  LightGuider is a novel guidance-based approach to interactive lighting
design, which typically consists of interleaved 3D modeling operations and
light transport simulations. Rather than having designers use a trial-and-error
approach to match their illumination constraints and aesthetic goals,
LightGuider supports the process by simulating potential next modeling steps
that can deliver the most significant improvements. LightGuider takes
predefined quality criteria and the current focus of the designer into account
to visualize suggestions for lighting-design improvements via a specialized
provenance tree. This provenance tree integrates snapshot visualizations of how
well a design meets the given quality criteria weighted by the designer's
preferences. This integration facilitates the analysis of quality improvements
over the course of a modeling workflow as well as the comparison of alternative
design solutions. We evaluate our approach with three lighting designers to
illustrate its usefulness.
