Systems and methods for light pruning
US7750906B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Apr 19, 2006 |
| Grant date | Jul 6, 2010 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 17, 2029 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T15/506
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The effective illumination volume (e.g., angular spread and falloff) of each light source in an object model scene can be represented by a simple geometry. Geometry-based culling techniques then can be used to automatically remove or de-activate lights for a frame, set of frames, or entire shot of animation, based on interactions of the light geometries with objects in the scene. The light pruning process can be run in a pre-pass procedure, such that production and rendering preparation procedures do not have to deal with lights that will not affect a final image. Further, a pre-pass pruning removes lights before rendering, such that the data for each light does not have to be loaded into memory at render time. Removing the lights before rendering also can reduce a amount of ray tracing and other processing used for the lights at render time.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.