Candela
Candela is built for architectural lighting design practices, and its hero is a real progressive path tracer running in WebGL2 — true caustics, not a shader impression, with a physically-sampled spectral dispersion model that draws one wavelength per light path against a Cauchy refractive index. One scroll-driven sun drives every background glow and the hero renderer alike, and an interactive photometric instrument lets visitors relight the page from a real distribution curve.
Open live preview ↗
Highlights
- A genuine progressive path tracer in WebGL2 — true caustics and soft-shadow global illumination fall out of the transport, nothing draws them
- Physically-sampled spectral dispersion: one wavelength per path, refractive index from Cauchy — pick crown, flint, sapphire or diamond and watch the fire change
- One scroll-driven solar altitude drives every section background, the glow position and the hero renderer from a single value
- An interactive photometric instrument that computes a real polar distribution curve and relights the page from it
Overview
Candela is built for practices whose product is light: lighting designers working on facades, bridges, museums and public space. Its hero is not a shader impression of light — it is an actual unidirectional path tracer running in WebGL2, firing new rays every frame and averaging them into a running mean. Because it solves the real rendering equation it produces true caustics, physically-sampled spectral dispersion (one wavelength per path, refractive index from Cauchy’s equation) and genuine soft-shadow global illumination. The image visibly develops out of noise the way a long exposure resolves.
Two further ideas run through the whole theme. One sun, one page: a single scroll-driven solar altitude drives every section background, the glow position and the hero renderer, carrying the visitor from the warm minutes after sunset into full night. And a real instrument: the photometric widget draws a genuine polar intensity distribution, reports peak intensity, illuminance at throw and beam diameter from the actual photometric relations, and then relights real page elements with the colour temperature you specify. Layout follows the grammar of a lighting plot — drafting grid, circled fixture symbols, dimension lines, legend — rather than a brochure.
What's included
- Full theme source — every template, style sheet & script
- One-click demo importer (idempotent, no page builder)
- Live Customizer controls for copy, colours & content
- Translation-ready .pot file + RTL stylesheet
- HTML documentation + a CHANGELOG file
- Lifetime updates + 6 months support (renewable)
Specifications
| WordPress | 5.6 – 7.0 |
|---|---|
| PHP | 8.0 – 8.3 |
| Browsers | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge (latest) |
| Layout | Fully responsive, mobile → desktop |
| Localization | Translation-ready · RTL included |
| Accessibility | Keyboard-navigable · prefers-reduced-motion |
| Page builder | Not required — native Customizer |
| License | GNU GPL v2 · single-site commercial |
Release
The complete, dated version history ships in the theme’s CHANGELOG file. Every purchase includes lifetime access to future updates.
