Method, system, and computer program product for providing illumination in computer graphics shading and animation
US6567083B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 25, 1997 |
| Grant date | May 20, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 25, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T15/506
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method, system, and computer program product are provided that represent complex point and area illumination in computer graphics shading and animation. An irradiance vector field table representative of an irradiance field for a scene to be rendered is generated and stored in a texture memory. During rendering, the scene is lit based on irradiance vectors in the irradiance vector field table. For each point being lit, a corresponding irradiance vector is generated from the irradiance vector field table. A vector operation is performed between the irradiance vector and a surface normal for the point to compute an irradiance energy component. In one example hardware embodiment, a look-up unit looks up and interpolates irradiance vectors for selected points in the irradiance vector field table to compute an interpolated irradiance vector. A dot product unit calculates a dot product between the interpolated irradiance vector and a surface normal for the point being shaded and outputs an irradiance energy component for use in shading. The irradiance vector field table can represent an irradiance field for one or more complex point and area light sources. A set of multi-resolutional i…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.