Patent ID: 6504538
Filing Date: 2003-01-07
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
In a computer graphics system, a method for generating light values for a set of vertices describing a geometric object to be rendered by the computer graphics system, comprising:receiving the set of vertices, each vertex having a coordinate and being associated with one or more vectors for evaluating a light value; selecting a vertex from the set of vertices for computing a light value at the selected vertex, the light value at the selected vertex being associated with a light source having a coordinate; scaling a selected vector for the selected vertex by an inverse magnitude value of a corresponding vector that is associated with a neighboring vertex, the selected vector being scaled to generate an approximately normalized vector for the selected vector; and evaluating the light value at the selected vertex using the approximately normalized vector such that an accurate normalized vector need not be computed for the selected vertex when the approximately normalized vector is determined to be within an acceptable error range.