Current deep, high cadence, untargeted surveys of the sky are revealing the great diversity of core-collapse supernovae of all types. These massive star explosions, understood to follow the gravitational collapse of the progenitor iron core, produce two distinct types of supernova with a comparable rate.
Type II supernovae stem from the explosion of H-rich supergiant stars, while Type Ib/c supernovae stem from the explosion of H-poor and more compact progenitor stars.

For the most nearby supernovae II, progenitor identification is sometimes possible. However, in general, all our inferrences on such explosions rely on the analysis of the supernova radiation.
This will be even more true for the forthcoming deep surveys of the transient sky (e.g., with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope).
Understanding massive star explosions therefore requires detailed radiative transfer tools to connect progenitor/explosion and supernova observables.

In this talk, I will focus on type II supernovae. Using a combination of stellar evolution, radiation hydrodynamics, and radiative transfer codes, I will discuss the evolution of a 15Msun star from the main sequence until core collapse, followed by the explosion and the resulting supernova.
I will then describe the supernova radiative properties, and how these can be used to set contraints on the progenitor star and its explosion.