Patent ID: 6567083
Filing Date: 2003-05-20
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
A method for providing illumination in computer graphics shading, comprising the steps of:generating an irradiance vector field table representative of an irradiance field for a scene to be rendered, wherein the irradiance vector field table includes a set of points and irradiance vectors identifying emission from at least one area light source emitter within said scene; and lighting said scene based on said irradiance vectors stored in the irradiance vector field table, wherein said lighting step further comprises the steps of looking up an irradiance vector for a point using the irradiance vector field table, and performing a vector operation between the irradiance vector and a surface normal for the point to compute an irradiance energy component, whereby the irradiance energy component can be used in determining a shade value for the point, whereby highly efficient computation in computer graphics shading is realized as the computation is independent of the complexity of said area light source emitter, and whereby the actual geometry and emission distribution of said area light source emitter are not needed for a lighting calculation.