pydirectional

BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) modeling tools.

pydirectional provides forward models, fitting routines, and utilities for working with BRDF measurements and standard semi-empirical models (RTLS, RPV, Hapke, and others).

Warning: This software is in beta. Results should be used with caution. Please share any feedback via the issue tracker.

Usage

Virtual environment

It is always recommended to use a virtual environment for each Python project. Use your preferred environment manager, or create one with:

python -m venv venv

Activate it on Windows with venv\Scripts\activate, or on macOS/Linux with source venv/bin/activate.

Installation

Install the package and its core dependencies:

pip install -e .

Optional extras are available depending on your use case:

pip install -e ".[dev]"   # Development tools (ruff, mypy, pytest, …)
pip install -e ".[docs]"  # Documentation build (sphinx, …)

Development

Install the pre-commit hooks after cloning:

pre-commit install

When you commit, ruff will lint and format your code. If it makes corrections the commit will be aborted so you can review the changes — just commit again once you are happy.

Run the test suite with:

pytest

Compatibility

pydirectional requires Python 3.11 or later and is tested on Python 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.

Licence

pydirectional is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPLv3). See the LICENSE file for the full licence text.

Authors

pydirectional is developed and maintained by the MetEOR Toolkit Team.