generated geometry is missing
  • Scene: patterns, textures and function or data modifiers are ignored; material roughness, specularity and transmission values are not shown, only a colour
  • Curved surfaces are cut into 24 flat facets
  • RGBE picture saved as .rad: pixels are not decoded (only dimensions, orientation, exposure, command history and variables)
  • SANKOM Audytor radiator catalogue: only the data kind and version are read, no catalogue entries

Background

Radiance is a suite of lighting simulation tools that Greg Ward began writing in 1985 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It renders by ray tracing, accelerated by an octree. Its scene description is a text file of primitives (surfaces, materials, light sources); its pictures are RGBE high dynamic range images, usually .hdr or .pic but sometimes .rad. SANKOM Audytor, a Polish building-services program, uses .rad for a radiator catalogue in its PWFILEVERINF container, the same wrapper as its .ekd and some .blo files. Poka decides by content. A scene description is drawn in 3D with a metadata card beside it; a picture and a catalogue get a metadata card.

Versions

Version Identifier Poka Note
Radiance scene description Partly read Surfaces are drawn in 3D (poka-parsers#241). Instance, mesh, source and ! command lines are not handled, and patterns and textures are ignored.
Radiance picture (RGBE) #?RADIANCE Partly read Header facts on a card; the pixels are shown by poka-hdr when the file is named .hdr, so a picture saved as .rad never shows its pixels.
SANKOM Audytor radiator catalogue PWFILEVERINF, data kind PURCDRAD Partly read Only the data kind and version are read; no catalogue entries.

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

Sources