Important Materials Theory - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 242

The importance of R, G, and B in the
digital realm
Technologies that use the RGB system, such as televisions, computer/tablet screens,
and digital cameras are in fact taking something that is incredibly complex in real-
world terms (visible light) and breaking it down into a much simpler model that can
then be used to approximate and so simplify the complexity of the original.
Ray trace render engines such as V-Ray are perfect examples of this particular ap-
proach to problem solving. Pretty much everything they do simplifies an extremely
complex real-world process, which in turn gives us the ability to compute and produce
single-frame renders in minutes and hours instead of the much, much longer time
frames that a completely accurate simulation of reality would require.
This can be done, especially in the case of the RGB system, for the most part because
of the amazing way that our eyes and brains work together to decipher information re-
garding light intensity and color values. By simply mixing varying levels of these three
primary colors as they have come to be known, most of the visible light spectrum can
be quite satisfactorily represented even though the actual wavelengths being mixed
to recreate the colors aren't technically correct from a physics point of view. In other